BartHumphries

In the Uniform subform, when I tried to make a post, I received an error. Title:The world scout crest isn't part of the uniform? Message: If every scout everywhere in the BSA wears the same world scout crest and never takes it off or swaps it for something else, why isn't it a part of the uniform like the American flag? Sunday, October 03, 2010: 2:42:19 PM (according to the forums, I'm in a different time zone). Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e10' [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]COUNT field incorrect or syntax error /forums/post_library.asp, line 91

I thought the website was pretty neat explaining the basic uniform quite well -- what's involved with it, which pieces go with what and how things are worn. It didn't go into any of the more complex details, but as an initial overview for people who are completely new to it, it works quite well. Most people don't live by an ocean and it's pretty difficult to sail on a river. It seems pretty reasonable that the BSA doesn't waste resources advertising Sea Scouts to all those people that will never really be able to do anything with it (except maybe one week in the summer).

I am not EDGE trained, Kudu, but that set of points you gave, Explain/Demonstrate/Guide are familiar to me from other contexts. It's probably familiar to you as well, something that you know quite well, but the context (how the words are used) are different enough that it's not immediately recognizable. Here's a good way to teach someone something: 1. You tell them how to do something. 2. You show them how to do something (you do it while they watch) 3. They do it (while you watch). They are now trained in whatever that thing is. In step 1, you want to describe why you do it one way instead of another way, things to watch out for, how you set things up in the beginning to make it easier later on. This can be a lot to take in at once and part of this is better given during step 2, while you're actually doing the activity. In step 2, you do it the right way, explaining how/why again as you go. Do you have to grab the ruler from your desk drawer at this point? Do you have to bump the machine with your fist at this point? Do you have to hold a rope tight at this point? Do these things, explaining how you're doing it as you're doing it. In step 3, there shouldn't really be any major surprises in store and they are ready to do it themselves, but you watch them struggle through it once so that you can offer good critique afterward (or during, if necessary). This is basically the same thing as (or so I believe) EDGE's explain/demonstrate/guide. These steps hold true and work well for anything, whether in the office or the construction field or whereever. Break things down into "good-sized" steps. Not too small, but not too big. Build off what's come before. Long complicated things, like putting together a large bid proposal for a project, or rigging an entire ropes course, usually requires the new person to be working alongside a more experienced person, in a continuous "never ending" "teach/do/watch" or "explain/demonstrate/guide" cycle. Again, I am not EDGE trained, but that phrase "explain/demonstrate/guide" seems to have some good features to it.

I don't see how to edit that previous post, so I'll just add on to it. It seems that the form (for brevity) listed 6 days/nights instead of the actual requirement of 6 days/5 nights according to http://www.oa-bsa.org/programs/ttr/ttrsupportpak.pdf which is good to know. My scoutmasters never told any of us about the Order of the Arrow and I've been wondering whether or not I should tell any of my current scouts about it. If they wouldn't be able to join anyway then there really wouldn't have been a point in telling them about it. 15 days/nights of camping and one 6 consecutive day/5 night campout is definitely doable.

Well, one thing you might want to do is to contact the troops in your area and ask if you can come visit them and tell them about the OA -- all of the troops, get a list from your Council or District. When I was a kid, my scoutmasters never told me about OA. Sure, I saw a few people with sashes every so often but since they didn't want to talk about it I never learned anything from them. "Hey, that's a neat patch on your shirt pocket flap, what's that WWW mean, you're in charge of the troop website?" "Um, yeah." And I walked away thinking that it was neat that other troops apparently had such cool websites and how I could make a good website for our troop. "That's a neat arrow thing you're wearing over your merit badge sash, what's it for?" "Oh, it's this camping thing." And I walked away thinking it was kind of weird that someone would cover up their merit badges for some big arrow camping thing. I mean, don't all Boy Scouts camp? And some of those boys had a weird extra arrowhead in the middle of the arrow -- couldn't any fool see that this didn't make the arrow more powerful but basically destroyed the arrows usability? I just didn't get it. So, I never really learned about OA until after I was 18 and I started working as a counselor at a Boy Scout camp. By then I was too busy (and too old) to even think about joining.

That'd only be $2000 -- it's $1k/donation. It doesn't seem right that there should be a reward for just giving money, but if that was a pattern of lifetime donations instead of a single donation, I guess it's ok to recognize that.

So it appears that one of the requirements to be an OA member is to have gone camping in the last year -- 15 days/nights and a consecutive 6 day/night trip. LDS troops have been asked by our church leaders to not camp on Sunday, so the most we could do would be 6 day/5 night (Monday morning to Saturday evening). Does this mean that it's sort of impossible for an LDS scout/scouter to become an OA member?

