Krampus

I have never met anyone from HQ in Irving. I wouldn't know them from Adam's dog.

 

Ever met a politician? Same type of person. Overly eager to talk to you about what is on THEIR mind, not yours.

I live among them. They are very snobby.

 

So I believe it is inappropriate to suggest that it is every adults duty to accept handicapped and learning disabled boys. 

 

Barry

Again, I'd have to agree.

We had a small incident this weekend with a boy on the scale. Nothing major, but he became aggressive, felt persecuted and appeared to want to hit me. My training and experience told me this was not the case. I got him to use a coping technique and he was able to calm down. Five minutes of work. No problem, no issues. No risk to other kids or adults. Spoke to parent at home and the boy is going to take a break for a month to work on his control.

The adult who was with me was at a loss for words. Didn't quite know what happened and was admittedly lost on how to defuse the situation. Could not imagine your "average Scouter" being in that situation and it ending up the same. Only my training and experience kept me from escalating this situation in to something ugly.

No kidding?  Soccer teams charge the coaches?  I didn't know that.

 

When I was an athletic director for my Catholic school, we gave our volunteer parent coaches a couple hundred bucks.  It wasn't much.  It certainly didn't pay for their time.  It barely covered their travel expenses, but I think the gesture was appreciated.

Yeah, and some times big money too.

Catholic or Baptist churches down here usually have their own gear, fields, etc., but they still need to compete in the league. Most churches will pay coaching fees. Those folks aligned with community-based teams have to pay themselves.

But you point is still well taken, Scouting costs greatly out weigh what most pay for soccer. At least in my case.

@@Eagledad you're right. We usually sit down with special needs scouts and their parents and discuss several things: parental involvement, activities which can/can't be done, approach to requirements, MBs and rank, etc. It is important to get their buy in and participation early on.

We are awarding Eagle to two Scouts on the spectrum next year. Both Scouts and parents have been actively involved since Day 1. My happiest day will be awarding these guys Eagle!

It is a bit strange that BSA asks adults to pay for the privilege of donating our time.  Even stranger is the fact that we do it.  We really are a bunch of saps, aren't we?

 

Youth sports programs don't charge registration fees or training costs to volunteer coaches. 

Au contraire.

In youth soccer some leagues require you to hold a USSF license. Depending on where you are and what license level you need, you may pay between $20-$500 dollars. They don't give you any gear so you may need to buy cones, nets, extra balls, other training aids, etc. Some leagues require you to pay for your own background check.

I spend more of my own money and time in BSA, but I spent a fair amount coaching my kids' soccer teams.

My apologies, Sentinal947.  I was being sarcastic.

 

 "I am shocked, shocked, ..."  is a classic line from the movie, Casablanca.

@@blw2 we do something similar; we have a troop event where we do various things for the visiting boys. They get a chance to ask their questions of our scouts and our scouts answer straight up. We give the parents all of our troop info up front. Everything they want to know (based on years of frequently asked questions) is in that document. We have a parent meeting during the event, but we try to keep it very short. We want the parents to be able to ask our scouts (or adults) questions too; also to see their kids having fun.

We don't do the "ringer events" simply because they never work. Sure, you get guys to sign up, but if they end up not liking your troop they leave anyway. Who wants that?

We've found being open and honest up front, putting on a good event (but still allowing scouts to come to ANY meeting) they will see what we are about. We actually had a family visit a few years back to a meeting the SPL was totally unprepared for. The meeting was a logistical debacle and ended very early. The SPL took responsibility for being unprepared, apologized to the troop and guests and it ended. The family signed up right then and there; proving yet again that honesty was the best policy.

I think the animosity toward professional scouters and national is directly proportional to their disdain for volunteer leaders. A generalization, but I think it works.

Well, I'm glum on camporees, but it's not because I don't like camping, it's because I've had to hear the boys in the troop next door whispering and talking until 3 am.  That, and I hate camporees. 

It's okay. They get to hear me making breakfast and drinking coffee at 6am with the other adults in our troop. They get the message pretty quickly.

Shouldn't stuff like this be covered as part of a unit's monthly program in the outdoors? Building fires, foil cooking, animal awareness, Dutch oven cooking, astronomy, weather, survival, etc., are all part of our unit's annual plan. It is part of every meeting and every camp out.

Why develop yet another training program to do what units should be doing anyway? That's what these handy guides are for. They help the youth develop a program around these core scouting skills.

When I read above from @@Krampus about the lack of people camping and the lack of qualified or trained volunteers it only makes sense to provide scouting in a variety of ways. It's true that the BSA is listening to its customers by offering some new programming like stem and new exploring opportunities. Of course there will be those that may be short sided and not see the need to change or really the need to just offer more.

 

But when you water down your core product, and have little uptake on your new product, everything suffers. BSA is trying to be too many things to too many people in a desperate attempt to stave off massive membership declines. This is not a prudent strategy in business or any other venture.

