Ankylus

Howdy , and welcome from Texas!

Howdy , and welcome from Texas!

Howdy , and welcome from Texas!

Howdy , and welcome from Texas!

Howdy , and welcome from Texas!

We do not have a "scout representative" per se, but the SPL is strongly encouraged to come to Committee Meetings. Some of them do, some of them don't. 

Howdy , and welcome from Texas!

Howdy , and welcome from Texas!

Howdy , and welcome from Texas!

Howdy , and welcome from Texas!

So ... IOLS now ... isn't a bunch of record-keeping? Plus, money has to exchange hands!

And, is there any real verification of skills mastered? Has anyone flunked an adult from IOLS who couldn't tie a sheet bend the day after it was taught?

 

I mean, seriously, if you're getting that kind of quality instruction and verification out of your district committee (especially considering your troop size and the number of adults you all must be sending to training), please get them on this forum so they can show the rest of the world how it's done.

I think you misunderstand me. Yes, IOLS is a bunch of record keeping. And yes, I agree that IOLS is not currently a good tool for this.

My point was that we have IOLS already, and it is kind of, sorta oriented in this direction. So, if you want to make sure that all SMs and ASMs have all the skills of a First Class Scout, why not modify the current IOLS curriculum to do that? 

As for quality of instruction, why do you think it will be any better for this First Class achievement than it would be for IOLS? I mean, I don't know anybody who has failed YPT, or hazardous weather, or any of the other adult training, either.

Personally, I don't think there is any good way to achieve this goal. Adult leaders will know and/or learn the skills or they won't. Coming up with another "requirement" isn't going to move the ball much in my opinion.

Not sure where you're seeing the layer of bureaucracy.

 

One grabs a handbook. Works with fellow moms and dads until skills are mastered. Instead of a weekend away from the troop, they can work on it at a troop adult campsite 100 yards distant from the other patrols. Loan field specs to anyone who needs to observe the youth in action ... youth-focused is instantly increased depending on the quality of the binoculars.

 

I agree this might create some knowledge gaps, but there is a build-in solution that doesn't require entire weekends away from troop and family: round tables. This is where scouters find out who can fill in their skill deficits or give them refreshers. How much more engaging would that be than power-points on internet rechartering?

If we are going to have adults "earn First Class", then there is going to be record keeping. Not to mention, we're going to have people doing the teaching and the signoffs. And those people will have to be vetted and kept in a list somewhere. And so on. To me, that's a layer of bureaucracy.

Well, I don't believe that Bird Study should be an Eagle Requirement. It's too specialized. I do believe that Nature merit badge should be an Eagle Requirement for a similar reason  you think Bird Study should be required.  I also think the Sustainability merit badge should be immediately eliminated as an Eagle required badge--it's just too boring for the boys. 

I believe that making the Sustainability MB Eagle required (option, of course) is a symptom of US scouting's departure from the its core mission as originally conceived.

National should really sit down and talk to the SMs that give SM conferences. No scout EVER said, "What I enjoyed about scouting was learning about sustainability."  And I will be surprised if any one of them ever does. For one thing, they are inundated with this kind of subject matter in school every day, and even in popular culture. Who needs scouting to learn about "Sustainability"?

That's not to say it is unworthy of being the topic of a MB. But, presumably, Eagle-required are such precisely because they are deemed core topics that every Eagle scout should know. Sustainability? Really?

Admittedly, I have never had a scout talk about enjoying Citizenship in the World, but at least citizenship has always been a core value of Scouting.

And a similar thing can be said about all the "explain", "discuss", "tell", and "speak to" requirements. They get school all day in school. I understand sometimes that is the way to impart necessary knowledge. But there's way to much of it. We need more "doing" and less "explaining".

But part of the problem has been that Scouting has evolved by trying to be all things to all people. They want all boys to have access to scouting and an opportunity to succeed in it. That includes urban youth with no or limited access to the outdoors. So, over time, they have watered down the outdoors aspect of scouting and brought in other things. Like STEM. 