Baden-Powell went to schools (especially Charterhouse) that were dry and boring. Boys went through the perfunctory motions and were released into society with a modicum of book learning and very little idea of how to comport themselves or really do much of anything to succeed in society or to develop a good name as a person who could be leaned or who could lead. BP's comment on not being able to give a boy character through classroom methods in no way means that scoutcraft and leadership skills are in any way mutually exclusive. The whole idea of scoutcraft is that you learn leadership skills while learning all the other stuff. By taking charge of your own activities, you learn to take charge of your own destiny. By learning to work well with others, you set yourself up to continue working well with others for the rest of your life. By learning responsibility, prudence and planning (the virtue of being prepared) in a situation where failure immediately and obviously brings the message home sharply (perhaps with an empty belly for an evening) you begin to self motivate to plan ahead, to think through things, to have dry runs if necessary. And, by working in a possibly highly changeable environment while surrounded with unknown variables, you learn how to make decisions quickly in a time of crisis -- how to properly and correctly think on your feet instead of grasping at straws. Character is leadership. Nobody wants a person who believes themselves destined to lead and can't be bothered with any of the small stuff. Those types of people tend to rub others the wrong way and generally make the work environment a pain to be in. Studies have show that people will stick with a job with bad pay, bad customers, bad coworkers, in a high stress situation (do or die, like crab fishing), they'll stick with all of that as long as their manager knows how to work well with them. If the manager is a piss-poor stuck up individual that nobody likes to work with, then ultimately it doesn't matter how good the pay is, it doesn't matter how many benefits or perks are offered, people will ultimately leave that job and go work somewhere else. If you have a good character, you will be a good leader, because you know how to work with people, you know how to take advice, you know how to admit that you're wrong and change course if necessary. Leadership is ultimately all about your character, what type of person you are. There are no magic wands for leadership. There are no special phrases that, if continually uttered in the absence of anything else magically make people like you and become devoted to their job and willing to work hard. It's all about you. It's all about your ability to motivate people, your ability to make people want to please you, to want to work hard for you, to want to support you and the business and everything else. A person can take all the leadership classes they want and if that person started as a jerk, they're probably going to continue as a jerk and all the empty platitudes and ISO 9000's and other management and leadership techniques just won't really affect the end result. The people that would have quit anyway will likely still quit and the opportunities that would have been lost and the missed possibilities will (in one way or another) likely still be lost and missed. Just like there are no magic wands for leadership, there are no magical educational techniques. There are many teachers in public schools who are amazing -- motivational people that really know how to inspire and guide/encourage their kids on to excellence. I've seen them, some of my teachers have been like this -- my own mother is one of them. She teaches first grade at a local elementary and has won various awards, is on a number of committees at the school, teaches part of the teacher training course at a nearby university (required course in CA to get your teacher certification), honestly she's an amazing teacher. There are also many teachers in public schools who are piss-poor, merely going through the motions, who don't even really like what they're doing but are clinging by their fingernails to get that paycheck to keep on coming. Some of my teachers have been like this too. But most all of the teachers do pretty similar things. Only for the better teachers, their kids show dramatic improvement in scores and even the kids that flunk tend to like the teachers. It's all about character, it's all about how much you demonstrate that you're willing to work yourself, how much you pay attention to people, etc. Now, these types of things, these leadership skills, this ability to lead, this ability to motivate and to plan and prepare, in other words to have a good character, these things can be taught anywhere in any setting. But to really teach someone they have to be willing to listen. Most boys tend to be, by virtue of their youth, unmotivated to say the least. So we take the easy route and sugarcoat all this book learning and how to plan and how to get along with people and all the things that a boy should know. We create really fun activities and like someone else mentioned earlier, we give them ice cream and hide a bunch of vitamins in it. We do this because we don't just want the amiable kids who'd learn this stuff on their own anyway (or who already know it). We want to train up every boy like this. We train them to love the world around them, to protect and cherish it because we want the next generation to love the world, to protect and cherish it. We don't want the world to look like downtown LA or the northbound 15 at 3pm on the Friday before Memorial Day. They give themselves the knowledge that they are able to plan, that they will be able to learn about a task, try their best to prepare for it and at least have a battle plan for every battle. They gain resilience -- concrete evidence that they will be able to roll with the punches, toss the battle plan aside when changing conditions make it "useless" and go on to "win" anyway. Scoutcraft is essential to Scouting and Scouting done right produces awesome men who will go on to become pillars of their community. They may have high paying jobs, they may have low paying jobs, depending on what sort of occupation they eventually settle on. But whatever it is they do, they will be a credit to their families, to their organizations, to their communities and ultimately to the world. There are countless organizations that attempt to work with kids, to give them leadership skills, literally hundreds of organizations. They don't produce anything close to the results that scouting produces, because as BP says, they don't understand how scouting does what it does. He said: The whole object of our Scouting is to seize the boy's character in its red-hot stage of enthusiasm, and to weld it into the right shape and to encourage and develop its individuality so that the boy may educate himself to become a good man and valuable citizen for his country.