You sell a popular cereal. Sales drop. You make different cereal in an attempt to meet alternate demand. Sales for all are below your costs to produce, and compared with overall sales of your core product, you are still way down in sales. The answer is NOT to produce even more different types of cereal in an attempt to increase sales.

I'd be careful with that assumption. People who have a bad experience with something are always louder than people who are happy and satisfied. That doesn't mean people who had a bad experience aren't justified in that feeling. 

 

"I thought about having my kid be a boy scout, but my friends kid didn't really like Cub Scouts, so I'm glad we didn't waste countless hours of torture." Right or naw? 

When I combine what I read (both sides) and my experience with the WB'ers in my area, my feelings and conclusions are more than validated. I keep an open mind and try to revisit the issue every few years, but continue to see my conclusion re-validated.

I'm under 55 and wear one. In my old council, only folks you saw with Smokeys were WBers, and BA22 and JLTC graduates. Wore one until I got my Expedition hat when I worked for supply. Since then it's a toss up.

 

Problem I have with the Smokey is that when I wear it, people assume I'm in charge.

I just can't do the campaign hat. Makes me feel 70 years old (not that there's anything wrong with 70 year olds). I wear my ball caps (all BSA) or I wear my troop boonie. In my area the guys who wear the "funny hats" as my scouts call them are usually the guys you pointed out; and in my area those guys tend to be the know-it-all types that constantly look down their nose at you for one reason or another.

At least that's what it's like in my area. I have met other guys that wear those hats in other areas of the country that are very nice, pleasant folks...but they are usually over 60. Give me 15 years and I will wear one. For now, I am sticking with what makes me feel younger.

Every time I consider taking WB I venture in to this part of the forum, read and come away with the realization (or should I say, validation) it would be a colossal waste of time. There's already too much nonsense in scouting. Thanks for helping to confirm my suspicions and saving me countless hours of torture.

A follow up question might be: How many scouters under 55 wear the campaign hat.

The problem with membership decline is not rocket science and comes down to running scouting like a business. When businesses see a drop in sales they try to figure out why. Was there a drop in product quality? Was there a shift in demographics? How was marketing targeted/focused? Was there more competition in the market? 

BSA does not run itself as a business. Better said, they run themselves like a poor business. What they need is to focus on their core product, increase quality, maintain a more standardized and predictable product, develop better product loyalty and better brand and management. There was ways to do this but BSA ignores them or implements them poorly.

For those who don't see the sky falling I will say this: I spent the weekend at a Cub Scout event in one of the biggest councils with one of the largest memberships in Scouting. The weather was beautiful. There were no major events with which to compete against the council event this weekend. Attendance was down 75%!!!! Families didn't camp...anywhere. Most came for the day and left at 2pm. I listened as my unit staffed an event and the comments from parents about scouting were not good. Most I heard had had it with the politics, the restrictions, the mismanagement, the burdensome rules, the ambiguity and the other silliness. Of the 40+ packs I spoke to, few had membership increases. Most saw declines. Most had 25% reductions year on year through Webelos 2. Of the Webelos 2's, few were continuing on to Boy Scouts. 

If this is representative of what is going on in other councils where scouting is less popular, I'd say the sky is more than falling. To continue the analogy, the atmosphere is depleting and not merely experiencing a whole in the Ozone layer. 

You've chosen a generally demonic icon to represent yourself to a group where goodwill, friendship and positive values are the goal.  It's like Facebook pictures of people flipping the bird.  

I am stunned at how funny some of you guys are. I read your posts on other issues and you welcome all sorts of things very liberally. You interpret something like my icon totally incorrectly and you get your liberal dander up. Ironic. Welcoming to those things you agree with, unwelcoming to those things you don't understand.

I will say again, it is a cultural icon from a Germanic region in Bavaria and Tirol. You want to misinterpret it and get your underwear in a bunch, fine. That's your right. But you're showing your colors by assuming it represents anything demonic.

Try being more inclusive. That is what you seem to preach in all your posts. Meh.

@@NJCubScouter here's your problem: What media outlet reaches these target audiences? You just don't have broadcast TV like we had when we were young. Now you have social media, cable, satellite, on-demand, etc. The good news is that these other outlets don't cost what broadcast or cable ads do. The bad news is that BSA is not very good at utilizing new contact channels.

It is the scouts that go to school and mix with the non scouts. They are the best people to explain why so many kids don't want to join. They know why their friends are doing *insert other youth activity of your choice here* instead of scouts. So they will be the best people to ask how to get more of them through the door. 

 

And nobody seems to have asked them.

Units ask their scouts. That's how we succeed. Our recruiting, events, camping and everything we do is planned and executed by the boys. The adults drop pearls of wisdom ("Tom, you can't get to Big Bend and back in three days and still have a good time so save that for a longer trip."), but the rest is all boy led.

