SR540Beaver

Thumper, Do you have a website address for you MBC?

Don't quote me, but since I've attended Jambo Contingent leader meetings every month for the past year, I'm 95% sure that my response is true. The Jamboree is a "Boy Scout" event limited to youth in Troops. While Venture Crews are a program of BSA, they are Crews and not Troops and do not qualify to go to Jambo. The age limit for attending Jambo is 1 years old and 1st class scout thru 17 years, 364 days. If your 18th birthday falls during Jambo, you can't go. He can go as staff however as long as he registers as an adult. He'd have to wear a Scout uniform even if he is in a Crew.

I'm impressed that they could even row a canoe or keep from exceeding the weight limit and sinking it after a breakfast like that! I'm surprised they were not rolling on the ground holding their stomachs.

FScouter, There is any number of things parents can do. They can be committee members and serve on BOR's. They can sign up as MB counselors. While it is helpful, you don't have to be an expert at something to be an MB counselor. They can provide transportation. They can serve as QM, Chaplain, etc. I'm an ASM and in addition to working with our older patrol, I care of all reservations and tour permits for outings. My fellow ASM who works with the new boy patrol also serves as Chaplain. Both of those jobs could be handled by parents who don't participate.....if they would participate. We are a young troop, so we don't have truely "older" boys to teach and train younger boys. Many of the demos we do on things such as cooking, first aid, etc. are done by adults. It would be nice to share that work load with other parents. First let me say, we have a fairly good group of parents who do a lot for the troop and are willing to do what is asked. We have others who have been given talent surveys with an explanation of how much we would appreciate their involvement and assistance with anything they can do. We never get anything back from some of these parents. The adult support of a troop has many many functions that too often end up being done by a few registered leaders and a hand full of caring parents. Beyond that, there is nothing in the world wrong with getting out of the lazyboy recliner once a week and sitting and visiting with the parents of your son's fellow scouts. I for one want to know who my son is hanging with and a little about the boy's family.

Seattle, I believe you contradicted yourself. You said, "This is an interesting thread because it challenges the folks who ritually trot out the idea of "we have boy led patrols. The patrols decide everything and unless it's a safety issue they'll learn from their mistakes." Then you said, "The good thing about this was that it was so obvious that it will be easier for the Scouts and adults to learn the needed lessons." That is exactly what those of us who use the term "learn from their mistakes" mean. You teach, train and test the skills they need to be self sufficient and independent in camp. Boys will often take short cuts even when they know the right path to take. Letting them see where that leads is a good thing until safety or health becomes an issue. What follows is a what did we do wrong and how can we do it better discovery. We have one scout who just won't drink water and got sick on at least 5 campouts in the last year and a half. We had to start monitoring his water intake and make him drink water in front of us to make sure he was staying hydrated. This past weekend we hiked with full backpacks. He actually drank plenty of water on his own and even related from his own experience what happens if you don't to the new boy patrol. He finally got tired of having headaches and throwing up and decided to do what he knew was the right thing all along. Every campout should be a learning experience regardless of whether it is the scouts or scouters. It certainly is for me. Once they are trained and decide to ignore the training, then we let the consequences (within reason) teach them the wisdom of the training.

Let me agree with Prairie about the babysitter terminology. It is not in reference to the leaders or how they run the program. It is how some parents treat the program. Oh goody, I have some place to dump my kid for an hour or two and get some peace and quiet. We've had parents who we didn't even know what they looked like because they pulled up in the parking lot, dropped him and drove off. My son recruited a good buddy who lives in our neighborhood into scouts last year. His parents never attended a single thing in scouting. The dad is very into sports. The boy and his little brother both play sports and the parents NEVER miss a practice or a game. The fact that their son wanted to be in scouting was not a problem (as long as it didn't interfere with sports), it just wasn't their bag and they had no desire or intention of participating. I think the use of baby sitters of America is appropriate in the topic line since the question is how to get parents to take an interest in their son's scouting program instead of using it as a place to drop their kids for a little ME time. I'm a dedicated scouter mainly for my son. He is the only child I'll ever have and I value the time I get to spend with him and experiencing things with him. If he were not in scouting, we would be doing something else like when he played baseball and I assisted with coaching and managing the team. I enjoy the outdoors, but I'd just as soon not be soaked in sweat from sun up to sun down, pull ticks when I get home and nurse my knees and back from sleeping on the hard ground. But the time and experiences I get to have with him are worth it and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm one of those people who also can't understand why parents have no desire to see that their son's have a quality experience and are more than happy to leave it in the hand's of strangers.