In Europe, they still tend to tie their neckerchiefs in a knot instead of using a slide. o) balding man who bent down to look at his shoes just as the picture was taken and thus you get the top of his head instead of the front.

Hopefully, they're getting some kind of an ego boost from wearing the uniform -- adults sometimes need additional motivation just like boys. You know Benjamin Franklin's saying, "Old Boys have their Playthings as well as young Ones; the Difference is only in the Price." The very first thing is to tell a person about myscouting.org -- to register and take the Youth Protection course. It's take a max of 30 minutes, probably shorter. After that, I've emailed every new adult who's now in a position of responsibility in our troop or our allied groups (the Webelos, the Cub Scouts) and told them about the leader knots that they aren't required to earn, but that... if they did earn... everyone who saw them in their uniform would know that they were probably doing the right thing. I tell them about the Trained patch and I send them dates on when the training meetings are going to occur in our area, also how much the two real life classes cost ($10 and $15). I tell them about the Scout Leader's Training Award and those other awards, depending on what they're doing -- the Webelos Den Leader I told about the Webelos Den Leader award instead. I also tell them about the adult religious award, maybe the Unit Leader Award of Merit, depending on what they're doing. They take a lot of time so they aren't going to be earned tomorrow, but looking at the requirements gives leaders a good sense of things they should be striving to achieve over the next year or so, like "During at least one program year, have a minimum of 50 percent of the Webelos Scouts in your den advance in rank (Webelos badge or Arrow of Light Award)" or "Serve as a merit badge counselor for at least five Scouts". If those requirements turn out to the minimum that happened, GREAT! If they turn out to be the maximum that happened, well, at least they happened. If they're not registered scouters, at least assistants to the assistants or whatever, if they're not actually holding some sort of position of responsibility then yeah they shouldn't be wearing a uniform. But there's always room for more people to come serve.

You missed the "presuming that the boys did homework" part. I did miss the Tenderfoot requirement, though. We have a separate 11-year-old scouting patrol and they all at least get Tenderfoot before coming into the older patrol where I work with them. Speaking of homework, take a look at the Tracking merit badge. It requires that a bunch of pictures of animals be taken (and also probably casts of tracks). There's no way you're going to be able to do that for all the boys during an evening. But if a boy's on vacation for four weeks and mostly bored out of his mind (and thus really motivated to go do that "homework" each week) then the weekly meetings can easily cover what needs to be covered while he does all the rest himself (like take pictures of animals). Go find a chipmunk, wait for a gopher, look for a bird. There's nothing that says that boys can't work on merit badge or rank requirements on their own time, presuming that they can hand in something to prove it. They have to make something? Ok, make it. They have to write something? Ok, write it. Take, for instance, the Reading merit badge. You better believe that nobody is going to sit there and watch a boy read for hours on end. No, that's what the reading log and the discussion with a counselor afterward is for. The same goes for most merit badges. The actual time that must be devoted to them during an evening's meeting is rather small, presuming that the boys do their homework (namely all those things that can't really be done during a single evening). Like I pointed out, if a boy practices Morse code and semaphore on his own then he can get good enough to pass the requirements. You're not going to do that in a single evening and once you stop practicing you may not remember it a month later, but while on vacation for weeks bored with nothing else to do? Boys should keep practicing and using what they learned in a merit badge, but if you leave afterward to go to another troop then that could be pretty difficult.

Are there any graphical dependencies charts out there showing what's generally involved with earning what and how things are connected? I started putting one together and am breaking today after a few in hopes that when I return tomorrow morning someone will be able to point me to something that's already out there. I'm looking for something like: http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a66/bubbajoe12345/scout/meritbadgedependencies.jpg

So, how do I quote a message? Or, how do I insert a quote into the message? I've tried clicking the "format this post" link to the left, but I just get a big purple popup. Should I use the HTML blockquote tags?

