MattR

Not sure about Bass in particular, but scouts that have gone to hardware big box stores all get the same bit of advice. Each store has a fixed amount of money they donate per month or fiscal quarter, so be there asking at the start of that period with an explicit list of needs.

Good luck. It sounds exciting.

Humuhumunukunukuapua'a. I think it's a fish. The flag was rectangular but had an extension so the name could fit. In order to be in the patrol you had to be able to pronounce the name.

@@KevinRiner, since you are both a CM and tiger den leader you should be awarded more than a knot. What you're doing is wonderful and whatever recognition you'd like I hope you get. Staying the course does require some recognition so go for it and don't be shy. It may take many years until the boys you work with are mature enough to say thank you, but it's worth the wait. That is the best recognition. In the meantime I hope some parents will also thank you.

The scout is just as high minded as the board. They aren't asking him to do anything out of the ordinary. Know a knot, handle some paperwork, describe what he did. At the same time, telling a scout he'll never get Eagle is being a bit closed minded. He's a kid. Of course there's a mess.

Whether or not the board will improve is of no interest, but the scout could learn from this. It sounds like the scout respects qwazse. Qwazse could talk to him. Just a guess but I'd say the scout got defensive when the board got pushy. That's the mess. Since the scout said he'd do those things for qwazse it sounds like he thinks he should know how to do those things. So the real issue is how to deal with people that you disagree with.

Scouts may be nominated for a position even if they don't want it.

Scoutmaster is involved throughout the process.

 

I may be missing or misunderstanding something but this has got to be one of the biggest complaints I have about BSA so far.  Why are people appointed versus being voted for?  This is not what I expected and does not seem to be much of an election process.  Please fill me in because this surprises me and I do not like it. 

The crux of the problem seems to be buried in the bottom of this post.

My troop does not appoint anyone that doesn't want a position. I would never suggest a scout take on a POR that he doesn't want. There are lots of reasons why a scout might not want to do it and most are legit, so we trust the scouts on that. There are not so many positions that everyone that wants one gets one. So they are coveted and there's never an issue of telling someone they have to do something. I may encourage a scout to try something, but it's his decision. At the same time, only the SPL and PL positions are voted on. The SPL appoints a lot of positions based on scouts that want a POR. If there isn't anyone that is both capable and wants the job, then there's some encouragement going on.

So, if your son wants to be QM and the SPL thinks he'd do a good job, then he's assigned that position.

I missed two campouts in a row for the first time since I joined the troop 14 years ago. While gone it seemed like everything was falling apart. All sorts of Mean Girls crap, parents sending me emails, one family quit in a huff, scouts saying they want to quit, parents telling me we have to have adults with the scouts at all times, an adult berating the troop because his son wasn't treated well. Blah blah blah. No, this is not the good news but it does make it that much sweeter.

Anyway, after all that I stick with my belief that scouts are good, problems are opportunities, and we are not going to solve all their problems for them. The long story short is that the scouts will not bring up problems. They don't know how. Everything seems black and white to them. Problems mean violence, so don't admit there's a problem. Even though we have reviews the real issues are swept under the rug. It doesn't matter whether adults are there to facilitate reviews.

We made a couple of changes to help with this. We asked patrols to focus on people problems during reviews. We asked ASMs, at least for now, to facilitate the discussion and to coax out issues. The ASMs also wander about at random times at campouts and meetings, just far enough way to not be noticed but close enough to know whether things are rough or smooth. Next, I told the scouts that if they attempt to fix something before I find out about it then I don't really care what it was, within reason. Finally, I pulled aside a couple of the older scouts that are the natural leaders (without any POR) but don't realize it and just talked about their role in the troop. This was all done before preparing for this past weekend's campout.

At the meeting before the campout all sorts of issues were brought up so it seemed good. At the campout the scouts were doing okay but it became real clear real quick that their planning for the main events were not very good. This brought up all sorts of problems. What was wonderful is that the scouts mostly took care of the issues on their own. I had very little to do on the campout.