Prairie, I second the motion on travel to other nations. Few Americans have seen real poverty and fail to understand how excessive our culture can be. Their concerns run more towards having the ability to have clean water, enough food, sanitary conditions and medicine. There are those in the US who view poverty as not having a new car or large screen TV or the latest pair of $150 Nikes. Don't get me wrong, poverty does exist in the US, but it pales in comparison to many other parts of the world.

E, Yes, the world has gone nuts. My Dad was born in 1925 and grew up on a farm in Oklahoma during the depression. You made do with what you had and recycled or fixed everything. He was a Marine in WWII, so he learned even more on how to improvise with what you have. My mom and dad put a roof over the heads of four kids and there was always plenty of food on the table.....I'm living proof! As the family grew, dad built a den, master bedroom and bath onto the house. I don't mean that he had it built, he built it himself. Inside and out. I didn't always have the trendy clothes the other kids had. I didin't get a car. When I got my license, dad said I was welcome to drive the family car when it wasn't in use. If that wasn't good enough, I was welcome to get a job and he would co-sign the note. All payments and expenses were my responsibility. I bought the lady next door's little red '68 Dodge Coronet 440. On one hand, I abused it about as much as any 16 year old could, but on the other hand, I treated like gold. I paid every dime for it and I'd pay every dime for any damage or repairs. It taught me a great deal of thriftiness and responsibility that has lasted me until this day. By the time I was 28, I was making more money than my dad was after 30 yearswith his company. Even though I make what I consider a very decent living and own a nice home and new truck, I'm still so tight that you can hear me squeak. I don't use credit cards and the only money I owe is on my truck and my mortgage. I'm 48 and this is the first new vehicle I've ever bought for myself. I lived in my small previous home for almost 18 years before upgrading. Those values came from my dad and I'm doing my best to pass them on to my son. He pressures us a lot to have some of the same toys his buddies have and he gets some of them, but only some of them. He does know that no means no. He'll buy his own car and he'll pay the expenses. He will appreciate it more and care for it better than if it was just handed to him. I've got four more years to worry about it. I've seen too many kids who tear up brand new cars because they know daddy will buy them another one. Yes, the world has gone nuts and the entitlement crowd is growing too large. Stick with the timeless values. You are not alone. Our sons and their community will be better for it.

Ed, I'm not opposed to the PB&J way of doing things, but we don't do it and it has never been an issue. One difference between summer camp and WB is that you are not determining the menu. If they decide to serve liver, they'd better be well stocked on PB&J. Within a boy run troop, the patrol will hash out (no pun intended) their own menu among themselves and come up with something everyone can agree on. They also do a shopping list with quantities listed and it all gets SM approval. If they decide their own menu and agree on it, PB&J isn't really needed. As to no food being left, we went over the rules this weekend at camp with our boys. Not because we ran out of food, but because of the PL's actions. He was the cook. He got pancakes and bacon cooked and proceeded to fill his plate and go sit down to eat. No grace, no making sure others even had a plate in hand to fill and no eating together as a patrol. The SPL was busy with the new boy patrol and supervising their excellent cooking activities. They did a better job than the older boys! The SM stopped the PL after one bite. He re-informed him that the cook eats last and no one eats until all the food was cooked. They still had half a package of bacon and half a bowl of pancake batter uncooked. The PL argued that they had cooked all they needed. The SM informed him that we plan amounts for meals and we cook what we brought and paid for. We don't throw it away. A scout is thrifty. Cook it all and if your patrol doesn't want it, offer it to the other patrols. Bacon is pretty easy to get rid of. If it has been offered and no one wants it, throw it away or see if it can be saved and used somehow in another meal. I digress though. Basically the same thing that others said. Plan your meals, plan your quantities, SM or an approved person signs off on the plans, cook all the food, cook eats last, cook serves the food to the scouts to control portion sizing, etc.