BSA really needs to figure out whether they want the historical core mission. If they don't, then quit pretending. If they do, then makes some changes to get back to it. Instead of Sustainability and Family Life, perhaps Orienteering, Pioneering, and/or Signals.

I am not sure I would reach that conclusion.  It may be that those vague requirements from 1911 were interpreted in radically different ways by SM's and MBC's (if they even had MBC's at the beginning) and a decision was made to make the requirements more specific, such as to require that the camping be a Scouting activity.  It might help to know when that change was made.

As a lawyer, I find that more complicated and convoluted language in anything is invariably to product of conflict over simple, more concise wording. I have no doubt that the longer, more verbose wording are an attempt to head off disputes over advancement caused by vague language.

However, another laudable goal that might have driven the verbosity is to institute some consistency in the application of requirements.

The more verbose "modern" requirements are probably driven by both factors.

That having been said, I agree with the sentiment expressed earlier that if you expect 12 year olds to read and understand them, then you have to make it readable and understandable for 12 year olds.

Of course not. Earn it as an adult in your troop. Maybe den chiefs could sign off pack leaders!

 

Every scout deserves an accountable leader.

Wow, I am really not ready to layer another level of bureaucracy for adult leaders. For one thing, it would detract from focusing on the youth.

But, IOLS is presumably to tool BSA uses to get adult leaders up to speed on First Class type skills. Perhaps a better mechanism would be to conform IOLS to First Class skills a little more closely and then make IOLS a prerequisite for Wood Badge. As a practical matter, my guess is very few Wood Badge attendess won't have already taken IOLS.

Thank you for your responses.

 I think @@qwazse got it in the first reply...it's the traveling shirt...it not only travels from scout to scout, it travels through time and back in time as the the scout(s) travel through the scouting program...and the winners are the Brotherhood of the Traveling Shirt. Make a plaque, hang it on the wall and add names.

I know, I know...but I have a different angle on this one.

Our troop does not "do" adult awards in the sense of scouting program. At the year end banquet, we give out plaques to the "CM of the year" or "ASM of the year" or whatever. But we never give out "knots". Even where deserved. The only exception is Silver Beaver, and we don't award that.

Our SM is departing the job. He did a wonderful job. Truly exemplary. But he is staying in the troop and in "lesser" leadership roles.  So, I thought it would be nice to get him his "Scoutmaster's Key" or "Unit Leader's Award of Merit". He does wear a "Cubmaster's Key" on his uniform.

The paperwork all requires the CC's signature. So I sent him all the information and suggested it would be a good idea. Silence. Crickets. Never even acknowledged the email. I will follow up, and mention it in person next time we get a chance to chat.

My question, though, is...what happens if the CC won't sign the paperwork for whatever reason? Is there a way to go around the CC? I would rather not have to go to district or council if I can avoid it.

I am sorry for your negative experience. Have you considered stepping up and offering to help? You could be his assistant Den Leaders and start scheduling things yourself.

[picking up the mic]

 

Isn't what constitutes high adventure relative?

 

My brother lives in Montana. If he were to do deep sea fishing for a week on a boat his kids would consider that high adventure. My sister lives in Kiawah and they are always on the water. A week in the mountains hiking would be high adventure to them. To a kid living in the plains who has never seen mountains or the sea, either would be the trip of a life time. To a kid from Chicago's inner city, a week at the Summit in canvas tents would be high adventure.

 

I would agree there are degrees of what constitutes high adventure, but I don't think there's one single definition.

 

[puts mic back in the stand for the next person]

I agree, and I admit there is reasonable minds can disagree. 

Oh - and Summit and Seabase isn't High Adventure?  Check your adult bias - to a 14 year old boy from Iowa, a week at Seabase will be a high adventure.  To a 15 year old boy from Kansas, a week at Summit learning whitewater kayaking will be a high adventure.

