Beavah

Yah, Yah, OK. Ill join in the biting, OGE.

So ders a troop in da next town over, chartered to a church. I was UC for them a few years back. About 50 kids, very active, very popular program, great older scout retention. They often have to turn kids away because they dont want to get too big. The Institution Head (minister) was very involved. It was always clear that the troops policies were his policies, even if it was the boys who set the policy.

Lets see: no age-based patrols, they used vertical patrols like my troop. No first year patrol, the kids entered into existing patrols, which were permanent." Some kids even joined the same patrol their dad had been in. PLs were elected by their patrols, SPL was elected by outingoing PLs. No patrol yells or flags, but they cooked, camped, and traveled by patrol, and had lots of patrol pride. No first class first year, they advanced about one rank a year or so. BORs included older scouts on the board. BORs did what most would call retest, but not every requirement. Scout Spirit was a very real requirement, and had to be signed off by a younger scout, an older scout, a teacher, and a parent for every rank. I dont think theyve ever had an Eagle younger than 17, and their Eagle service projects are easily triple the man-hours of any other troop in the district. Their PLC sets dues, decides the calendar, determines and manages the budget, and even makes policy. Boys take turn planning outings, and older boys do ALL of the instruction and signoff of younger boys. I never once saw a bully there, but I did several times see older boys helping younger boys in their patrol with math homework. Their official uniform was a BSA shirt with any decent outdoorsy pant besides jeans. They only wore shirts part time at meetings, never on outings, and they had a lot of non-standard uniform parts like Royal order of the Fork knots. Some fundraising went into personal accounts, but half of it could only be used to buy some gear or pay for a trip for a younger boy in your patrol.

This troop very clearly reflected the goals and policies of the CO. They very clearly did an outstanding job developing young men of character, fitness, citizenship, and service. They had fantastic retention and long-term loyalty. They used the BSA program materials very well as a resource, but its pretty durn clear that they didnt view it as McDonalds so much as some stuff with which to make their own hamburgers. Ive seen few hamburgers that tasted so good, and I certainly wouldnt want their burger shop torn down and replaced by McDonalds.

It's true, just like the old Soviet system, standardization does guarantee minimum quality - for everybody.

And dats only one example. For a while, the biggest troop in another town in our district was chartered to a Catholic school and run as a school extracurricular activity. Teachers were SM/ASMs. It was more adult run than some troops, but less than others. There were all kinds of modifications that they made. Around here, some home schooling cooperatives are starting to use Scouting as part of their curriculum. They are definitely retesting but it works really well for their goals.

Yah, yah, I know, "that's not really scouting" yada yada. There are always people who make church more important than God, policy more important than principle, and program details more important than kids.

A wise man knows that a tree is judged by its fruit, and a field by its carrots. Dont sweat da other stuff, Elmer.

Likewise, the CO has no right to modify or otherwise redefine the BSA program.

Well, dat's true. Why would anyone believe that a CO could modify the BSA's copyrighted works? They're owned by the BSA.

The point is only that the CO gets to choose how to use the BSA's materials in running it's own youth program, according to its own policies and guidelines.

If that is the case, then you, or your CO, would then be altering the aims of Scouting to suit the desires of the youth you serve. As admirable as that may sound, that is not scouting.

As strange as it may sound, that is Scouting, as defined by the congressional charter and the BSA's charter agreements. It's also very American (in the traditional values sense, not the current hyper-legal regulatory sense).

Scouting resources are used to advance the aims of the CO. By being respectful of and strengthening the youth programs of CO's, the BSA hopes to advance character, fitness, and citizenship in youth. They're betting that strengthening CO youth programs with good materials and resources is a better way to meet their goals than making everyone do the same thing.

BSA scouting is closer to "charter schools" or "faith based initiatives" than it is to the more lockstep and highly regulated government programs.

A charter organization enters into an agreement with the BSA and is granted a license for one year to operate the BSA's program.

Nah, fellow Beaver. Yah gotta read those program materials everyone talks about all da time. A charter organization enters into an agreement with the BSA to license the BSA's materials for a year to operate their own youth program. The BSA "respect the aims and objectives of the organization and offer the resources of Scouting to help in meeting those objectives."