I hear what people are saying, but trust me when I say that what you find here is pretty doggone tame. Go visit a few of the conservative political forums I frequent if you want to see people get really mean, ugly and nasty. This is triple G rated in comparison. Maybe that is why I don't find it as shocking as others. Still, I wish it didn't happen here at all. Yes there are some who are well versed in the "rules" of scouting and can be very blunt about telling you how you too can be well versed in the rules if you will just do as they did and read the documentation. There are probably more diplomatic and polite ways to say it. There are also others who don't want to do the leg work and who see the "rules" more as suggestions than anything else and do what really "works" or makes sense for them. Many of these posters are long time posters and there is considerable history between their reactions to the other side's views. The main concern of the "rules" crowd is that you are getting advice based on someone's made up solutions as opposed to the program as designed by BSA. It doesn't take long to figure out which side is wrong and which side is right and which advice it is more wise to follow. But I would agree, it would be nice if people wouldn't let others get under their skin and devolve a good informative thread and pleasant conversation into personal bickering.

Ahhhh, I remember 27! Get back to me when you are 48. I admire and respect your dedication. Keep up the good work!

We do ours during troop meetings. Our scouts have to request an SM conference a week in advance so the SM can set aside time during next weeks meeting. He then presents them to the committe so the scout can schedule a BOR with them. That usually happens the following week. Since they are done at meetings, we don't do conferences or BOR's on demand. No one has ever requested doing one at camp. Now, we have had a few at camp.....but they were not for advancement! We meet in a very small church and we only have access to three sunday school rooms. One room is for our meeting and another is used by the parents and committee. We use the third room for conferences and an ASM sits in for YP. Honestly, the configuration of our set up and the small size of the rooms does not allow us to do them out of ear shot but within view of others.

Lynda, Amen sister! Look at some of the stinkers we elect.

Dug: And my age hasnt a thing to do with anything. Then one could assume you have no objections to Eagle early.....but you do. You seem to want to apply your own standards to what makes an Eagle over and above the BSA standard. You believe the experience a boy gains between the age of 14 and 18 to be integral to becoming an Eagle. How then can you take exception to the suggestion that it would be wise to accept the counsel of people who have been trained scouters longer than you have been alive?

Active to me means more than just showing up for the specified period of time. It also means to actively attempt to do the job. As I said earlier, no qualifier of "success" is included in the requirement. Each boy will bring certain raw talents and abilities to the position and hopefully will be trained and guided by adults. If he is in the position for the specified time and even shows up for meetings and outings but does absolutley nothing to perform the job, he shouldn't get credit. We have a PL in that position right now. He makes most meetings and outings, but he resists us at every turn in actually fulfilling the duties of the position. I'm not sure why he ran, he had complete knowledge of what the job was. To be "fair", he has lost interest in scouting and is counting the days until Jambo is over and he will be leaving the troop. That has a lot to do with his attitude towards doing the job.

Last night, I went to our last Jambo leaders meeting before our shakedown. They passed out the latest bulletin from national which is available on the Jambo website. Guess what activity they've added for Jamboree? Geocaching. My son will be excited. He listed that as one of his interests on his Jambo paperwork and several people asked me what the heck that was when they read it.

