NJCubScouter

I am wondering if the BSA is going to provide training to Scoutmasters on how to deal with certain answers that they might receive, for example, "I don't know if there is a God." I know that some SM's have to deal with that already, and on occasion someone has reported such an event in this forum and we have talked about it. But the fact is that there are many SM's who do not discuss the subject of "Duty to God" in SMC's, and I am pretty sure my troop's SM is one of them. Now National is requiring all SM's to do so. So maybe National needs to train the SM's on how to deal with the consequences. The example I give above is just one of a number of possibilities that could leave an SM wondering what to do next.

I am pretty certain that the statement you are looking for has never been made in any official BSA publication or document. The statement you are talking about was made by a BSA spokesman, either in an interview with a newspaper reporter that was published in a newspaper article (in which case, who knows whether it was accurately quoted), or in a press release.

I hope we haven't already lost JC's Mom with all the off-topic diversions. But the answers to her questions are in this thread, and in the workbook and Guide to Advancement.

That's Westhampton. And I didn't know there was a Garden State Council, evidently the Southern NJ Council and Burlington County Council merged two years ago and they didn't tell me. More camps soon to be on the chopping block, I assume.

From the Scouting blog, as linked to by robert: So isn't the BSA competing with itself to a large degree with this new program? Last time I checked, the BSA already had programs for that entire age group except for girls under the age of 14. (Or 13 and finished whatever grade it is for Venturing.)

A SM was not previously required to discuss with each Scout at each SM conference how the Scout has fulfilled his duty to God. It's a change in the requirements. Of course, as I said before, we don't know exactly how it is going to be worded, so maybe it would be best to have this conversation in a few weeks, when we do know.

In my opinion BSA National is trying to pick both sides, or perhaps more accurately, it is trying to appear to each side as if it is picking their side. In the process it is going to give a headache to a lot of Scoutmasters who would probably prefer not to discuss religion with their Scouts at all. I know that our Scoutmaster is not going to want to discuss with each Scout how he does his duty to God. And then what happens if, in the course of this discussion, a Scout says he really isn't sure whether there is a God? Or he doesn't think there is a God? I believe there was a thread on that several months ago when the subject came up in an EBOR. What is the Scoutmaster supposed to do? And does it differ based on exactly what the Scout says, or doesn't say? Others seem to view this issue as opening the door for a Scoutmaster to impose his own religious values on a Scout. But for my own troop, and probably most of those in my state, I think the real issue is that the BSA is handing many Scoutmasters a can of worms that they don't want to deal with at all. I wonder how many SM's are just going to ignore this new requirement.

This thread has been teetering on the edge of "Issues and Politics" territory almost from the beginning, but I think today's posts have definitely pushed it over the edge. With apologies to John-in-KC, who I think was looking for a discussion of the "advancement" aspects of this, rather than a political discussion, I am going to move the thread now. At least I am going to try, since this is the first time I have moved a thread with the new forum software. Hopefully this will end up where it is supposed to. And maybe, either now or after the actual requirement is published in May (to be effective at the beginning of 2016, I believe), someone can start a new thread here in "Advancement Resources" with a request that it remain more narrowly focused.

Stosh, it's just the opposite. The new requirement apparently is not going to require a discussion of the duty to country at the SM conference, nor the duty to help others, nor the duty to keep myself physically fit, etc. ONLY the Duty to God. Why?

I am waiting to see the actual new requirements, but I have the same concern.

See the post right above this one. There's a procedure for that. I don't want to send the original poster's thread off-topic, but I need to say something here. I know we've been through this before, but you shouldn't sign something without reading it. That applies to both contracts and Eagle Project Workbooks. Right above where you (as SM) are signing, it says "I have reviewed the proposal," or words to that effect. If you haven't read it, you shouldn't be signing that you've reviewed it. Right. That's why two of the four signatures on the proposal are by leaders of the troop (the SM and someone on behalf of the committee.) (Past experience tells me I need to point out that that was sarcasm.) The troop is supposed to be part of the process, but apparently you have chosen not to be. I don't think we should distract from the original poster's question with how Stosh chooses to do it, or how Mozartbrau's troop chooses to do it, or how NJCubScouter's troop chooses to do it. This thread is about how this particular Scout's troop does it, and what options this Scout has in dealing with it.

JC'sMom, your son's options are actually summarized in the workbook itself. Page 6 (right before the Proposal section starts) says (with some bolding added by me): There is more detail about this (a lot more, unfortunately) in the Guide to Advancement itself. If your son decides not to comply with the request to rewrite his workbook (and even to do more work), he (note I say "he", it's his project) should get a copy of the Guide to Advancement (its at scouting.org, somewhere) and find the applicable sections and see exactly what the procedure is. The point is that it is possible to go over the Scoutmaster's head and get approval from the council/district level. You (I mean, he) just have to jump through the right hoops in the right order, but they're all in "the book." (In this case, the Guide to Advancement.)

I am pretty certain you're not allowed to do that. That was the whole point of revamping the workbook a few years ago. When the proposal and plan were all in the same section that had to be signed off by everybody (SM, committee, beneficiary and council/district), apparently too many Eagle candidates were doing all the work needed to prepare an elaborate plan, only to be told that their idea was no good and they have to start over. So they divided the pre-project part of the book into Proposal and Final Plan, with pre-approvals required ONLY for the Proposal (which does include some preliminary planning but not all the stuff that now appears after the signatures.) Now, if the idea is no good they have only wasted X amount of time, instead of X times whatever. It might seem "a bit backwards" to you, but that is exactly how it is intended to be. And I am pretty sure it says all this, though in more lawyerly language, either in the workbook itself or in the Guide to Advancement, or both.