I agree with people, the best way is to have both a boy race and a parent race. Let the parents go crazy and wild with their own cars and mandate that they can build their own cars while their kids/relatives/whatever watch, but that they can't help the boys at all. That being said, sometimes young boys really are all that good -- sometimes they started making pinewood derby cars at 5 with their parents "help" and at the ripe old age of 7 or 8 they've had years of practice at it and have made a dozen cars already. I used to dig into my piggy bank and buy three kits when I was making a car, just so I could totally screw up on the first car, then fine tune it for the last car. I was really clumsy when I was young, so totally flubbing on at least one car was pretty much par for the course for me. Other boys in the troop were much more coordinated, but my method at least let me have a single entry into the race when all was said and done instead of watching from the sidelines.

Leadership Skills and Scoutcraft Skills are definitely not mutually exclusive. One only has to look at BP, who was offered the supreme commander spot of the British Armed Forces and turned it down to focus on Scouting. He obviously had Leadership and Scoutcraft skills in spades. The "Leadership Development Method" is really a fancy way of saying, "The leader doesn't have to be the best at everything and likely won't be the best at everything -- learn how to work well with other people." In other words, the "leadership development method" is exactly what scout leaders should have been (and have been) practicing and learning all this time. Leadership skills can be taught in any setting. In Scouting, they're taught in an "outdoors" setting because of the mystique of the outdoors, the romanticized version of what outdoor living could be (and is). The office is generally a dry place for boys to be, little boys never think to themselve, "When I grow up, I want to sit behind a desk and fill out forms." So we play to their notions, we give them all the cool amazing things that they really want and intermixed with it all comes those leadership skills. The idea that leadership and scoutcraft skills are in any way mutually exclusive is simply untrue. President Monson, the head of the LDS church, said, "If I were a Scoutmaster and ... had one of my boys who was not active, I would take my senior patrol leader and go to visit that boy and his dad. I would say: 'Billy, we have a great Scout program in our ward. We have campouts, go hiking, swimming, play fun games, and all sorts of other activities. 'We invite you to join with us in our activities. 'In fact, we want you so bad that we have already paid the registration fees. 'We also know that you like to swim and have planned a swimming activity for this week. Can I come and pick you up?' And he will join---not to become honest, or to become a better citizen, or to learn to work hard, or to serve others. He will join because it sounds fun, and boys like to do fun things. He will also join because he knows that the boys themselves do much of the planning and carrying out of the activities---and he likes to do that. And in the process, he will learn what it means to be "trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind," and to do his duty to God and his country. For he will learn and become a better boy, and in the end, a better man, by doing and by his association with adults who have a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ and who stand, with the parents, as righteous role models for these young men. And he will also learn what it means to ... serve and bless the lives of others... Again, leadership skills can be taught in any setting. We use Scouting and teach scoutcraft because it's amazing and fun. If you want to teach leadership skills in a dry indoor office setting where the boys do nothing but push paper, sure, you can, but you're not going to reach near as many boys as you would with a real scouting program.

How about going to one of those patch companies and getting a patch made with the business's name then sewing that to the kids backpacks when we hike? Corporate "sponsorship" like that -- is that alright? That's not a handout anymore, that's them paying us for advertising. Is that legal? Allowed?

That was interesting, thanks. Two questions -- how does a Boy Scout who's an Eagle advance in rank, and the program starts for units with the normal October rechartering. Does that mean Oct 2010 or Oct 2011?

Four weeks is plenty of time, presuming that the boys did homework. Shoot, at the 100th anniversary campout locally recently, there were programs to take the boy from Tenderfoot to 1st Class in one long weekend (Fri-Sat-Sun). There are no time requirements for those ranks. I've been planning on doing the Pathfinding merit badge in one evening for our boys. They all know the area -- basically, all they have to do is to draw maps, know the streets on the north side of the lake, where the hospital is, etc. This is a rural area, but there are no farms, no blacksmiths, so those requirements are easily met -- there are 0. There's only one gas station, the court house/municipal building/police (sheriff) station are all the same building. It's not a difficult badge to earn. The same goes for the Carpentry merit badge which they already earned -- the example in the century old pamphlet is just the same as what most people build in an hour for the Woodworking merit badge today, a bird house (an article for practical use on the home grounds). Signaling would take some work. Send and receive in Morse Code and Semaphore? That's daunting, but if you have a few weeks to practice for a few minutes each week and the boys practice at home (perhaps while they're bored with nothing else to do while on vacation) I think that would be doable. Tracking is easy, as long as you can find the animals to take pictures of them, well, it would be for us anyway. We live right by the National Forest, so we'd just go down to the local Ranger Station and look at one of those Smokey the Bear posters with all the animal tracks on it and memorize those. Do a "stalking game", chase after a lizard and a squirrel while they run away and guess how fast they were going. Note the "or" in requirement 3, you only have to track two animals. I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. Perhaps they didn't really do anything while with your troop because your troop doesn't really do anything and so (since it wasn't fun for them) they didn't really feel like coming? I don't know, but then I don't know anything about the other troop either. Perhaps you need to pick up the pace a bit, though.