Dug, Scouts and orderly should never be used in the same sentence! I'm half kidding when I say that. From your description, you expect a newly elected leader to be the next Donald Trump. Trump has had a life time to develop his management abilities. Scouting is in the business of teaching leadership skills. It is on the job training. Most boys have never had to do long term planning, write agendas, run a meeting, do conflict resolution, etc. UNTIL they get elected to a POR. To expect them to step into the job and do a bang up job from day one just isn't reasonable or realistic. Our job is to teach these skills. Some of it is learned by doing requirements, being active in your patrol, etc. Much of it is learned when you step into the job. Note that the POR requirement uses the word "active" intead of "successful". The reason for that is they don't measure the requirement on how good of a job you did, but at how hard you worked at it. You are to grow in the POR, not walk into it ready to take over the world. If we penalized every boy who shows up late, we wouldn't have a troop. I realize the expectations of a 17 year old are different than that of a 12 year old. We have one boy that IF he shows up, it is always about 20 to 30 minutes late. It is out of his control, it all depends on when his grandfather gets him there. I'd rather have him there for an hour of an hour and half than not at all. You never mentioned if the MB/SM asked for a reason for the scout being late. What if he was rushing from a job or sports practice? What if he was held up at a train crossing? There are valid reasons people are late. It is not always because they are lazy or irresponsible. Dug, I say this with all due respect and mean absolutely no offense. I know you are young and if I recall correctly, you have not had a lot of training. There are many people here who have been scouts as boys but who have actually been scouters longer than they were scouts. They have a vast amount of experience. Instead of constantly arguing that you have it all figured out and you provide a superior program by the things you've added, you might want to take heed of the advice offered. Trust me, the older us guys get, the more we realize there is always more to learn. Age is a humbling experience. But that is a good thing.

Indy, Understood! You got a lemon, but you're making lemonade. Good on you. BTW, there is nothing secret about the ticket. If I were your husband, I'd have a talk with the course director about realigning his ticket and the difficulty you've had with the TG.

I don't know......where is the skill in setting up a free standing dome tent with two poles as opposed to using a canvas BSA wall tent? A monkey can set up a dome tent while the wall tent can confound a grown man. The monkey will be bug free and dry though. Where is the skill in using a lighter to start a fire as opposed to fire by friction? A monkey can use a lighter while rubbing two sticks together gives a grown man warm hands from blisters. The monkey will have a fire to cook on and stay warm. I'm half way joking here. The basic skills need to be learned and practiced so you can be profecient in them. The basic manual skills can be the difference between life and death in an emergency situation. I'd never replace them. I love my GPS and don't get to do as much geocaching as I'd like. Do I think they have a place in scouting? Sure. As a replacment for map and compass? No. In addition to map and compass? You bet. Your GPS will only help you until you run out of batteries. We did a six mile hike on an established trail recently. There really was no need for a map and compass. We did have them however and the SM would ask individual boys at each rest period to get a bearing and show where we were on the map. I brought along my GPS just because I wanted to make a log of the route and compare the distance with what the maps said. Halfway down the trail I ran out of batteries and didn't have new ones. I forgot about my route mapping and enjoyed the view for the rest of the hike. The GPS sure comes in handy when we are driving into an unknown campsite after dark. I've toyed with the idea of having a geocaching weekend at camp sometime to introduce the boys to GPS. We adults would have to go a week or two ahead of time and place the caches for the boys to find. Would I ever tell them to throw away the knots, matches, flint and steel, map or compass? Not on your life. We often teach boys to have back ups in a survival kit. Have two or three methods to make fire. There is no harm in teaching them how to use a GPS as long as they know their map and compass.

Indy, I'm not too sure you could just do the newsletter with 5 steps and call it good. If I were a TG, I'd consider producing a newsletter as one item on your ticket. Keep in mind that one ticket item needs to deal with diversity in some way. I'm not sure how you could address diversity in the production of a newsletter. Don't get me wrong, I think the newsletter is a worthy ticket item, I just don't think you can split it into 5 elements and satisfy doing 5 items on a ticket. That being said, each and every ticket item doesn't have to be equivelent to climbing Mt. Everest. Our TG's warned us about trying to "mission impossible". They counseled against tickets items such as saying you will recruit 10 boys to your unit at the next crossover period. What if you only manage to recruit 5? It had to be reasonable and attainable. I have been shocked at how easy some of the tickets have been though. I ran into one guy who had a ticket item of attending 6 roundtables in a year. What the heck? I go to every roundtable anyway! For me, I would have paased on that one too if I were the TG. Still, I don't understand why you don't want to have a ceremony based on your ticket experience while at the same time enthusiastically recruiting WB, will wear your beads with pride and working on a WB staff. Is it that you harbor bad feelings towards your TG's approach to the ticket and you don't want the TG to present the beads to you?