The problem is district and council. I'll give you an example. My council is putting on this HUGE event in Nov. It is going to be like a camporee on steroids. Problem is they announced the event before they had the activities lined up. The activities are okay, but with the size of the event you can imagine long lines for the events, bathrooms, showers, traffic in/out, etc. The PLC took one look at the event and just said "Meh".

Instead they've planned a shooting sports camp out the complete other direction of this event to avoid the traffic, etc. Smart kids! 

This IS part of the "existing" BSA "program", or at least the BSA organization. Whether you consider it "Scouting" is up to you. I clicked on the "Exploring Explosion" link and it seems pretty clear that it is just a stepped-up marketing campaign to grow the Exploring career exploration program that has been around for years under that name

 

ROFL...never heard of it. Never seen it at district RTs or any council events...and I live in a charter council. Shows you how well communicated it is.

 

I do like the idea of reaching out to minority communities. These communities tend to be more interested in community and less on winning all you can. But someone said they don't know the outdoors and for some it's hard to volunteer, so that is a problem.

I like the idea but their concept is skewed. Scouting is family based. We have a helluva time getting our single parent kids to participate, let alone the parents. They just look at us like we have three arms when we ask them to volunteer. We have a few households where English is the second language....forget getting mom or dad to step up and help.

So in a program that depends on parent volunteers, BSA has their work cut out for them in making this outreach program work. They have a hard enough time keeping packs and troops viable in the areas they currently serve.

I like what he said about minorities and immigrants. Most of our white people demographic has had the opportunity to be a Scout. They know what Scouting is. Obviously we want to keep that option available to them. Inner city and immigrants are an area where Scouting can grow, but we have to give them the same program the country and suburb kids get. Being outdoors, with their friends, doing fun things. Not stupid ideas like the "improved Scouting program." 

But you will need to fundamentally adjust the program to meet that objective. With the high rate of single-parent and multi-child households in those demographics -- adding in language issues -- how are you going to drive growth in a program that relies on parents to step up and run a Den or Pack? Until BSA solves that issue these ideas are useless musings.

We already have an issue with 20- and 30-somethings stepping up to help in Scouts as it is today. Do you think immigrant parents with poor language skills or single parents with multiple kids are going to do it? That's the problem to solve first, then you can market to those groups.

Read it this way:

His mission statement was to grow legacy programs, evolve quality, reflect interests of youth, focus on key-scouting values and methods (assume that means outs, adult association, patrol method).

Career experiences through Exploring Explosion. Not quite sure how this program dovetails with the "legacy programs" or what it even does, but it seems to be a career education and development program. I read the play book and it is yet another example of how BSA rolls stuff out telling you WHY something should be done but not HOW to do it or WHAT benefit you get from the program. Yet another set of volunteers to manage and more recognition garbage. They just don't make it simple for anyone. What we need is a quick way to integrate this program in to the EXISTING Scouting program. This just seems like another layer to an already muddled picture.

The second point is just a plea to develop a program to reach out to minority and immigrant communities. They do seem to imply they will be reaching out to kids younger than Tiger age.

Obviously they see STEM as a big play.

He talks about "underserved" markets and groups. Sounds like PC speech for minorities and immigrants again.

@@NJCubScouter is right, there's not much to go on here. 

As @@Beavah said (my paraphrasing, since I can't speak Beavah) more than once, if you expect consistency in wording from National, you are on a fools errand.

Still...as a national organization they should strive for it. Instead of focusing on some of the things they do, establishing a clear and concise message should be a top priority. It will help with all the other issues (i.e., membership, training, etc.) if that objective was met and extended down the food chain.

"An advancement example is jumping feet 1st into water over your head and swimming 25 feet, it does not say you can't have a flotation device on."

 

Oh, come on, seriously?  I am a former aquatics instructor and WSI certified.  The intent of the requirement is to determine who can SAFELY participate in aquatics activities.  This particular requirement demonstrates that IF a scout falls into the water, he can safely come back to the surface and make it to safety WITHOUT having to wear a PFD all the time. 

 

WHen you start parsing the requirements that affect health and safety, I have to object.

So if you cannot swim you cannot make Eagle?

What about kids in wheel chairs that cannot hike 5 miles?

The accommodations exist to allow all boys to participate regardless of handicap.

I am sad for those of you that have to compete with other packs. The other pack and our pack work together to make sure that scouting is available to any boy and his family that want it.

We have 42 packs within a 15 minute drive of each other. Most are separated by only a mile or so. Some are clustered where you have three or four schools within a one mile radius of each other. This model was built by council and perpetuated all these years. Since council does little forward planning on such issues, it has evolved in to this.

The irony is that when the demographics change to such a point that packs need to merge, council swoops right in and tries to build a new pack where the old one left. The fallacious thinking on their part is that they (council) believe the reason the pack went wrong was due to poor volunteer management. If they just asked the pack (which floundered for years) they'd realize that demographics have changed so much in that area that a pack is just not sustainable. A simple case of council clinging to a model instead of changing with the times.