In his book Aids to Scoutmastership, Baden-Powell said, "The whole object of our Scouting is to seize the boy's character in its red-hot stage of enthusiasm, and to weld it into the right shape and to encourage and develop its individuality so that the boy may educate himself to become a good man and a valuable citizen for our country." Now, a person learns more by teaching something than he does by learning, which is why we want to get boys involved in the teaching. Do with Scouting what you'd do with any endeavor. Learn as much as you can. Ask as many questions from other people who are already familiar with the endeavor as you can. Be bold and go out and do it. Recognize that you make errors, learn from your mistakes, apologize, recorrect course if necessary and go on.

There's really very few patches that can actually go on the uniform. Take a look at http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34283.pdf If it's not listed or shown there, it doesn't go on the uniform. The exception is the right patch pocket -- you can basically put about anything that fits (a patch put there can't go outside the edges of the pocket or cover up the button flap). Mix and match, whatever, switch it up every month, whatever you like. The insignia guide shows a blank portrait-oriented oval there, but not all temporary patches have that shape. The Warstone patch I just picked up at the local 100th anniversary campout where we set a Guinness record for the most people playing a game of marbles at once is landscape-oriented oval shaped and I've seen squarish ones too. I don't have anything on my right pocket right now, but it changes depending on my mood. Can you wear the National Outdoor Badges there? Sure, why not. Now, if you go so far as to earn the National Outdoor Medal, you can wear it where you wear your medals, centered above the left pocket (above knots if you're wearing any), with the caveat that you can't wear more than 5 medals on your shirt at once. Also, you don't wear both the medal and a knot for something, like if you're an Eagle you don't wear both the Eagle Medal and the Eagle Knot, you pick one or the other. If you'd like, you can wear temporary insignia on the back of the merit badge sash as well. Once that fills up, though (or if you're an adult scouter and thus don't wear a merit badge sash anymore), any other patches would go on a brag vest/jacket or on your backpack (and most swimming things go on your swim suit). They shouldn't have to relist these things with every new award that comes out.

You're right about schools banning anything that resembles a weapon. The tough plastic forks that could really do some damage if you stabbed someone were just fine for kids to use back in high school. But the plastic knives with tiny nubbin teeth? Only available in the teacher's lounge, because they were "knives". Never mind that the forks were capable of doing far more damage than those thin plastic sticks with little bumps they called knives, because they were called knives they were banned. Nowdays, the school district has seen how ridiculous this is and the forks are almost sporks and the useless knives are back in the cafeteria.

You really need to get more people involved. If, God forbid, something should happen to you, the whole Scouting program will die. Don't put Scouting in that position, train up other people and delegate enough responsibility that they can learn what will be necessary to do if you get in an accident or retire or whatever.

A scoutmaster basically needs the same skills as a parent, only you're a parent with multiple other parents who are actively looking over your shoulder once a week and critiquing your parenting. How does a parent get trained in what they're supposed to do and how things are supposed to go? Luckily, scoutmasters have an active training system and theoretically at least one assistant if not more to delegate more responsibilities to. If a scoutmaster is going camping once a month like he should, then he won't forget how to camp.

AYSO is American Youth Soccer Organization. I was in it when I was a kid, but I have no idea how it all works now and I wasn't in charge of administrative matters back then.

Yes, online adult applications would be amazing! Paraphrasing my recent conversation with the local council office: "Hello, I'm a registered adult scouter and I'd like to be a merit badge counselor. What form do I need to fill out? Wait, uhm, I've already filled this out. Well, can't you just make a copy? Oh, I can go make a copy myself? Uhm huh, so I'm going to fill this out again, it's going to get passed around and eventually it'll be filed in that other filing bin right next to where my other copy already is? Ok, yeah, I'll go fill this out then." YES! Online adult applications so that it can be sent on to whoever needs it. Honestly, this is the 21st century, I don't even own pencils, in calculus I even took math notes on my laptop with LaTeX. Come on, 100 years of Scouting, let's not process forms the same way they were processed back in 1910 in the dark ages before computers were even a pipe dream. And while I'm dreaming, I want form fillable .pdf documents. Honestly, for a one page form it only takes a few minutes to drop some fillable text boxes onto the document.