ParkMan

4 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

It seems your last paragraph conflicts with the first. How does one share their differences and not sound personal or even derogatory. I have made many of what I felt were objective nonpartisan comments on this forum over the years that resulted in a lot of emotional responses. Your words could be interpreted as anti religious. Is that what you mean?

Maybe you are just over reacting to certain words. For example, a great many people feel that homosexuallity is immoral. Do you believe your opinion is superior over them, or just different? How you react could come off as personal and derogatory.

Barry

We have a steady stream of pot shots at the BSA & it's leadership. 

One that is fresh in my mind was from the topic on Executive Salaries.  There @David CO writes:

"We get a failing organization with drastically declining membership and morally bankrupt leadership. We should pay extra for this?"

In this topic, we had an example from @LegacyLost:

"It is better for the BSA to collapse than to persist as a vehicle of societal corruption. Particularly due to the BSA's historically wholesome and patriotic image from its past. This image makes the BSA especially dangerous, unfortunately, due to the arsenic it now carries"

There's a ton of stuff like this.

I'd think it depends on the Scout.  NYLT is about teaching scouts skills to be a better leader.  The scout has to be at a point in his own personal growth where he could grow from the lessons.

I think it's less about the program than the Scout himself.

I think that's the crux of it.  The BSA is a reflection of society held to a higher standard.   Society's view on homosexuality has changed.   That doesnt mean everyone has changed - but in my lifetime it clearly has.  As a result of this change, the BSA changed it's position.

We are all going to view these changes differently.  Those that favor the change are going to generally say "it's about time."  Those that oppose are going to decry it as wrong.  That's no different from society as a whole.  It's fine that you don't like it.  It's fine if you reach a point where you think "this has just gone too far."  If you want to walk away, that's fine too.

The argument over the choice is fine.  That's what we do in free societies. 

The problem I have is that it's becoming personal and derogatory.  The leaders of the BSA are not moral.  The BSA itself is no longer moral.  People who are homosexual are immoral.   This feels patently wrong to me.  Scouting is not about imposing your personal moral code on others by denigrating them.

Just now, mashmaster said:

I do appreciate peoples beliefs, but I don't appreciate people telling everyone that we all should follow his beliefs.  Scouting is interfaith always has been.  I accept people having different beliefs than mine and am doing this for the youth.  I do not see the value in chastising people for sticking with the program for the youth.  If you can't follow it, then find an organization that you can follow without throwing stones.

That's my feeling too.

While I understand that people disagree with the recent decisions, all this talk of the BSA becoming immoral is out of character with the non-denominational tone of the Scouting movement.

54 minutes ago, David CO said:

I do.

I do as well.  I know a number of people with strong, deeply held beliefs like this.  I appreciate for some people their beliefs are so strong, that they feel it's morally wrong to compromise their beliefs.  I'll admit the strength of his convictions drew me into the debate.

While I appreciate that people feel this strongly, I do think that in the interest of the youth and the movement, you have to temper your beliefs in a Scouting context.

Yes, teachers make a fraction of what they should.

Senior executives are well compensated.  It's true in any organization that those people who have the biggest individual impact on the success of the organization make more - executives, finance, sales, etc.  In theory you pay these folks more so that the organization makes even more money.

You don't want a discount CEO.

Yes - these guys make a lot.  However, these numbers are not crazy.  

Randall Stephenson made 28.7 million last year.  That's 40x what Mr. Surbaugh made.  I'm guessing the people who report to the people who report to Mr. Stephenson at AT&T make more than our CSE.

I believe I also noticed that the directors of the BSA make nothing for their troubles.

36 minutes ago, David CO said:

Who said they aren't?

This "human being" argument has become very popular lately. Liberals have been using it on a wide variety of issues. I think it is one of the most idiotic arguments I have ever heard.

 

30 minutes ago, David CO said:

This is another argument that has become very popular among the liberals. Anyone who disagrees with them are haters. 

 

it's not that.

I've found the tone of the comments of late on the forum to be getting more and more negative towards the kids that are admitted through these changes.  Comments like the one calling for the demise of the BSA.  The one about how a Scoutmaster wouldn't let his scouts interact with the girls.

Welcome to the forum @ladybugcub.

What's your main goal here? Is it to improve the pack or to make sure your daughter has a great Scouting experience?

If you want to fix the pack, then I think you've got a big project.  First thing I'd focus on is building a culture of three things:

- great den leaders

- good recruiting

- a few strong pack activities.

If you do those, the rest is much more likely to happen.