So the CO's Aims, not the BSA's, are what controls.

Same goes for councils, which are separate corporations that apply for a license/charter to "distribute" Scouting materials and offer program support in a geographic area.

Yah, the BSA can choose not to enter into an agreement, and vice versa (as we've seen a lot lately with charters gettin' dumped). 3 G's maybe, but not anything else. If you're going to try to reach most of America's youth, ya gotta be a bit less parochial.

Goth may make a great Venturing uniform...

Yah, well... I'm not too big on being judgmental about how fellow volunteers run their programs, or how other Chartered Organizations operate. Da BSA ain't McDonalds. It's a resource provider for community organizations to use in running their own youth programs. Emphasis on their own. Those are the terms of the BSA's congressional charter, and each council and unit charter.

What Catholics, LDS, VFW, the council the next state over, or Joe's Pizza shop do in terms of structuring their youth scouting programs is really none o' my business.

Nor anyone else's.

BTW, the reason Cubmaster Jerry got different answers to his NCS questions is because every state has different camp licensing laws and regulations, and each council corporation is quite independent. When you travel, every doctor is licensed under different rules and different standards in different states, and in most states, the EMS personnel operate under different rules in each COUNTY.

Our founding fathers thought that was a good thing. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited it by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Different rules, and different applications, in different places.

Local control to better serve, and be more responsive to, the people's needs.

How progressive.

the 2% has become 4-6 %

Yah, and both of dose are bogus numbers, eh?

Da BSA reports the number of Eagle Scouts in a year divided by the total number of boys in scouting that year, which works out to around 5% these days. But the percentage of boys who join Boy Scouts who eventually earn Eagle is much higher.

Say you get 100 new boys each year, eh? And each year for one reason or another you lose 10 to moves out of town, fumes, etc. After six years, they either earn Eagle or don't, stay in or drop. Half earn eagle, half are Life for Life or whatever. Yah, yah, they really have 7 years, but this is just an example. So you've got:

1st Years 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th

100 90 80 70 60 50

Total Scouts in Troop at any one time = 450

Total Eagles each year = 25

BSA-reported percentage of boys in program earning Eagle = 25/450 = 5.5%

Real percentage of boys who joined Boy Scouting who earned Eagle = 25/100 = 25%

Math, what a terrible thing to mind.

Yah, yah, whatever. He's not talkin' about dat, eh? He's talking about the equivalent of federalizing everything. One standard way of doing things across the nation. For schools, a national standardized test, a national curriculum, no more local school boards who can make adaptations for urban, or rural, or transient kids, or listening to da kids parents.

And every business has to look like WalMart.

BAH. Humbug. Ain't good for schools, ain't good for businesses, ain't good for scoutin'.

Give me liberty, or give me death.

Bah, humbug.

Standards would work if people were widgets. People ain't widgets. And personally, I think it's insultin' to people and mean to kids to treat them as though they were a standardized widget that can be reached with one-size-fits-all programming.

If standards really worked, you'd see only one type of successful business or one type of successful school. Thing is, you see all kinds of successful businesses and schools, and they're DIFFERENT. And when businesses and schools try to standardize on the people-side, far more often then not they become WORSE.

Plus, I know some of da people who write the standardized programs you want to embrace. As often as not, they don't know that much more than any other experienced practitioner, and a fair bit of the work is done by their "staff" who actually know less.

Forget da widgets. Courtesy demands treatin' people like people.

Yah, Calico, I hear ya. There is dat small risk that a particularly obnoxious DA might try to subpoena a scout leader to extract an indirect confession. Of course, that comes with da risk that the scout leader, being up in years, might simply forget exactly what was said... or may decide that the boy was in fact a patient.

My first rule is that "help other people at all times" has no exception for worry of legal risk exposure. First do what's right. If that means listening to a boy, crying with him, or whatever, you do that. Yah, our legal system is occasionally weird, but it gets it right 99% of da time. I can live with the consequences of the other 1% more than I can live with not caring enough to do the right thing.