Dug, I can appreciate your romanticized view of an Eagle. All the things you speak of are what the words Eagle Scout bring to mind for almost anyone. The trail to Eagle starts when a boy joins as a Scout. He moves thru the ranks by meeting requirments. If we follow the program as laid down by BSA, the boy will be exposed to all of the elements needed to reach what the BSA considers an Eagle to be. Call it a set of minimum requirements if you want, but it is what BSA considers as the standard. Remember, you can't add or take away from the requirements. While all of the personal characteristics you espouse are great, wonderful and desireable, the BSA program does not require your standards for an Eagle Scout. Dug, if they fulfill the requirements, they earn Eagle. Let me relate a story of something that happened in our troop recently. The SM's son was having his BOR for 1st class. He is ADD and fairly immature. They turned him down because they didn't feel he had shown the proper amount of leadership. The boy was obviuosly upset and embaressed. The SM (who is also the district trainer) went to the committee with the Scout handbook in hand and asked them to show him the leadership requirement for 1st class. They couldn't because there isn't one. He got a second BOR a couple of weeks later and passed with flying colors because he had fulfilled each and every requirement for 1st class regardless of his immaturity. What was the issue here? We are a new and young troop and only one person on the committee had received training. They have all been trained now and have a clue how to run BOR's and know what the requirements are for each rank. Dug, the traditions of your troop don't really matter. We've always done it this way and it has worked for us is not an excuse for following your own program in a scout uniform instead of the program of the BSA. Training and following the program is the correct course. I had a music teacher once who disliked the saying that practice makes perfect. He said that instead, practice makes permanent. If you practice something wrong, you will do it wrong consistently. If you practice it correctly, you will do it correctly consistently. If you follow the program and advance the boys thru the ranks based on the requirements as laid down, you will end up with boys worthy of the Eagle.

Why thank you! I'll have a hot cup of joe for you if you ever make it to my campfire.

indy, Sometimes I'm dense, so forgive me please. What do you mean by one ticket and not five. A "ticket" is made up of five items. You have 18 months to complete them and if I recall correctly, you can't complete them all in the first six months. Working your ticket should be an extension of the position you hold in scouting and benefit scouting and your own personal growth. I do know that there are some very strict TG's out there who won't allow any kind of adjustment and take the ticket to an extreme. There are others like mine who realize we are people voluteering our valuable time and are very flexible. I almost didn't attend WB because of the "unknown" of tickets. I knew they were supposed to relate to your current position. My problem was that I was a Pack Committee Chair and my course was in September. I would be crossing to a troop with my son in February without knowing what position I would fill. I was in a quandry as to how I was going to write a ticket while in a transition phase. I was assured it would be no problem and it wasn't. I wrote my ticket for my position in the Pack. I got part of them done before moving to the Troop. MY TG then let me rewrite my ticket to reflect my position of ASM in the Troop. I was never required to prove my completion of my ticket items, my word was good enough. Besides, the group I run in is close enough that people would have known if I said I did them and didn't. Ticket items don't have to be major events. One of mine was to get our new Troop up and running on TroopMaster software. It was something that needed to be done and someone would have to get it done. It wasn't any more of a burden than any other task I do in the Troop. Why was your experience with the ticket so bad?

Coming to Oklahoma by any chance?

Seattle, In our troop, we always counsel the boys at election time. We discuss the responsibilities of the POR. We make known to them that if they decide to throw their hat inthe ring and do get elected, we do expect them to fulfill their obligation. We also tell those who play sports, that if they are considering running during the season, they might want to consider running off season. If they can not be present to lead their patrol, there is no valid reason for running. We won't prevent them from running, but we do make known our expectations if they take on a POR. A scout is trustworthy, helpful, loyal and courteous. How can he serve his patrol if he is not there? Note that the requirement says actively serve, not successfully serve. He can be there for every meeting and learn leadership by trial and error and still fulfill the requirement. If he isn't there, he has not fulfilled the requirement and the SM should have a conference with him to determine if he is going to step up to the committment he made or step aside for the good of the patrol.