If your goal is your daughter's Scouting experience - I'd suggest that you'll make better progress focusing on building a great den.  A great den really only takes two leaders and 10 kids.  You could be one - now you need a second.  You don't need parents to run meetings- in fact, you probably don't want that.  To build a strong den, you need energetic leaders with a strong vision- not a committee of parent teachers.

From what I've seen you'll never keep 100% of the scouts.  But, the best dens retain the scouts who participate in scouts.  Usually when I see kids leave for a sport it's because the parent says to the kid - you're doing too much.  But, if the parent and kid see how much fun and value the kid is having in scouts, they often find a way to make an exception.  Don't create ultimatums, don't scale back your program, don't hold two den meetings.  Do the opposite - make that den's program outstanding.  Work with the families to find the best time for all.  Make it a community.

I've seen this repeated many times.

3 minutes ago, numbersnerd said:

If you'd bothered to read any of his other posts, you'd see the real reason for his stance. But keep poking at it, it's a nice quality to see in people here.

4 minutes ago, gblotter said:

He is referencing BSA's embrace of homosexuality and transgenderism - not the inclusion of girls.

We'll I'm glad that I mis-read that then.

Had this funny thing happen a few years back.  My in-laws are some of the most devout, religious people I've ever met.  Go to church every Sunday, sing in the choir, serve on the church board, have the minister over for Christmas dinner.  Mother in law is a part time employee of the church office.  Father in law is literally a preacher's son who almost became a minister himself.  They have a daughter - who they love and adore.  My sister-in-law in fact.  Turns out that she's gay.  Now I suppose you could say that my in-laws are morally bankrupt and ought to disown her - but I can't quite make that leap.  

About a year ago had another funny thing happen.  A family I know well has a 15 year old son.   I've know the kid his whole life. Big, tall kid - a scout too.  Good role model, active, helped at church, at scouts.  Turns on that he's transgender.  Now, he was born a boy, he still dresses as a boy, still acts as a boy, but he struggles daily with his gender identity.  Dad pushed back too.  Told his son - you're not really, it's just a phase.  Kid had the presence to stand up to his dad and fight for his acceptance.  Got his dad to understand that it wasn't a fad, wasn't a choice.  Did I mention - great kid?

In both cases, I'm reminded that these are kids and human beings.  They have hopes and dreams.  They have hurt feelings as much as any other kids.   I just cannot fathom so hating these kids that someone would root for the end of the BSA because they dared to let them be kids like everyone else.

1 hour ago, LegacyLost said:

It is better for the BSA to collapse than to persist as a vehicle of societal corruption. Particularly due to the BSA's historically wholesome and patriotic image from its past. This image makes the BSA especially dangerous, unfortunately, due to the arsenic it now carries. And that is why my family can no longer support any aspect of the BSA. I even made sure not to buy the 1911 handbook replica from the BSA, which I shall teach my son from. I found a 3rd party publisher.

Thankfully, there is now Trail Life USA. I'll use the 1911 handbook to supplement Trail Life.

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!"

Really - over the inclusion of girls?

6 minutes ago, gblotter said:

It absolutely does matters what BP did in 1907. He is the founder with the vision we follow today.

However, it does not matter one bit what you or I speculate he would do in 2018.

It matters just as much.

You claim that: "BP's choice to have two separate groups was a thought out analysis of how by boys and girls learn"
is no different than my claim that: "BP's choice to have two separate groups was simply a bi-product of the times."

This is an important analysis because we live in 2018, not 1907.  So, understanding the context for the decision is important if we want to claim to continue to operate under his vision.  

I'd be willing to stipulate that we really cannot know what his motivation was in 1907.  But, it's a two way street.  

2 minutes ago, gblotter said:

And I make the assertion that the man who found the Boy Scouts and the Girls Scouts would have likely kept them as separate organizations if he were starting them today because he had the wisdom to understand the inherent differences between boys and girls and the ways they learn differently.

Your speculation is just that.

 

 

And your speculation is no different.  So now we can stop claiming that it mattered what BP did in 1907.

5 minutes ago, gblotter said:

Twisting the conversation disingenuously. GSUSA would remind you that girls are far from excluded from Scouting in the United States.

Not at all.  The GSUSA (or really Girl Scouts/Girl Guiding in general) didn't start until after the Boy Scouts were started.  Why would BP have said "I'm going to start a group for boys, but not one for girls."

6 minutes ago, The Latin Scot said:

It's cute that you pretend to know him so well, but unfortunately for your position I have read too much of his words to believe this. And you make it sound like all visionaries and leaders would have supported this, when of course there are many visionaries and leaders who oppose it. Being either one of them, and supporting girls in Scouting, are of course entirely unrelated. You can try again though if you like. 

Amen to that!