That afternoon, after all the problems were solved, was magic. They all cooked dutch oven meals and then hung out together around the fire. 11 to 17 years of age. All having fun. The older scouts, the ones I had talked to, were running games and really enjoyed it. The younger scouts were so enthralled with the whole scene that they were just good. They looked up to the older scouts and the older scouts looked out for them. It was a Norman Rockwell scene.

Maybe we were lucky. Certainly we didn't have the complete set of troublesome scouts but we did have a couple of them. We seem to go through these rough patches every 18 months or so but this time it was different. They did a better job solving their own problems. It certainly renewed my faith in scouting.

If the parents are having fun then they are showing up, and bringing their sons with them. If the parents are showing up then it's easier to teach them how scouting works. If all the parents are having fun together then it's easier to pull them aside when they get too involved with the scouts.

Before I became SM I was going to make a Heckawee patrol patch. After I step down I'll go back to that. The patch was going to be a broken compass. For those of you that don't know, the Heckawee came from F Troop, as in Where the Heckawee. Turns out there really was a Heckawee tribe and they weren't to fond of the F Troop episode.

I agree with fred, the art of this is finding some fun things that incorporate learning. If there's a boring class that just has to be done then hopefully it will be preparing the scouts for some fun activity. Gun safety is an easy example. Imagine gun safety without the shooting afterwards. Dry. Horrible. So, how to make Cit in the World not dry and horrible? That's art. Once I taught that MB and to illustrate a dictator I took a tennis ball and said whoever is holding the tennis ball makes the rules. Then I tossed the ball up in the air. Mayhem. But they learned something about types of government.

@@Ankylus, resume loading is my pet peeve. The problem is the parents think the learning is all from getting stuff signed off. A lot of important learning is a consequence from having fun, or maybe not having fun. The Scout Law falls under that category.

Make time to have fun and tell the scouts when they do a good job. This may sound simple but while you're trying to deal with all the details you can lose the forest in the trees.

The school has to follow OSHA regulations. The administrator made the right call.  

 

We get that all the time, particularly with broken windows.  It is often the parents of the vandals who ask us to have their kids fix it themselves. While I totally understand the appeal of this sort of restorative justice, we simply can't do it. It is against the rules.

 

We would send the parents a bill for the cost of repairing or cleaning up the damage.

Well, make them take the training.Or give the kids equal work doing something else, like making sure the floors stay clean.

I was in Japan a long time ago and the kids clean the schools. They have no janitors.

My guess is something could be worked out, if the schools were interested.

If it does happen, and the only reason they do it is to increase membership, then they're in for a surprise. It won't change much because that's not the issue. If it were than venture scouts would be growing. It's not about girls, or gays, or God, or STEM, or making a uniform that has a pocket for an mp3 player.

Boy scouts has an image problem that has become self fulfilling. That's why the numbers are going down. It's where you go to pad your resume for college. Nerds and preppies. Many scouts will say that's nonsense but that's the image. The BSA is playing to its strengths so they're naturally going to lean in that direction. STEM and FCFY? That's not appealing to many kids so why is there wonder that the numbers are going down? The kids it is appealing to is reinforcing the image.

I think they should take a careful look at every method and be honest about what is going right or wrong with it. Does it support fun, adventure, challenge and the aims of scouting? That will make it cool. If high adventure is so important and there are fewer adults that know the outdoors, then maybe having really expensive high adventure bases that are hard to get into is not helping. Their squirt gun rules are beyond stupid. Advancement shouldn't look like school so clean up the MBs so each one has a higher percentage of fun, adventure, or challenge and isn't geared just to 12 year olds. Simplify the uniform and make it uniform. Put more focus on patrol method, leadership, and just letting the scouts make their own decisions. There are a lot of adults that don't get it, solve that.