 

<mic drop>

I cannot tell you how excited I am to finally discover who the King of the Board is! I wish you could experience my appropriately obsequious posture and demeanor just now. I shall endeavor to properly observe your clearly superior intellectual, moral, and physical person at all time in the future.

That an activity thrills a scout does not necessarily mean it is high adventure. Otherwise, riding a roller coaster or an afternoon at the rock gym would be "high adventure". Whitewater kayaking CAN be a high adventure. And it is a thrilling activity. But the way it is experienced Summit is not high adventure. Similarly, deep sea fishing is high adventure? No, it's a long day of fun. (Now, the scuba diving and tall ship, on the other hand, I could go with.)

You cheapen the words. 

Check your arrogance. <mic drop>

I think when BSA takes 'high adventure' to mean rock climbing walls and zip lines, boys miss out on the experience of mastering a genuine challenge, not a manufactured one.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I have a hard time believing that BSA labeled Summit a "high adventure camp"...and much of what goes on at Seabase isn't high adventure either. 

"One of the problems is that BSA has to make rules that apply to EVERYONE"  Does that mean they dumb it down to the lowest common denominator of not knowing anything about camping and set the bar there?

 

By the time I was eligible for Boy Scouts, I could and had already camped for a good 5-7 years prior to that just about every weekend from early May to mid October.  In the fall, the boys and I would head out camping for the weekend and take our .22's to hunt for squirrel and rabbits as well. We didn't shoot each other, but we weren't all that good yet at shooting fast moving rabbits either.  We did get one, cleaned it, and had it for dinner.  Best weekend as a kid I ever had with my buddies.  It was a weekend the SM told us we weren't allowed to do that kind of activity, so we got parent's permission, dumped the uniforms, and went anyway.

Yes, I do think national does that, although not quite to the level you state. I do think that the bar is high enough to learn camping and to practice it. But giving the scouts the kind of latitude that permits scouts to go off by themselves like in that previous post is not a part of that.

Your second paragraph sounds really good and, again, I have no problem with that for boys who are sufficiently mature and responsible enough to do it well and safely.

But we have many scouts who are broken in many ways, emotionally and intellectually.  In my older son's troop, we had one boy who snuck in some accelerant on a campout, poured it all into a lake, and tried to set the lake on fire. There was a second boy who wanted to build a "big fire" in a wooded area one fall so he made a giant mound from dead leaves and set it on fire.  A third scout tried to set the scout house on fire one night. Imagine if there wasn't any supervision for these boys. 

Our troop does not wear them. Neither did my older son's troop. I don't know why. That decision was made before I joined the troop, nobody has mentioned it, and nobody has ever raised the question of reconsidering it.

I don't think it is any more, or less, uncool than any other part of the uniform.

I admit to some personal bias here because we wore neckerchiefs in my troop as a youth. Those, along with those stupid berets, and the...uh...strange..tabs and garters on the knee high socks were completely useless and extremely annoying. None of those things ever got worn on campouts or anything remotely active. Nothing like a uniform so impractical you don't ever wear it.

I see utility in neckerchiefs, but none of that utility has anything to do with the way they are worn on the boy scout uniform. But if we're going to have them, at least make them big enough for practical uses. I think the test on the size should be at least large enough to tie a head bandage for First Aid purposes.

But I don't miss them and, aside from this board, don't know that I know anybody who misses them.

BUT ... I guarantee you ... a troop that is a 20 minute drive away will cost you scouts.  If you have a local troop, try to work with them and make it a better troop in subtle ways.  

Where do you live? My children's public high school is almost 15 minutes away by car. Our troop is hovering around 100 at the moment and most of our scouts drive 15 or more minutes to get to troop meetings. 

Sure it happens, but in my experience I have yet to find an Eagle that young worthy of the true title.

I have seen one, but only one. I agree with the sentiment overall.