Not cute at all.  I get that you're trying to dismiss my point, but it's not working.

Again - Scouting was started at a different point in time when the way men and women interacted was different.  You can replace the "in scouting" part of this with whatever other transformation in gender norms occurred in the last 200 years and make the same arguments.

I merely make the assertion that the man who founded the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts would have likely created a single gender organization if he were starting it in 2018.  100 years ago things were different.  Many organizations 100 years ago were single gender.  Today they are not.  It seems a far fetched conclusion to think he would have said "you know what, just about everything else is co-ed, but scouting - nope."

22 minutes ago, The Latin Scot said:

In that case, the man you claim to know is nothing like the man I have come to know and love. I have read everything there is on Lord Baden-Powell, and if he was anything, it was a man of principle and integrity. You can throw his name around in an attempt to add weight to your argument if you like, but don't expect those of us who have read his literature and studied his ideas to agree with your assumptions about what he would or wouldn't do or believe if he were still alive today. If anything, I assume he is grateful not to be around today as the organization he was inspired to create buckles under the whims of public opinion. It's certainly not something he would have done.

BP was a visionary and a leader.  He'd have been disappointed to see those who want to exclude girls from Scouting trying to do so in his name.

25 minutes ago, The Latin Scot said:

My problem with this line of thought is that it presumes that girls think like boys, learn like boys, and respond to the same things boys do - and the simple fact is that they do not, because they are not the same. Sure, the benefits of Scouting are just as desireable for the one as they are for the other, but the paths by which they get there won't necessarily work as well for girls as they do for boys. Some may think differently, which is their right, but I know girls and boys are inherently different - thank Heaven for that.

And frankly, I have never trusted public "trends." Too often, the sway of public opinion leads only to disappointment and regret. So I am more than happy to stand against trends that I feel are erroneous if it means I am still standing by my principles in the end.

A couple of years ago Verizon had a commercial.  I can't remember if I can post links, so I won't.  But to find it, search Google for "verizon inspire her mind".  It's about the subtle things that maybe we don't even realize we're doing to girls that discourages them from science.

I've got a son and two daughters.  Watching it, I realized just how much I'd been playing into the sterotypes of boys and girls.  It made me question how I'd treated my own kids.  I found that my kids were not nearly as different as I'd thought them to be.

There is very little that will be any different in my troop once the girls show up.  Sure, the interpersonal dynamics may be a little different.  But, like any troop, there will be groups that hang out together.  In our troop of 80 boys, they don't all just hang out together all the time.  It will be no different in a coed troop in a few years once the newness wears off.

Living today, I expect BP would have realized the same thing.

I'm surmising that the executive board of the BSA did the same.  Further, I'm sure they realized that it's just a matter of time.  If they said no now, it would have come up again and again.  So they could have said "no girls allowed" or instead make the gutsy decision to take a step forward.

45 minutes ago, FireStone said:

I don't agree that they've departed from their core mission, but if we are talking about accepting girls into the Boy Scout program, I think we all know precisely why they've decided to do that.

The BSA is a business, and an expensive one to run. Lots of big paychecks need to be cut to top-level execs. The BSA could function perfectly well with 1/10th of current membership, if it wasn't for the costly overhead of the organization. Scouts UK has far fewer members. Other scouting organizations have even smaller numbers. There are scout organizations that have no paid leadership, 100% volunteer-run, and they can sustain their programs with miniscule numbers compared to the BSA. 

I firmly believe this change is based in a strategy designed to stop the bleeding and save the BSA as a "company". There is some minimum number of members that we need to stay above to continue to operate our big costly National office. That number was probably getting dangerously close based on year-over-year membership declines and projections. Hence the big change. 

Its a bet on a future of Scouting in the US that adding girls to the program will affect membership numbers in a way that slows or stops us from hitting that critical low-membership number. 

Or some variation of this idea, but still based on membership numbers and money. Surbaugh basically said as much in the initial presentation of the idea girls in the BSA, showing those charts with lines heading downward for BSA, GSUSA, etc. 

Or perhaps the leadership of the organization looked around and said - "Why are we limiting this to boys?  Girls can benefit just as much as boys do."  The BSA already have co-ed Crews & Ships.  A number of packs were getting siblings involved as well.  So they said - instead of fighting the trend, let's embrace it.

The more I see the number of people who do support this, the more I realize that the senior leadership may have indeed been leading.

18 minutes ago, gblotter said:

The only reason - really? Who are you to state the motivations of Baden-Powell so definitively?

Could it possibly be that Baden-Powell recognized the value of single-gender Scouting and appreciated how boys and girls learn differently? Nah.