UK scouts is growing. There are waiting lists to get in. That sounds like a high class problem to me. How does the BSA get there? It seems to have started with a leader, that had a vision, that could stir things up and get things done. The change shouldn't be about third rail issues, it should be about making scouts cool again.

My approach to scouts not acting scout-like has always been, you break it, you fix it. The level of fixing matches the size of hole they make. In this case it was a deep hole. Loss of trust was a big issue. He couldn't just talk his way out of this one. Other scouts were also an issue as they knew what happened and were watching. There is a point where the hole is too big. For this scout it was. I told him make it right and we can talk but he didn't even try. He left the troop. So, maybe what I did and what David would have done with a zero tolerance policy weren't so far apart. David wouldn't have given him a chance and I gave him a chance that I knew was a long shot. The more I learned about this kid and his friends and his history I just knew he didn't have it in him to fix this. I would have been happy had he tried but he didn't. He wanted eagle more than he wanted to fix things so he left the troop.

Skip's story about the scouts that found the troop with the alcohol just doesn't translate well to people that live in the US. When I was a kid, living in Europe, there was no age limit on drinking. We drank. Nobody cared. Four days ago I was carded. I'm closing in on 60. How stupid is that? I recently went to a class reunion and we all talked about how we could just go places and do stuff on our own in Europe without adults. We got into more trouble but we also had to fix those problems. We also went out on our own more.

These two stories illustrate how hard it is to motivate scouts to make good decisions. Leave them alone so they make decisions means some of them will be bad. It gives them opportunity to learn how to fix things but there's always pressure to prevent them from making bad decisions. What I'm finding now with my troop is that scouts have no idea how to solve people problems. Not how to apologize, or disagree with someone. They would much rather hope it all just goes away on its own. Getting a scout to admit to himself that he did something wrong is a huge first step in fixing anything. In hindsight, I look at the kid with the marijuana and there was no way he was going to fix the mess he was in.

@@desertrat77, there was no zero tolerance policy from me, the county sheriff, my CO, or my CE. I talked to all of them and they all wanted to get this kid to see his mistake and own it. The problem was, as the saying goes, you can bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink. This kid was not interested. I suspect Frank was different, or maybe it was his parents.

My impression is that zero tolerance policies are being used less.

@@krypton_son, you make good points, teenagers make mistakes and the punishment should match the transgression. At the same time the teenagers need to learn from those mistakes and there is no learning until the scout realizes he make a mistake. The big question is how to know when that happens. As I said before, I wanted to know if this scout was sorry he got caught or sorry he did something wrong. Until he realized he did something wrong I didn't want him in my troop. I suspect the same thing was going on with Frank. After his parents and his scout leaders punished him he regretted what he had done. I was hoping to get to that point with my scout but he never once showed any regret. I explicitly asked him if he thought he made a mistake and he couldn't answer the question. Until he saw that he had made a mistake he wasn't going to be in my troop. If he had I was willing to work with him, just like Frank's parents and his scout leaders did. Rather than confront his problems he decided to transfer to another troop.

Update on this story: The scout went to another troop. Brought cigars to a camporee and was smoking them, in his tent, with other scouts. Got caught. Lied about it. And was thrown out of scouts by the Council. Some people don't learn.

@@blw2, I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. The problem with this scout was almost entirely due to his parents. They never held him accountable for anything. They got mad at me because I upset him over this incident. Something tells me Frank's parents were not so worried about their son being upset.

I think the sports/scouts comparison doesn't hold. Sure at the game a player has to wear the uniform, but scouts go to a lot more "games". I played football when I was a kid and we wore our jerseys to school on game day. It was fun. But we only played 8 games a year. If we had to wear our uniforms every Monday for seven years, it would have gotten beyond old.

@@qwazse, I think the real issue came out in your last message, you'd like it stricter and some adults wouldn't. I'm in the "it's a method, not the aim" camp. Yes, I want the scouts to look sharp and I always do, but right now I am much more interested in getting a small group of older scouts to start sticking up for some of the younger scouts. I have to choose my battles. However, more power to you if you can succeed at the battle.