As far as "objective" goes, I contend there's always opinion involved. What does "swim" mean? Thrash in a forward direction without needing rescue until exhausted after 25 feet, or actually doing a reasonable stroke? What does "in a strong manner" mean for the swim test? A board of 3-6 people decides subjectively whether the requirements for an Eagle project are met in our district. And ya can't find me a single MB that doesn't have multiple requirements open to the interpretation of the counselor. But I'll give you "square knot"

That's as it should be; boys should be benefitting from the experience and judgment of caring adults.... which requires the adults be allowed to exercise judgment.

While it's important to understand that the field management of various snakebites is still an active area of research, a few comments/corrections to Calico's last are in order.

1) Pressure immobilization is generally advised for Elapidae (coral snake, cobra, and other snakes with high levels of neural toxins). That should be done with an Ace bandage, starting at the bite site and wrapping toward the heart as Calico suggests, but wrapping the ENTIRE LENGTH OF THE LIMB, not just a few inches. The pressure should be eqivalent to 40-70mmHg for an arm or 55-70mmHG for a leg... call it just a bit looser than what you'd do for a sprained ankle.

There's no good reason to use a compression band instead of this form of pressure immobilization, and several reasons not to.

2) Any form of pressure immobilization is no longer considered viable treatment for pit viper envenomation, mostly because of the tradeoff between local tissue necrosis and systemic effects as Calico suggests. Simply put, since pit viper bites are unlikely to be fatal, it is not worth sacrificing a limb. First, do no harm. Even trained physicians and emergency workers generally do a poor job of properly applying and managing pressure immobilization and constricting bands. In the "deep woods" the (relatively small) delay in envenomation progress is not sufficient to prevent systemic effects in any event.

For rattlesnake bites, teach your kids and adults to remove jewelry, clean, dress, splint loosely, and transport. Especially as a civilian responder on a scout outing in the U.S., don't use any type of constriction or pressure for a pit viper bite, and don't worry about above/below the heart.

Nah, constricting bands went out after morbidity studies some years back. Drop #4.

For an American pit viper (rattlesnake, copperhead, etc.), clean & dress the wound, remove jewelry (rings, bracelets, etc.) and constricting clothing because the area may swell (and cut off blood flow). Splint loosely. Keep limb neutral (not above, but not distinctly below level of heart). Transport to professional care rapidly.

No suction of any kind (recent studies show the Sawyer Extractor uneffective or in some cases problematic).

No constricting bands of any kind.

Don't bother with ID'ing the snake, the antivenin is universal for pit vipers.

Da rules change for bad and badder snakes in other parts of the world, where you wrap the ENTIRE limb with a wide elastic bandage to reduce toxin transport toward the core, and you may need to ID the snake.

Best place as a physician to keep abreast of dis stuff is the Wilderness Medical Society.

Ours don't.

Dat's been true for as far back as the memory of our oldest scouter. Guess it's not "traditional" in a scouting sense, but da modern neckerchief ain't nuttin' more than a foo-foo fashion accessory anyway.

Reading all da constant blah-blah about not adding to requirements, Im surprised at how little folks comment on the other half of that (one, isolated, out-of-context) policy statement not subtracting from requirements. How many of us take to heart that BSA badges are awarded for what a young man is able to do, not as a reward for what he has done skill and ability, not sign-offs? How many of us hold our summer camps accountable for making each individual boy actually demonstrate the requirements that say demonstrate, and do it without help? And without someone doing it for them and them just parroting it immediately afterward? Write a real, coherent, 500-word essay without copying it out of a MB book?

Do your boys tie a bandage once and get signed off, or do they tie bandages on different people in different conditions until they get good at it, making decisions about further treatment and care on their own? Da first subtracts from da requirements, and gives a kid a piece of cloth. Da second gives them an ability which really merits recognition.

I'd think if we cared about da kids, we'd take ourselves to task at least as often for shortchangin' em as for being too strict.

Gotta disagree with Calico on this strongly.

When teaching children, whether our own kids as parents or other kids as scouters, the standards for responding to behavior have to be something much less, and much more personal, than adjudication by a court of competent jurisdiction.

