353Beaver

The bottom line in ALL of our training should be, All about the boys! (unless a venture guide... then subtitute youth) Our best reward is not wood, cloth, paper, or stone... it's seeing one of our youth move on, better prepared to meet the world!

Unfortunately, no amount of training will purge all of the "Renegades." Only vigilance from their peers will keep them from adding requirements. We must provide the best program possible and remember the focus is the young men (I prefer not to call them boys)... and not the adult leaders/staff. And encourage the "renegades" to shape up. Back to the WB21 issue, there are individuals (one of my Patrol mates, in fact) that have continued to focus on the program in various positions (in his case as a SM and OA advisor). Between that and work as a DoD contrator he could not afford the tim

The whole they/we old vs new course rift has been enhanced by the requirement to give up one's beads and go through WB21 to be "Woodbadge qualified". Instead, a Nationally sanctioned recurrency/update short course would be a better idea! As an 20-year USAF navigator, I did not have to re-earn my wings because they restructured Nav-school (changes were much larger in scope than Woodbadge)... but I did have to stay current with the latest changes. So why force a person to give up their hard-earned beads and retake the full program? Well, some other opportunities require (not

The Beads... Important, yes... however we must never forget they are a symbol of accomplishment, committment, etc... Without that they are just another trinket to buy on e-bay. In Baden Powell's original course the beads were awarded to highlight the added training and committment. He was looking for something to award his class and chose the his Zulu beads... early participants were awarded 1 bead and required to carve #2 themselves. Reaccomplishing the course... don't like it. But I am open minded to a means for a person to get another chance to earn their beads, maybe recurren

When WB for the 21st Century was first launched, National made a huge deal about the new grads being, rightly, accepted into the Woodbadge fraternity and not be looked at as completing a "lesser" program. Now, the tides seem to have changed and the Old Course grads are being excluded and essentially told that our beads are worthless! Of course we can just pay another fee and complete a new ticket... then we can join the reindeer games again! I staffed the 2nd iteration of WB21 in our council and our staff (which was carefully selected, to avoid the they/we crowd) did get the new program