Kind of on a side note, but I recently talked to a guy that grew up in Mexico and he told us about Mexican scouts (he's a US citizen now). Their uniforms and the uniforms that I saw on Skip's film just look much easier. From what I can tell, all of the patches go on the shoulder. There isn't much room so there isn't much bling. For the most part it looked like blue shirts and a necker. One thing I don't like about our uniforms is they aren't at all uniform, and I'm not talking about the different versions of the uniform. Everyone looks different because there are so many patches and awards that can be displayed on a uniform. Sometimes it looks like a walking trophy case and the adults are worse about it than the scouts. Knots, epaulets, OA insignia, council insignia, language strips. When I played football our jerseys were identical except for the number. We were part of a team. I don't get that sense at all looking at scout uniforms.

Just my 2 cents:

For 3-4" I'd likely use 1/4 to 3/8" rope. I've bought spools of rope online. It's much cheaper than going to the local store. Before you buy a spool get 100' and try it out.

I prefer natural fiber rope as it holds better. The biggest challenge with the scouts is getting them to tie the lashings tight enough to, say, hold up a tower they want to climb on. I tell the scouts they have to pull on the rope until it creaks, for nearly every wrap and frap. With natural fiber there's enough friction that after every pull it will tend to stay in place. The plastic ropes are much slicker and tend to start loosening up as soon as you let off the tension.

The down side to natural fiber is that it is harder on the hands when doing all that pulling (use gloves) and whipping the ends takes a bunch of time. I learned the hard way that there is good whipping twine and everything else, get waxed whipping twine.

Just trying to get this back on track. I think @@blw2 was not so interested in the fact that there are Areas so much as the absurdity of saying a 16 year old is allowed to drive several hours to some events but not one hour to a unit event.

BTW, blw2, we apply those rules to our unit events.

@@onetallmama, welcome to the forums.

I find it very hard to turn kids away.

The boy scouts would handle this by splitting the group in two but still be in the same troop (each group is called a patrol). Maybe these scouts have differences of opinion on what they should do so two groups of 7 might be easier to work with. More scouts means more parents so maybe you can get some help. This could be a good thing.

I saw a great demo you might want to try regarding wet kindling. Someone took a bucket filled with kindling and filled that with water and let it soak for awhile. He then took the kindling out of the water and put it on a stand with a candle under it. Lots of smoke for awhile but it eventually lit. Probably a practical skill in your neck of the woods.

I agree with people that say this isn't worth service hours. A flag ceremony is not a service project. It's just something we do.

Which begs the question, what is it? If it's just part of an advertising campaign then I'd pass. But how about a company that's interested in developing community. If the sole intent is nothing more than doing a flag ceremony because it's veteran's day, I think it's fine. Yes, they may get some advertising for it but they also help pay for creating events that bring community together. At the same time some parent might bring their child to a scout unit because they saw some fine young men doing a flag ceremony.

I'd say talk to the owner and get to know him. Then listen to your gut.

Well done. The scouts are having fun. Did the scouts put this all together?

I wish we could set up a stove in the middle of our room.

There's a book you might be interested in, called "Risk, the science and politics of fear" by Dan Gardner. It's a very good dissection of what people are scared of and why, with, as the title implies, it lays the blame very much at the feet of the media and politicians.

I don't know Skip, I think of what I grew up with and everyone knew about it and we still got out. Late 60's to mid 70's? Not only was all that in the news but so was the fact that rock and roll was going to rot your brain. I got bused into an inner city school and they had fights between white kids and black kids every day. I learned to stay away from that. I also learned to walk away from a dicey looking street. My parents taught me that if I got robbed, just give them the money and don't worry about it. We walked around with traveler's checks and didn't keep all the eggs in one basket, so to speak. It's called being prepared.

