Ankylus

So, you want to decrease the quality of my sons' experience in scouting because GSA failed your daughter? Really, I am so tired of "girls in boy scouting" I could puke. And if you think "those people" are going to stop with just having girls join you're crazy. I'm out. It's been good knowing y'all.

I find it amusing because I disagree with everything in it! (Except the epaulets...somebody must have had a last minute delusion.) And that amuses me because I think it highlights difficulty with the uniform. I can't imagine how hard it would be to get any kind of real consensus on uniforming issues. Please note that I don['t oppose any of that. I just disagree. As I always tell my children, there's no accounting for taste. Different people just like different things. Just don't go back to the berets and the garters with red tabs. Please, please, please, don't to that.

There are two kinds of countries in the world...those that use the metric system and those who put a man on the moon.

Some more on the sale: https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2017/08/18/boy-scouts-selling-longtime-campgrounds-for-nearly.html

(1) Scouts know when they have earned something and when they haven't. This includes scouts on the autism spectrum. This scout's mother is not doing him any favors by hollowing out his achievements and depriving him of the opportunity to genuinely earn something. (2) If the scout has a disability that needs to be accommodated, that is one thing. You do not indicate that this one does. So what the scout's mother is doing is wrong. (3) You should be proud of your sons, for they are showing true compassion. No scout is more proud of an achievement than a scout that has overcome more than

If you are “luckyâ€, I suspect it is the kind of luck one makes through hard work and preparation. But I offer the following observations. “Two mixed gender teams of 5, aged 16-21.†It is not unusual for my troop to have anywhere between 40 and 60 boys on any given campout. We average 50-60 scouts at summer camp every summer. My experience is that the difficulties in supervision at any level vary exponentially with the number youth involved. 10 youth vs. 50 youth are worlds apart. Also, a high proportion of those 50 or so scouts are aged 11-14. There is also a world of differe

I was wrong...it took 2.5 hours. Fortunately, I am the last signature so that will be rather quick.

"Bailing out"...you use a pejorative to describe your opposition and then try to bind them to the Oath and Law. Well played, well played. My advice is to be careful where you set the bar. As to "bailing out": A coed boy scout program is not what I signed up for...if I were to use a pejorative, I would call it a "bait and switch". If they choose to change the program under me and it is no longer what I signed up for, why should I hang around? There is simply no reason if the program no longer does those things that are the reason for my being there. (2) It's hard enough to take a bunch of

I agree with @@Chisos...it was my favorite camp growing up. Still is. One reason usage is down is that they never rebuilt River Camp after the 2015 floods. Not many people really ever went to Horseshoe Bend or Hammond. River Camp was the big draw. If they did't rebuild the most popular camp, what did they expect would happen? Also, some of this was just penny pinching and making decisions centered on the council rather than the boys. When I went as a youth in the late 70s, early 80s, the tents in every campsite were up on the hillsides in the shade. They were 8-man tents so you could

1, The two primary reasons I hear is so that "someone can pick up and complete the project" and to "get a taste of the real world". First, is it really that hard to "pick up and complete the project" is somebody puts their mind to it? There may be a project here or there, but I have yet to see one. Second, "the real world"? Perhaps some parts of it, but not all of it. In my profession you would bankrupt yourself proceeding along these lines. 2. A "good learning experience for doing projects as adults". Again, I haven't seen anything in the real world approaching the kind of crap going on

To the extent this thread is dead, I am resurrecting. Just to take ownership of that fact. I am watching my second son go through the Eagle application process, ad got to thinking about the phenomenon of "eagling out". So I searched out the forum and found this thread. Like the OP, the term "Eagle out" bothers me. But what prompted my wandering was watching the futility and frustration of the Eagle project and Eagle application process. Between those two events, my son has probably had to schedule 15 to 20 meetings with adults for various planning, approval, and signature requirements

We are fortunate that our CO has provided us with a "scout house". And it eases some of your concerns like storage space and such. But we still have many of the problems you do for our CO does not reserve it solely for our use. Sometimes they even kick us out of it for some special function the church is having. Even now we are having to fend off a dance program in there that will severely restrict its availability to us. My oldest son's troop's CO did the same exact thing to them. Don't get me wrong, it's an improvement over what you describe. But it's not a cure all. I hope the commiseratio

I think the single greatest factor is experiencing good program with a group of friends. I think it is more likely that they will stay in scouts if their friends are also there and I think they are more likely to stay if they find the program fun and interesting. Put the two together and I think you have a real winning hand. One huge problem is, of course, that individual scouts will find different things fun and interesting. I also think it helps a great deal if the scout's personality and the troop's personality are a good match. For example, there is a very large, very successful

Nice story, and a nice testament to the scouting program. Also a good experience that will serve the boys well as they grow and move on in their lives. Nothing prepares one for a tight situation as well as past success in tight situations.

This much I understood already. But thank you for the effort.

I don't contest anything you say here. But, we do implement it a little different than you envision. For example, we don't just "tie knots". For example, we once had a SAR specialist from the Coast Guard come out and teach SAR to th boys. He had a prepared survival at sea scenario in which the scout role played. Or, for rope work, we might have a knot relay where each scout ties a different knot in succession and we see which team finishes first. And even if the older scouts are less than inspired, I find that anything where they get up and do stuff is better received than another speake

Not worthy of any further response.

I occasionally check the blog, but don't recall seeing that one. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't really do either of those, but I do have accounts. Guess I just need to look.

That's all well and good, but he is operating in a civilian context. The scouts surely are not military. And in the civilian world, you call people back when they call you and leave a message.

We aren't actually meeting quite yet, we are waiting for the school years to start. If I had had enough warning, I might have tried to do something with it. But thanks for posting, perhaps next time we can look for it earlier.

I have never understood what y'all are calling NSP, or age-based patrols. So, we have a patrol of 11 years olds and one of them is going to be PL. How can you not expect that to be a dysfunctional patrol? Similarly, a whole patrol of 16 or 17 year old scouts? Why not spread them out to leverage their experience and maturity? As for the statistics regarding making First Class in a year, what does age-based patrols have to do with that? We have a separate program we call First Class Emphasis for the sole purpose of getting the boys to First Class within a year. Doesn't always happen, but th

Well, I don't know about your scouts, but 98% of ours go to fully coeducational schools and fully coeducational churches and have siblings including sisters. They are not what I would call "isolated" from girls. And I would bet that is true for most of the boys at the National Jamboree. I think going coed would have no effect on these problems. I personally believe this kind of behavior is largely a product of the breakdown in social mores, poor parenting, and lax adult supervision.

I especially understand this point. My wife has never been supportive of our participation in boy scouts. She thinks it's a detriment to the boys' schooling, takes too much time, and does nothing for their character development. She does not value the personal growth it brings, either. It's very hard to keep things on an even keel that way when she is basically pressuring him to do other things besides scouting all the time. I don't have any words of wisdom for you here, but I thought I would just let you know you are not the only one with an unsupportive spouse.

The issue of boring meetings is near and dear to my heart. Primarily because I hate boring meetings too. I find that the older scouts like speakers because they don't have to put any work into it. However, we (the adults) have started requiring that they have at least 3 or 4 meetings where they practice scout skills in some way. We also have a couple of open houses for Webelos every year, and the scouts get to get outside and move around for that. We also occasionally do some strictly fun things like a pumpkin carving contest by patrol for Halloween, and a duct tape challenge where they make c