I'm someone sticking up for BP.  Looking at what he created and the core principles principles contained in the oath & law, it's a small step to ascribe the single gender nature of the program as a byproduct of the times.  I find it very difficult to believe that BP living in a world that is moving in the direction of treating boys & girls equally would create a program and specifically excluded them.   It's unfair to BP to try to lump him in with the "girls will ruin scouting" argument.

The only reason there was a separate group was because the world was much more segregated then.  Economics, class, gender, race.  It's just the world at the time.

25 years from now, kids will look back and be surprised that there was ever a time where Scouting was not co-ed.

17 hours ago, Cambridgeskip said:

Dont forget your Boy Scouts goes to 18 where as ours goes to 14. So to make a direct comparison you need to include our explorers which runs 14-18

latest numbers (as at 31 Jan 2018) were released last week. Total across all ages now up to 638K. I've not seen a breakdown by age group though.

Grouping the US & UK programs by general age category:
BSA:
5.5-10.5: 1,252,311 (3,844 per 1M people)
10.5-17: 959,628 (2946 per 1M people)

Scouts UK:
5.5-10.5: 286,218 (4360 per 1M people)
10.5-17: 170,875 (2603 per 1M people)

It looks like the US & UK programs are similar in size per captia.  The UK is a little larger at younger end, the US a little larger at the older end.  However, since there are quite a few duplicate registrations in the Boy Scout/Venturing programs, I'm not sure the US is really any larger.

Surely, we'll see the US numbers drop below this once the LDS change happens.

Does seem like the UK program is a very good one to look to for guidance on moving forward.
 

12 hours ago, ayates said:

Overall, including Beavers (ages 5-7), ~6% of the kids in Scouts Canada are in LDS groups. The impact to the sections in which the LDS have groups is as follows:

 

Allan.

As an aside - interesting how much smaller the number of scouts is in Canada. I know Canada has a population about 11% of the US - but even accounting for that, the US numbers are still significantly larger.

From the BSA 2016 annual report:
Cubs: 1,262,311
Scouts: 822,999
Venturers: 136,629

9 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

Looks like 23 in 1912

Interesting stats.  Thanks a lot for sharing them.

In addition to their only being 23, I have to imagine that it wasn't quite the big deal back then.  It was still a pretty new program gaining traction.

I don't get the new direction on these shirts.  Are those some kind of big zippered pockets on the front? Who would actually use these?

Instead of adding the embellishments, the need to just do some tailoring on the current shirts and call it a day.

3 hours ago, CalicoPenn said:

National can't fix youth retention issues.  It truly has limited control on how individual CO's operate their units or how unit leaders operate their units.  National provides the tools for local volunteers to run a successful unit program that attracts and retains members from 11 to 17.  (Adjust to your age group program as needed).   Then they pretty much rely on the first part of the Scout Law and trust that people will do it the right way.  

National can provide all the tools in the world but if people at the unit level don't bother to use them, then its really not National's fault.  Unless people would prefer to have the BSA run on the Girl Scout model where the councils actually control the units, we, at the local level, have got to stop blaming National for membership losses and start looking in the mirror.  Losing older scouts?  In my experience, the units that lose most of their older Scouts are the units where the adults run and control things instead of trusting the boy-led program because, well - they just know better than the BSA.  

What can National do about membership losses?  Exactly what it is doing - expanding the market.  The Mormon church decided to create an internal youth group due to pressure from their "foreign" branches, where their growth is greatest.  From a business perspective it makes perfect sense that the BSA would open their doors to girls to try to make up for that membership hit.  Blaming National for a redirection of resources and efforts by a religious organization is blind to reality and unfair to National.  

I'm the first to agree that the unit level volunteers are the group with the single greatest ability to drive membership & retention in their unit.  I'm also a firm believer that it's up to us unit level volunteers to build our troop and make it successful.  I also agree 100% that national cannot make any given troop do anything.   Yes - unit level scouters need to control their own destiny and not blame national.

I do think that National can do a  lot to increase retention.  In reality, National wears a few different hats:
- central  message leadership
- program development
- central marketing organization
- leadership to and oversight of councils

Some things that I think the national council to do to help:
1) more clearly define the program for 14-17 year old scouts.  The Boy Scout program is well defined for 11-13 year olds.  Make it easier for units to understand the key things they need to focus on to drive retention.
2) Create a nationwide campaign to really focus on this problem. The CSE should be repeating retention, retention, retention.  Make this a key part of the national Scouting conversation.
3) National should pressure councils to develop programs focused on improving retention.  Tie the professional's variable compensation to improving retention.  Scout Executives who improve retention gen promoted.  That kind of thing.

I could keep going...