Think about this insane idea of safe spaces and triggers at universities and that has nothing to do with news inspired boogie men. That's more about your life being perfect and heaven forbid it's a bit uncomfortable at times. In order to go on an adventure you have to deal with some discomfort at times.

We used to have two HA trips a year because we had so many scouts that wanted to do them. We're going down to one and opening it up for everyone because few of the older scouts want to go.

I'm not surprised a scout would ask for certification, assuming an instructor told him to ask for it, but it's a very bad idea. Not only is it a lost time issue (the time to find my id, if I had it on me, would be the time I'd give myself to see if someone has a pulse before starting CPR) it's also creating a bad environment. Any first aid situation I've been in requires lots of help and starting it off by dismissing someone is not going to help things. In the heat of the moment you need to work together and check each other. You have to fight your own shock. The more people helping the better. If someone tells me they're an EMT then that's way above what I have and I'll ask them how I can help. It will be real clear real quick if such a person is lying. Then I'd have a bigger mess to deal with.

As for Good Samaritan laws, they do not apply to anyone with professional training. That's why a lot of doctors will stay away from a first aid situation if it's not their field of expertise. They are not obligated to help. They may have no better training than first responder. I've heard that police will also defer to anyone that says they know first aid because the police have other things to do in order to get an ambulance there. A lot of scouts think they know first aid because they have first aid MB, but the truth is that's one and done. I have to have my certification renewed every two years and the scouts don't.

Whether the BSA first aid training program is sufficient is another thread. It would be nice to see a boy scout and know you have someone that's qualified but the reality is different.

I had a great time this weekend and it had nothing to do with scouting or the outdoors but it did clarify why I'm frustrated with boy scouts. I went to a class reunion and had a great time reminiscing over all the adventures we had. As teenagers we were thrown together with people from all over the world and put in a place that was completely different from what we were used to. We had to figure it out, it didn't always work out, but we ended up with incredible memories and we learned how to solve problems. All in all everyone said it was a great experience.

It all reminded me of what scouts should be. Granted, learning how to not get lost in the woods is a bit different than getting lost in an old market where nobody speaks any language you're familiar with, but there are similarities. The big difference seems to be our parents vs us. When we were kids our parents let us do a lot more. Once my mom took me and a friend and our bikes to Calais and dropped us off. We told her we were going to take the fairy across the channel, ride our bikes to Stonehenge and we'd call her up when we got back. She was fine with it. We didn't call her for a week.

I started asking my classmates if they let their kids do what we did and the responses were either hell no, or you could just see the light come on and they'd just say oh. There were a few people that encouraged their kids to do what we did. We set slightly tighter boundaries and made sure they knew how to get out of trouble, but we eventually pushed them out the door and said good luck. Not many parents will do that now.

I see the same thing in my troop. Most parents just don't understand what an adventure is or how useful or fun it can be. This used to be just a few parents and now it's closer to half. I just had a parent bitch at me about how I should make extra PORs, whether they're needed or not, so his son can advance faster. He already has the time done so how about a 1 month special project for the POR? I kept my mouth shut but I wanted to tell him that, since he's an Eagle scout, maybe if he went camping and let his sons go on high adventure trips then maybe they might see scouting as more than a patch.

Someone said scouts is struggling because there are fewer parents with outdoor skills. I disagree. There are fewer parents that understand what an adventure is. Scouting without an adventure is nothing more than a classroom.

I wouldn't use a survey for one campout. We do something after every campout that we call roses, thorns and buds. The BSA calls it stop, start, continue. The idea is get everyone in groups of about 10 (we do it by patrol) to stand in a circle and politely talk about what went great, what went wrong, and what should be done in the future. By explicitly asking for examples of each of those the most important issues come up.

Asking for feedback is important. Your parents will really appreciate it. Doing it face to face should help tone down the snarky comments you might get with an electronic survey. It would be good to have at least one person in each circle that can encourage people and also keep things civil/not personal.