Scouter99

The whining immature smarty-pants comments on Scouting Mag's FB and blog comments are a real goldmine. I don't see why anyone is so from-my-cold-dead-hands passionate about this phrase when it was never said by BP, and is not the line from Hillcourt, and can easily be replaced by the actual quote without changing the meaning or screwing with Highlights. Just a bunch of ignorant babies.

So direct her to the Guide to Safe Scouting: "If a well-meaning leader brings along a child who does not meet these age guidelines, disservice is done to the unit because of distractions often caused by younger children. A disservice is also done to the child, who is not trained to participate in such an activity and who, as a nonmember of the group, may be ignored by the older campers." http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/HealthandSafety/GSS/gss03.aspx Family camping is not Scouting, it's the opposite of Scouting and works against our aim to produce young men who can do things for them

Scouting arose in great part due to concerns among men of the era of the effects of urban life on the men of the nation, upon which, of course, the future of the nation rested. It was actually the working class who were most profoundly feeling these effects, thus Scouting aimed for these boys. War orphans, dropouts, families whose parents were absent due to work. The Woodcraft Indians, E.T. Seton's forerunner to Scouting, also targeted these boys; it's founding campout was by invitation to boys who were spending their free time vandalizing Seton's property.

No, there is no reason that you can't do both jobs. Committee members don't command each other so it's not like you're setting things up for some insubordination showdown or mutiny. Tell the people who have a problem that any one of them is welcome to take one of the two jobs and watch them all slink away mumbling about how busy they are. AND: Welcome to the forum!

I can see where any number of adults might fall upon this solution from an adult-driven program perspective. It is not necessary at all. Put the boys in patrols, tell the PLs, SPL, ASMs, and Committee how things are to be, and it will happen. The adults must imply resign themselves to and embrace that it will be bumpy, and that the bumps are the lesson. The aims of Scouting are the lessons learned, patrols are a method--the two are different. Your advocates for a Leader Patrol think the goal is to have perfect patrols ASAP because they think the patrols are the goal rather than the path

It is laid out in a dumb way. I imagine it only lists the major Christian holidays as well as federal holidays because they're the ones that are also going to be school holidays that all units, Christian or not, will need to grapple with (every unit I know of doesn't meet on school holidays) In the bigger sense (where my "grow up" was placed, not just to you, sorry), I'm simply tired of every person with any quirk turning it into victimhood for themselves, or of people without any quirk white-knighting for no reason.

Go to Wood Badge, they say, it's the best training in Scouting, they say.

God, grow up. The index in the back of the calendar includes all holidays from Judaism, Ba'hai, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism (for all 5 people in the US that are Zoroastrians), Sikhism, Jainism (for all 3 Jainists) and a ton from Christianity which aren't marked on the calendar pages themselves, either.

Reading the 2010 post, I don't see why you needed a bunch of internet strangers to tell you that a guy who sexually harassed and groped crew mates should be kicked out. If I were an adult in your unit and you hadn't, I would've left until you were gone. As far as the gravedig/rehash from the other week, wrapping up the basically harmless teenage game of nut tapping with false allegations of abuse is a big goofy conflation.; they're separate issues. I wouldn't tolerate nut tapping if I saw it, but it's not a kick-this-kid-out issue by itself.

We avoid Christian holidays because you're not going to get anyone to show up with 73% of the population celebrating that holiday. If we're talking about a Jewish holiday, we do not have the same utilitarian issue with just 2% of the population, up to 20% of whom are actually atheists and a further 20% of whom adhere to a faith other than Judaism. There's no reason to not hold a unit event on Yom Kippur unless the unit has Jewish members.

Or I was pulling your leg. That was fun. That's really quite funny given that your council uses the same policy that bans their smudge pots to make everyone take some ridiculous stove training. (wasn't that you complaining about that?)

Calico has it.

If I get a BSA plate, I can't honk at jerks anymore. It's ongoing, there's no time limit on gathering the pre-paid applications.

Tut, tut. "Prohibited Chemical-Fueled Equipment: Equipment that is handcrafted, homemade, modified, or installed beyond the manufacturer’s stated design limitations or use. Examples include alcohol-burning “can†stoves, smudge pots, improperly installed heaters, and propane burners with their regulators removed." http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-013WB.pdf Our council does that, but we don't camp there. The training sessions I've been to during summer camp, from YPT to Weather Hazzards to Climb Safely, have been horrid. Disinterested staffers

Which is why your SM is having difficulty doing right by his boys, and is the reason BP opined on the best size for a troop: "The numbers in a Troop should preferably not exceed thirty two. I suggest this number because in training boys myself I have found that sixteen was about as many I could deal with - in getting at and bringing out the individual character in each. I allow for other people being twice as capable as myself and hence the total of thirty-two.(Aids to Scoutmasterhip)" As quoted at WOSM. (emphasis mine) Scouter205, As others have done a good job noting, SMCs are ba

What a pinhead.

While watching a program on federal agents violating an indian reservation to destroy a crop of hemp, they discussed that it would actually be quite smart to allow cultivation of hemp because it would naturally cross-pollinate and wreck the potency of growing operations.

Unit leaders are as much the problem as crappy camps. In 2011, the Horsemanship MB requirements changed to the inclusion of a 60-foot straight cantor and 30-foot half-circle cantor. Apparently a cantor is very hard to manage, and the instructors decided they couldn't do it in a week, so the Program Director announced that because of the safety issues the boys would all be leaving with a partial and would need to do the cantoring at home. All I heard for the rest of the week was Scoutmasters talking about how they would just be signing off that requirement as soon as they got their gear

Good solution in the short term. It bugs me when 10- and 11-yr-olds cross over and come in wearing Cub conservation awards in weird places, but I couldn't ever bring myself to deflate a kid. The 22-yr-old, however, I like to give a hard time. I mean, really.

Yeah, it's framed in from Google on Boys' Life's website, note the blank Google ad space at the bottom of issues on boyslife.org. Thanks, I'll have to look into that!