I think different trends develop in different troops, or maybe in different areas. In my troop almost all of the currently active adult leaders (including committee members) became leaders when our sons were in the troop, and usually as soon as they joined, because we were Cub Scout leaders before that. Of that group, the majority (including myself) have sons who have aged out of the troop and are no longer involved. That includes our current SM, "lead" ASM, CC and advancement chair. The other leaders' sons are still in the troop. The two exceptions are Scouts who just made Eagle, turned 18 and registered as ASM's. However, my experience with other 18-year-old ASM's is that once they start college, they generally disappear. (As I did when I was an 18-year-old ASM, and I was not involved in Scouting again until I became a Tiger Parent or whatever they call it, and then a Den Leader for my son's Bear den.) We have no leaders who just "showed up" on our doorstep. I think there were a couple of instances when friends of leaders expressed interest in becoming involved, but they never really did. I think in one case it was a young parent with preschool children, in the other case it was someone with grown children. But since they were "known" to at least one established leader in the troop, I don't think there would have been any suspicion. I do think that if someone showed up with no connection to the troop at all, there might be some questions. But in more than 15 years of being a leader (both pack and troop), I have never seen it happen. (Just to amend that slightly, when I first joined the troop there was a committee member and Eagle advisor who had no children and was unmarried, and was around 45 years old when I knew him. Other than him being an Eagle Scout, I don't really know where he "came from", that is, whether he had been in the same troop as a youth and stayed on, or was in Scouting elsewhere and moved to this area, or what. He left before I really got to know him very well.)

This is to everybody: Just a note on this new forum software, you need to be careful when you are "quoting" someone, to make sure your response ends up outside the "quote box" so it is clear who is saying what. I have seen this several times now, where the response ends up inside the box.

They never were - which I think is why mgood777 referred to them as "illegal."

Which would tend to suggest that some of your Christian Scouts may not really understand whose presence (until we meet again) they are requesting either.

Maybe it's also a matter of perspective. When you live in an area where one of the three councils simply "closed", presumably due to financial reasons, and all of the units had to find new homes in other councils (I'm not sure if they have officially redrawn the council boundaries yet), most people are probably happy to be in any council at all - to the extent they even think about the council, that is.

Maybe I'll ask about this the next time I happen to be speaking with someone who would know. If it does happen in my council, it is kept very quiet. As an aside, if a unit wanted to switch councils in my area, I'm not sure where they would go. The northern "half" of New Jersey (it's really less than half by area, but more than half by population) now has two councils, since the Central New Jersey Council was absorbed into neighboring councils. (At one time there were probably more than 20 councils in the same area.) I have no reason to believe that the "other" one is viewed by anyone as being significantly better (or significantly worse) than ours, and the "border" is a considerable distance from where I live. So maybe it's partly because of geography that the idea of switching councils doesn't even come up.

Mozartbrau, I see the smiley face, so I'm about three-quarters sure you are making a joke there. But I'll ask anyway, does anyone actually say it that way, with "Scoutmasters" in plural? Our troop says the Scoutmaster's Benediction as part of our standard closing ceremony, but by tradition we say it so quietly that I don't know exactly what anybody's actually saying other than myself. I'd be willing to bet that there are several different variations that the kids have picked up from each other - not due to any religious differences, but just from misunderstanding what the words are, like a game of "telephone." I'd also be willing to bet that some of the Scouts do not realize who "the Great Scoutmaster" is. And now that I think about it, we actually say "Master" rather than "Scoutmaster." Or at least I do. Maybe I should check on that...

In our troop, adults do check on Scouts who do not seem to advancing. The PL's are asked to do so, but there still seem to be Scouts who fall through the cracks, or whatever, so we do it as a backup. If that means that our patrol system is not working perfectly, well, that's probably true.

Mozartbrau, did any other units switch districts? I guess if one unit does it and is allowed to do it quietly, the impact will be minimal. If you have a large number of units trying to move from District A to District B, there are going to be problems. And if the district is THAT bad, why wouldn't ALL the units want to move? So eventually you just have a "district" with apparently bad leadership and no units, and a district map that isn't really true because while Town A might be in District A, all of the actual units in Town A are in District B.

Renax, I see no reason to believe that's what he meant. I assumed he was using "God" in the same way that the BSA uses "God", to mean any supreme being(s). But that's not all I was referring to, another one was when the SE said “local organizations select appropriate role models and we don’t question who they pick.†It may just mean that nobody has called or written to that council saying that a particular leader in a particular unit is, for example, openly gay. That has happened in other councils, and the council did take action. The other way to read the statement is that this council is not following national policy. I would not be surprised if a "clarification" appears in the next week or so, stating that the council does follow national policies. That is the way these things always seem to go, and one can just imagine the calls and emails that occur between National and the council, between the original statement and the "clarification."

SE Rogers said several interesting things in that article. Such as: It makes one wonder, is his council following the national membership policies? Or are some of his words being taken out of context? Or what?

I have never heard of a unit changing councils (not counting councils that ceased to exist, of course.) I would have assumed it was not possible. I also have never heard of a unit switching from one district to another. It seems to me that it defeats the purpose of having geographic districts at all.