DuctTape

Yes. That is what I would preserve, and wish national and councils would advocate for instead of chasing quantity.

I think the focus on membership numbers (ie collecting dues for national) has allowed a corruption of the program. I would rather see national and the councils focus on promoting quality programs instead of quantity of units. It may be true that youth desire other activities, however there are some who still desire a quality scouting program. We should aim to provide that instead of trying to change the program to attract others. I would rather we have 10% of the current membership and units delivering a scout led, patrol method, outdoor based scouting program than increasing membership number

The next step of the process is the scout being tested. They would go to their SM (or whomever the SM has granted authority. I prefer the PL) to be tested on the skill they practiced. The sign-off occurs when the scout successfully passes the test. The sign-off is NOT from the practice or the skill building activity, it is a personal test.

In most cases it seems to always boil down to programming at the troop level, vs programming at the patrol level. Example: Troop decides to do district camporee and half the patrols/scouts do not attend because they have done that camporee multiple times. vs Patrols decide individually their campout some choose the camporee some do a different campout. Some argue that there aren't enough adults to do separate patrol activities. This could be true, but unless the troop is using a bus or multiple 15 passenger vans, they will need 1 adult to drive (at most) 4-5 scouts whi

Hit or miss. Same with boys. For those in stand-alone troops with a quality Scouter who understand the program, then yes. However what I have witnessed is these rare cases are the SM is a successful scouter and created the troop for his daughter. Now that the daughter is out, he is as well and the troop is suffering from a leadership and experience vacuum. This happens in boy troops too. The more common girls experience is a "linked on paper only" and typically joined a dysfunctional boys troop with a poor quality program and the introduction of a girls patrol made the bad situation

Awesome!

I was trying to be brief without getting into all the technical aspects of filtering, purifying, etc...

If there is a water source, I advocate for filtering. Only carry water for dry camps.

The concept of linked troops was good on surface and if managed well, likely quite successful at the sharing of resources. In my experience, the implementation of linked troops was not even close to the ideal. The reality I have seen is co-ed troops instead with adults using linked troop verbiage. These troops struggle with the implementation not because of the introduction of girls, but because they did not have a strong (or even basic) understanding or use of the patrol method. Basically the girls troop implementation was less than successful because they joined a boys troop which was n

In our area students all take a course in HS called "Participation in Government".

Your post prompted me to go look at the date for my Songbook. Much more recent 1966.

The cooking example was just that, an example. I am not trying to dicker around about what badge(s) are more important than others. The example was illustrative that any badge can be broken down into multiple badges with a more intense focus. It is my opinion that citizenship as 4 separate badges is grossly over-represented in the mB line-up. I have no intention to argue over my opinion. You have yours, we disagree.

Even if the mB is more knowledge based, the reqs IMO should have the scouts do something with that knowledge whether it be during the acquisition of the knowledge, and/or after the fact. Almost 25% of mBs in one topic is too much IMO. I would also not like it if they had 4 mBs for Cooking. Cooking for family, Cooking on open fire, Cooking International Recipes, Cooking for a Patrol all as different badges.

Some scout activities are not for every scout. We should not force a scout to participate in activities which they do not enjoy. If the patrol want to sing, and one scout does not want to sing, the patrol could find another role, such as "hold the flashlight as a spot light on the patrol". As an aside, I have been playing with the openAI bot. Here is my latest prompt and the AI response. (This thread was the catalyst for the prompt). write a campfire song for boy scouts and include the guitar chords and music Here is a cam

IMO, no merit badge can/should be done via powerpoint. If it *can", then the badge is really no more than reading a condensed book. IMO not worthy of a mB which should require scouts to DO more than just "repeat". Second, the mB program is predicated on adult association as a method. A mB reduced to a ppt presentation more often than not has little/no adult association. (It is extremely rare that a mB counselor is skilled enough to use ppt and provide meaningful adult association, mostly b/c if they have the ability they would not choose to use ppt in the first place).