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Zuse

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Everything posted by Zuse

  1. LDS scouter here. Report this to your District Commissioner, District/Council Advancement chairs. This shouldn't be happening regardless of unit. It's unfortunate that BSA doesn't have a verification system in place for merit badges and counselors signing off for blue cards, because then parents, random adults and basically anyone else who can hold a pen can print merit badges for boys like they're monopoly money. In our unit, I produce a blue card each time the boy is wanting to work on a merit badge, and I provide them with the contact information for MB counselors using the d
  2. Hopefully I'm not being dense, but I'm guessing you were joking. It wasn't my intent to suggest that BSA should pander to these trends- quite the opposite, I think Scouting needs to stand its ground because these principles really do matter and they build strong youth. Scouting just can't work without strong families, and families need to be investing the time to build those strong households with or without scouting.
  3. I agree with you- there's so much that goes into the declining trends as contributing factors. I personally think that among other things, you have: Families being less connected, spending less time together and more single-parent families (as cited by Mr. Surbaugh during his presentation), which undermines the family-centered support that youth need to really be successful and invested in scouting. On a related note, I see more and more parents expecting scouting to fill in their gaps as parents. Scouting thrives and does its best when it is merely reinforcing what should already be t
  4. Nailed it. The variety in the questions in different parts of the country tells you that they're fishing for answers. I already had questions during the presentation about the survey methods, questions asked, options that people could choose from as their answer, etc. This just makes the preliminary "market research" that Mr. Surbaugh mentioned even more suspect and erodes his (and national's) credibility. I mentioned it during our meeting last week and I'll say it again: I feel like the fact that our CSE was doing a sales pitch (his words at the end of the video) tells me that BSA has
  5. The reasoning given by our council executive and the trainer presenting the video and facilitating the discussion is because they very much wanted people to be exposed to the different viewpoints about the presentation before filling out the survey. Although I do agree about making the video available--I actually asked during the meeting why they couldn't make it available to watch/show others later--I also see where they're coming from. It's that exposure to others and having a respectful discussion that helps people to think critically and not resort to a lot of knee-jerk reactions from
  6. Stosh, your point rings true with regards to something shared at one of our council meetings about this topic last week. It was mentioned only once--but it is true--that girls developmentally are mature at an earlier age than boys, which means that a lot more girls will be in leadership than boys and boys will struggle even more than they already do in many units to step up in terms of leadership. I want girls to have the blessings of scouting, I truly do. But if it comes at the cost of neutering our young men in a program that technically belongs to THEM, scouting will fade away even
  7. For anyone taking the survey without having watched the video AND participated in a council-level discussion, please keep in mind that you are missing a LOT of the context. In our council, they specifically said that the survey and video was not to be shared with people who did not attend since watching the video was crucial to see the options explained and then have the discussion with other interested parties. It's not that I desire anyone's voice to not be heard, but without the video, you don't have enough of the facts to be able to answer the survey as well as you could, which doe
  8. Unfortunately, an "adult" scouting program beyond what is already offered through Venturing would survive long enough, have enough resources or have enough interested people for it to really thrive. It's a pipe dream. Some young adults will see it as too childish (an extension of scouting for teenagers), and some will not feel challenged enough by it. Those that would truly benefit from it are a very small, fringe group of people. Outdoor programs that cater to 20-somethings and up seeking outdoor adventure and leadership are a dime a dozen, so for BSA to enter that saturated field is n
  9. It's unfortunate that many people equate a single-gender environment or organization with automatically being discriminatory, as if it's done out of malice. Discrimination, in the sense being talked about, has everything to do with an intent to do harm to those groups being left out. That is not why Scouting is boy-only. It was in Scouting that I learned from male role models--including my own father--that living the values and treating all others with respect, including women, isn't something only to be done when you are around those people. You do it all the time, and your speech, cha
  10. Truth be told, I think that these council-level meetings that they are having are just a formality. No amount of feedback is going to change BSA's mind on their course to opening it up to girls beyond what already exists in Sea Scouts, Venturing, etc. It's inevitable because the BSA is, in the end, a business. In order to keep the program alive from a financial standpoint, they need to open it up to increase membership. Unfortunately that will only slow, but not reverse, the trend of decreasing membership because BSA membership has been in constant decline since its peak in the 1970s.
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