mk9750

In our District, we start each year with a Chairman who was a Vice - Chair for the event the previous year. He and other core adults from his Troop are the lead people responsible for this year's event (be it Camporee, Klondike, Webelos Woods, etc.) The FIRST responsiblity of the event chair, who works under the guidance of the District Program Chaiman, is to recruit a vice chair, who will run NEXT YEAR's event. This person serves very closely with the Chair, so that when it is his turn to run an event next year, very few surprises should come up. The event chair works with what we c

How is it that I can proof read a post three times before I hit the submit button, but when I actually see the post in the forum, I can find at least 2 more mistakes? Mark

What a wonderfull article (even if it is long enough for ME to have written!). As I read it, I made a mental list of people to whom I want to forward this. Unfortunately, I kept having to scratch people of my list because I might offend them. Maybe I am displaying the same friendship mistakes as the parenting mistakes the author discusses here. I have no business judging other's parenting philosophies and skills, so apoligize in advance for doing so. But I can say almost without exception that the biggest "problem boys" we get in our Troop have parents that display most or all of the

Mollie, Sorry to hear your son had a tough time with Personal Management based on adults. That is my favorite badge to work on with guys, especially if they take my advice and wait to do it until they are old enough to have a part time job. There is so much more to learn by budgeting a few hundred dollars a month -vs- a $5.00 per week allowance. The number of valuable things guys can learn with that merit badge is huge. In one of the older Personal Mangagement pamphlets, there was a chart of two methods for saving. It demonstrated that if a person were to put aside $2,000.00 a year

I just had to share this incident with all of you. I thought it was very interesting. Our older guys are beginning the preparations for their annual Appalacian Trail hike in the spring. Because this event is a great time to tackle some of the requirements for Hiking and Backpacking MBs, a number of our guys asked me for blue cards so they could begin working with one of our ASMs, who is a Counselor for those badges. A week or two ago, I walked into the meeting to find three Scouts discussing various requirements with the ASM. It was one of those Rockwell moments, with the ASM standi

This is less a confirmation or dispute of the points made so far as it is simply another point to consider: Our Troop was at 11 boys when my oldest son joined with 10 other boys and doubled the size of the Troop. Over the last 12 years we have had as many as 48 boys in our Troop, and are now back down to 20. Our experience has been that there is little change in the way a Troop works until it grows or shrinks by about 10 boys at the same time. Our Troop functioned the same with 26 boys as it did with 24. But in years we added 10 guys, the way the Troop functioned changed dramatically

May I try to address this issue from a slightly different angle? One of the questions, followed by more than a couple answers, talked about switching Troops. Although that must remain an option, in my VERY humble opinion, it should be as a last resort. We have now had 4 boys transfer into our Troop from other Troops. In three cases, the reason was that the other Troop didn't do anything fun or interesting. In the fourth, both the boy and his father could not see eye to eye with the Scoutmaster on numerous issues. In our experience, limited to four examples, switching units has b

Man, sorry to hear that. I would classify this as aggregious (sp) disregard for the Scout Law. As such, I would delay the conclusion of the Board of Review until such time as the Scout could remedy the situation. For me, that would include at least the following: 1) An apology to the Scoutmaster, the Board of Review, and the MB Counselor whose name was forged. 2) Completion of all of the requirements of the MB honestly. 3) A period, at least a month or so, but probably not more than three or four months, in which the Scout demonstrates that he actively accep

Well, the results are in, and I think you'll find them interesting. After trying to get together during last week's meeting failed, I asked the Scout to write out a short description of his belief system. As I've mentioned before, this is one of those guys who is a bit too smart for his own good, and it showed in his writing. He created a three page dessertation on comparative religions, got into the debates of free will and natural law, and discussed absolutism versus relativism. But in the end, he really didn't discuss his believe system. We got together last night in the group I h

Trev, That sounds great! Two years ago, a small group of us got together to come up with ideas how to revive our spring camporee, which was looking for life support. One Scouter (now our District Commisioner BTW), suggested a pioneering competition camporee. We decided on categories of Trebuchets, standard catapaults, and signal towers. No dimensional lumber, and no fasteners of any kind. The first camporee had only 6 of the 27 Troops in our District attend, but everyone had a blast! They launched water ballons (although the corn starch might actually be more fun!). The event w

Once again, thanks for all the guidance. We tried to get together with the Scout on Tusday night. ("we" is the original 3 BoR members, plus the Scoutmaster). We had hoped the Scout would want to include his parents, but he did not. The Scout talked to his parents about the issue during the intervening week, and were quite upset. However, they were upset more about what this might do to their son making Eagle. The family has never been very religious (I had forgotten this until I was reminded about it in the last week, but they once stopped him from doing a Scripture reading at Mass for S

I am going to defer to Beavah on the Consititution issues concerning copyright laws. He sounds like he knows more than I do (at least it SOUNDS that way). However, my common sense tells me that if I create anything, I should own the rights to what is done with that creation, and may give it away, throw it away, or sell it away as I see fit. If I create something and sell the right to enjoy my creation to another person, I believe he has the right to enjoy it as he / she sees fit. In the instance of a recording, my common sense tells me that should I want to have a second copy to list

Folks, Thanks again for your insightful suggestions. I also want to commend everyone for returning back to the question. Even Merlyn, with whom I disagree almost 100%, was respectful enough to discontinue his fight in this thread when I requested. Thank you! It just now struck me that I'm going to have to deal with at least portions of this issue again. One of our new Scouts is Budhist. Being completely and shamefully ignorant about Budhism, it never occurred to me that they don't worship a god. He is scheduled for a BoR for Tenderfoot next week. For this rank, questions would