We don't want to teach kids about legalism. We want to teach them about character. I worry, too, about what we do to a boy in trouble by telling him he can't talk to trusted men & women like scouters; the goal is not to avoid punishment, but to help heal.

Besides, all of da requirements for Eagle are subjective, especially the most important ones. There ain't no "standardized test" from National for merit badges or ranks, and let's hope there never will be.

They specifically prohibit bivy sacks, in writing, in the printed material they send out.

I can understand not wanting 12 single tents in some of the tight campsites in Philmont. But da rule on bivy sacks makes no sense whatsoever.

Yah, well, I'm a conservative, and there are some Boy Scout values that I wish would go out of style.

Mail and fundraising fraud.

Inflated membership numbers.

Gross financial mismanagement.

Selling off camps for kids to pay salaries for "executives."

A rule for everything (best used to attack other volunteers).

PC "safety" prohibitions banning fun kids games.

High-impact camping.

The Boy Scouts have a military history, a patriotic history, and a proud one too! The Father of Scouting was a Military Officer, the basis of the movement started with the military.

Yah, right.

And the boys in Germany wearing tan brown shirts and running around doing scouting were a great example of what can happen when the movement continues its association with a patriotic, proud military history.

German scouting since has done OK without uniforms.

Da Scout Uniform is supposed to be a game uniform, not a military uniform. The current U.S. one ain't, as demonstrated by the adult silliness over military-style "uniform inspections." Maybe if the military-precision-look adults would get over it, da kids would get a game uniform they'd be proud to wear.

MY CHILD is in the GIFTED AND CHALLENGE program and has a very high IQ

Then if it were me, I'd be sending the SM a gift certificate to his favorite restaurant as a "thankyou" for trying to hold my kid to the standards he should be reaching.

Yah, but only if they have very high attendance.

A nylon tent doesn't offer much insulation, and you need substantial ventilation to prevent condensation.

So, really, there's no particular way to make your tent much warmer than the outside air, beyond the little bit of heat retained by reducing convection.

Try a bivy bag.

What ticks me off is the fact that the week before these posters speaches were due they had a drug/alcohol seminar at the troop with a local representative. So they fulfilled this requirement.

Well, no. They had apparently participated in part 1 of the requirement. This "troop program on the dangers of alcohol and drugs" had a part 2, which was to make a poster. It's the troop's program, they can decide what it consists of. If your son did a school or community program, it very well might entail making a presentation or writing a report (which may also be judged on quality).

My feeling on the poster/speach wasn't so much that they were asked to do it but that they were "judged" on how good it was.

Hmmm... Then I guess you have a lot of problem wit da whole scoutin' program, eh? Most rank requirements are judged on quality, or should be. "Splint a broken limb" means to splint a broken limb effectively, not just make an attempt.

Relax. The very temporary disappointment won't bother your kid half as much as your fretting about it. You admit you've got an overall good troop adult leader. Trust and support.

As far as da other stuff like Eagle seminars, it always amazes me how many leaders take "not adding or subtracting from the requirements" more seriously than any of the other advancement policies or procedures... so much so that they often try to trump the Aims and Goals. If it helps the kid, it strikes me as a good thing, and certainly not somethin' to get my dander up over.

I'm with acco and molscouter. I often wonder how folks who get an angry parent further riled up to go make a stink with the troop leadership feel that they're helping the situation. Even when "right" in terms of technicality it strikes me as being "wrong" in terms of Loyalty, Courtesy, and Kindness.

As a parent, I'd use my time more productively to support the SM and help my son a bit to add some "polish and practice" to his poster presentation. Presentation and communication skills are good things to learn; they can even be tied into Communications MB. What a great opportunity to work on them! I'd be glad the SM was insisting on some standard of quality.

Finally, I definitely would put the other boy's presentation out of my mind. As a parent, I have no idea how the SM is handling this... it may be, perhaps, that it comes up in a more private environment like a SM conference down the road that I'm not privy to; it may be that the SM or CC will be having a talk with that parent; it may be that the SM is just a volunteer and doesn't want to deal with an obnoxious pushy parent and so lets a kid get by without really learning anything. Who knows? Not my business.