Folks, Thanks so much for your help! Most of the answers are the same considerations I had before I asked the question to you. In reading your suggestions, and mulling it over myself, I think that my course of action will be as follows: SM, Scout, and the three of us who sat on the BoR will get together. The Scout has asked that we not include his parents yet, as he wants to determine how he deals with this with his parents. I would like to have us ask some or all of the following questions: 1) Tell us what you perceive being agnostic means to you. 2) We assume

One more thing. As much as appreciate everyone's right to their opinion about the right and wrong of atheists and agnostics, and as much as I appreciate everyone's right to express their opinion, it would be nice for everyone to realzie that debating the merits of the issue does not help me resolve the situation we have. If everyone who wants to debate the BSA's right to exclude people would kindly do so elsewhere, so that the rest can help me resolve the specific issue, I would be VERY appreciative. Thanks! Mark

To all, Thanks for so many great answers so quickly! I look forward to more. Let me ask more specific questions. Would you contact anyone outside of the Troop (Distrcit or Council) about this? Who would you contact? Would you try to evade identifying the boy or tell them straight out who it is? And lastly, although this certainly is an advancement issue, am I right to assume that it is a membership issue first, and therefore should be resolved by Council before the Board of Review? As far as "how agnostic is he?", his position seems to be that he doesn't believe God exists,

Hello forum! As I've mentioned before, I've cut back significantly on my activity here, as I feel I'm not as valuable a resource as I always thought I was. However, I do need your help. Allow me to describe a conversation I had in a Board of Review for Life Scout last night. The Boy is 17 years old. Within the Troop, we have described him at times as being one of those guys who might be too smart for his own good, if that helps you get a handle on the type of young man involved: I asked the candidate to repeat the Scout Oath and Law to start the Review, which he did. When he finished

Lisa, I've been with our Troop for almost 12 years now. In that time, we've delayed advancement for only one boy, and it was based on the boy either not being able to, or refusing (I still don't know which) to describe some of the ways he has demonstrated Scout Spirit. But as the Advancement Chairman, if I knew an adult could not be open minded, I'd ask them to excuse themselves from the Board. However, if anyone has serious issues with a Scout's standing, but could be open minded enough to listen to the Scout's answers and be fair with his vote, I would hope that person would participate

For what it might be worth, I have two views on your son's situation: 1st, it is common in our geographical area that when a boy commits to a sporting program, the coaching staff has an expectation that his commitment is 100%. I can understand why - The coach's responsiblity is less to an individual, and more to the team, and perhaps the school for which he coaches. If a boy isn't willing to commit 100% effort, there are other boys more than willing to step up. As understandable as that is from the coach's perspective, it is a real disservice to our children, I think. Our kids should have

As with so many things in Scouting, this is a topic that has no specific answer. Certainly, somewhere on the continum of activities in which Scouts participate, the threshold of good clean fun gets crossed and the activity becomes hazing. And what makes it tougher, to me, is that the same activity could be good fun in one circumstance, and yet hazing in another. Back about 8 years ago, during the first summer camp I attended, I was asked to be the "acting" Scoutmaster for the week. Early in the week, some of the older boys woke to find their underwear up the flag pole. Turns out this was

dhedron, Thank you for the sincerity of your concern. It is obvious to me you are guided by the principles Scouting holds dear. My suspicion is that this will work out the way it should. Having been involved in two situations that at their core involved the same problem (allow or stand in the way of a boy working toward Eagle when it is a questionable result), I think the decision rides on which position supports the AIMS of Scouting: Character, Citizenship and Fitness. In other words, which position would likely help this Scout improve his character, or citizenship, or fitness

Kahuna, I too feel bad for the loss the forum will experience if you go. However, I hope you take the advice of a couple of wise folks here and take a sabatical rather than leave entirely. I found myself getting too involved in discussions regarding minutia that, regardless of how they were resolved (if at all), the solution would make almost no difference in the lives of the people I serve. When combined with the insessant bickering of two particular people, both of whom I admired, I felt that I was better off to reduce my investment in the forums. I check in from time to time, and

What an interesting topic! Barry made a lot of great points. I agree with him 99.85% on this one. Barry made the observation that political correctness has us morphing gender equality into gender exactness, and that this attitude is incorrect (I hope I rephrased that and stayed true to your point). I couldn't agree more. Instead of trying to blur the differences between men and women (or between races, or between religions), we should be celebrating those differences, while at the same time treating each group fairly. This is important because there are roles, tasks and jobs tha

We have 7 ASM's right now for a Troop of 24 boys. That probably seems like a lot, but here's the breakdown: 1) is Scoutmaster Emeritus, soley an honorary position for a previous SM who served for 16 years and wants to remain semi active. His biggest role is to work with new Scouts on Scout "rank" requirments. Other than that, he tells stories. 1) Is the New Scout Patrol ASM. We ask the father of a Scout who just finished his first year in our Troop to take this position. This ASM would have a good understanding of the program by this point, but still has that "fresh" quality that seems to

Falter, Sorry to hear about your problems. I think you will read many answers that speak to the appropriateness of expelling a Scout based on hearsay, rumors, and second hand info. I'd like to take a different angle. We have had two intances when expulsion was a reasonable course to take. In both instances, after we considered whether the facts warranted that action, we considered what effect the expulsion would have if we followed through, and what effect not expelling the Scout would have if we didn't. In both of our cases, we determined that there was far more value to