Do what's best for your boy. Is it better to help him learn how to do a good job with a presentation, or is it better to burn a lot of adult leader good will just as long as your boy gets the signoff?

Kids haven't changed much over the years. They're still just as capable at age 14 as they used to be when Ben Franklin was running a print shop.

If you want to look for a cause, the most obvious choice is the aging of the general population. The older it gets, the less it trusts the abilities of the young, and the more it votes and acts to impose restrictions/"care" on them.

Please do NOT teach any scouts to wear damp (with perspiration or rain) clothing to bed on a Winter camping trip. Hypothermia is a very real problem in cold weather & has been known to kill.

Riiiight. Yah, dat damp polypro dat has about 4 teaspoons of water trapped in its fibers is going to be a real killer. Not.

Fact is, drying things out with body heat is a common, ordinary, and professional thing to do in da winter, especially on longer trips. It never killed anybody, but may have saved a few toes here and there. Just don't try it with the cotton sweatshirt, or too many items at once.

Doubled sleeping bags work great, if you can afford the weight. To the gent who woke up cold at 3am, I suggest adding more fat to your diet before bed. Mix a couple o' dollops of margarine in with your cocoa, or indulge in some of that good ol' Wisconsin cheddar from those cold-weather cows.

Oi! I have never seen such odd winter camping advice.

An alternate scientific view, from a guy who has about a full 365 days campin' below freezin...

Less is NOT more. If ya think less is more, try going to bed tonite wearing long underwear and fleece, and see if you're cooler.

Not wearing leg insulation will not help da rest of your body stay warm. It's less efficient for the legs to heat the air and then heat the body, compared with the legs/body not losing the heat in the first place. Blood is a much better heat transport mechanism than air. If you want your feet to stay warm, or to be warm at night, ADD a layer to your legs to reduce your largest area of heat loss.

Der's nothin' wrong with wearing a hat inside a sleeping bag, but you should make sure you are not too warm (and sweating). Der's nothin' at all wrong with wearing socks, fleece slippers, or down booties inside a sleepin' bag, as long as they're not too tight. You NEED to drink/be well hydrated at night, because blood flow to your extremeties is necessary to keep them warm.

Summary: If you're cold at night, you're an idiot if you don't add a layer, provided you're not using anything with cotton content. As the original poster generated...she was cold until she ADDED a winter jacket.

My advice to da original poster:

1) Lose the air mattress, add a thermarest.

2) Eat high fat-content food before bed. Fat has higher energy content than other food types, and takes longer to digest. It will provide energy in the middle of the night when everything else is spent.

3) Add a neck gaiter or wear a balaclava. There's a lot of heat loss through the neck as well as head, and the neck area tends to trigger a bunch of neurological "I feel chilled" responses.

4) Fill up "extra space" inside your sleeping bag with extra clothes. You want to heat as little space as possible.

5) Add a lower layer. One pair of fleece pants will do ya.

As always, leave cotton at home. As always, if you're perspiring at any point, lose a layer. As others have mentioned, go to sleep in fresh dry stuff if you can, but there's really no problem with lightly damp synthetics.

For the younger guys:

1. Watch their energy level. The young guys tend to go hard then crash. Usually when they're cold, they're tired and HAVEN'T BEEN EATING AND DRINKING ENOUGH. Forget the 3-meals thing. Teach them to "graze" on gorp/energy bars every half hour to an hour... not just candy bars, but stuff with about a 30% fat content for longer-term energy. Lots of hot drinks (cocoa & soups), and drink mix to encourage them to drink.

2. NO COTTON. Invest in a midweight or exp. weight polypro base layer.

3. Waterproof breathable shells have gotten cheap. Use 'em.

Small sleeping bags, or fill up all the excess space.

4. Teach them how to "layer up" after running around, and "layer down" before running around.

Yah, they're much safer about using liquid fuels than I was at their age. Only issue we've had is with the initial training/learning, which obviously needs to be supervised.