
yknot
Members-
Posts
1742 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
59
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Articles
Store
Everything posted by yknot
-
That's from 2012. The standards were updated in 2018: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/historic-safety-standard-to-eliminate-majority-of-corded-window-coverings-from-us-market-takes-effect-300765221.html
-
This will vary by state, district, and school but today many classrooms have two adults by default because so many kids require instructional aides especially K-8.
-
I don't follow your logic. Why is delusion an excuse for BSA but not for COs? BSA also signs a chartering agreement with each Council, which basically stipulates an annual health assessment of units and several supervisory tasks. At least once a year, BSA, through its district and Council designees, would have been alerted if a unit was not following bylaws, etc. No one could blame BSA if a case occurred in units that were out of compliance and the BSA was unaware for the first months of charter, but at the end of the one year term, they should have been aware and should have revoked the charter, as they expressly state is their power in the Council chartering agreement. Many of these cases, however, took place over years and even decades.
-
As far as the "Scout" name, does any of it really matter? I know BSA, and maybe even GSUSA, would like to trademark "Scout" but that is like trying to trademark "Runner" or "Tracker" or "Hunter". It's just something people do. You've got Army Scouts, Sports Scouts, etc. that are actual jobs that also use the Scout name.
-
It was one aspect of a longer conversation where my point is that life is very confusing for kids today. They are very different than kids in the past and their stressors, pressures, and challenges are different. The fact that they are having more difficulty coping with modern life is borne out by statistics that show ever increasing rates of depression and suicide that are showing up at younger and younger ages. They are also starting puberty much earlier, with all those hormones and stresses as well. The 10 year old you dealt with 20 or 30 or 40 years ago is different than the same aged kid today. In some ways, vastly more mature and worldly, in other ways terribly unprepared for life challenges. I read here and quite often see in the units around me an attitude that how we handled kids decades ago is acceptable today and it is generally not. For the specific area of teasing and bullying, there are adult and peer to peer behaviors that are tolerated in scouting today that border on bullying in most other aspects of a kid's life. I don't think it's part of our job to confuse them or continue such behaviors because it's thought of as an amusing tradition by adults. Edit: I forgot to respond to the last part of your post. That's what I'm talking about when I say the recipient gets to determine what bullying is. Sometimes it's a good thing because kids (and adults) don't realize the impact their words and actions can have, but it's often over done. But that is the reality kids have to navigate. And if you are meeting on school grounds or using school facilities, then yes you do need to "wear the uniform" when on premises or if you have children who attend that school in your unit.
-
Yes, there is significant training and each district must have a HIB specialist on staff. There is a matrix and an escalation in my state too, but in daily practice in real life it basically turns into virtually anything can be interpreted as a HIB infraction and once reported it requires a mandatory investigation. It might ultimately not be ruled that way when the investigation is concluded, but the students and the families are still required to go through the process which can be intimidating. One interesting phenomenon is how easily the system and the process can be subverted by an actual bully who claims that the object of his or her attention is the aggressor. Another phenomenon is how, especially in recent years, very innocuous comments or behaviors have met the so-called objective threshhold.
-
Where are you getting this information? They don't "convict" school age children of bullying. Generally cases of harassment, intimidation, and bullying are handled within the district and disciplined with detention or suspension and/or referred for counseling. The only time it would go to court is if a parent sues. The issue for today's kids, though, as I have been commenting about so frequently to you that it does feel like I am on a replay loop, is that almost anything can be interpreted as bullying or microaggression. The recipient definitely controls what is perceived as bullying because all they have to do is report it and it instantly triggers a process. It is therefore very confusing for a kid to be given a pass by adults to tease in scouting when the same behavior in school would result in discipline. On the flip side, a kid on the receiving end of teasing in scouting can be disoriented when adults seem to turn a blind eye. There are a lot of kids for whom those situations don't help build character, they just quit, which brings me to membership. As far as membership, every other youth organization has faced the same pressures scouting has and yet so many of them are faring better. 4-H for example still has 4 million kids or thereabouts. 4-H, despite waning agricultural roots, has done a really good job of navigating changing times and still staying relevant to present day youth. Kids do think their problems are more insurmountable today despite what you believe and the statistics on youth depression and suicide bear that out. It's a whole other discussion as to why and whether it actually is true, but that is their reality.
-
It's not circular to me. If I feel like I have to explain or defend what I said to a kid, I probably shouldn't have said it in the first place. That's why kids are different. That's my point. BSA's own membership numbers show that it has been struggling to connect with kids in recent decades. It's not just me saying kids are different. Other youth organizations seem to be doing a better job of adapting to this. A lot of organizations saw declining membership as the numbers of school age kids dropped, but none so precipitous as BSA. And many other new youth organizations have sprung up to meet some of these changing needs and interests. Again, I disagree. Not acknowledging that kids have different worries and stressors today isn't helpful. I don't know if you have school age children or not but you must not have encountered HIB laws in your state. In the school system at least, bullying is not held to an objective standard. Pretty much anything and everything IS called bullying today, and kids have to navigate that. BSA needs to align with their reality,. I think it does on paper, but in practice in units where old attitudes hold sway, it can still be very mixed messaging and there are problematic experiences for some scouts. Don't get me started on the tea pot song.
-
My feeling is that if you feel like you have to defend teasing, it is probably best not done. Kids are always in a subordinate position to adults and it's hard to get a true read of what they really think even when you think you do. Kid on kid teasing is even worse. Kids today have a very strange social and cultural lanscape to navigate. Their counterparts in the 1960s may have had to worry about physical landmines; kids today have to be vigilant about not putting a foot wrong and hitting a social landmine. Say the wrong word or post the wrong thing on social media, and your life can be blown up. Kids are very unsure about where the lines are drawn. Some of the things I have seen done in scouts that are still considered acceptable, like teapot songs and the like, would get them disciplined or even suspended if they did the same thing in school. Bullying today is decided by the recipient, not the deliverer. I would also say that as adults we need to be sensitive to the fact that some kids who come to scouting are here because they feel like they don't fit in anywhere else. They have likely already put up with their lifetime quota of teasing.
-
Kids today are very different in some important ways. They start puberty at younger and younger ages and are increasingly likely to be depressed. Suicide rates have increased dramatically over the past two decades, with more suicides occuring among younger, middle school age children. The events of their time are leading them to mature faster in a physical sense but obviously leaving a lot of them without the skills to cope with the stressors and pressures of their daily lives in a psychological sense. I haven't seen many adults who are capable of teasing kids in such a way that builds character. It's mostly the opposite. I've mostly seen adults who think their teasing is humorous but it is not to the kid. The quickest way I know to lose a kid's trust or respect is to tease them.
-
Meeting space problems and continued virus issues
yknot replied to Momleader's topic in Open Discussion - Program
If you have any agriculture near you, try there. We have a farm that does events through December and they rent small tents to groups for a nominal fee or sometimes you can get it for free if you also buy tickets for the corn maze or other activity. I can think of worse fall pack meetings to have. Some farmers also have equipment barns. Ask a firehouse if you can meet in one of their bays. They might be willing to move a truck outside and leave the garage bay door open for you to meet. See if there is any empty warehouse spaces or empty buildings with garage bays. Most of these places won't have heat but you might get light and be out of the rain/wind. Some might have limited bathroom access. If it gets you through to December you can try Jan or Feb as a family ski or skate night outdoors somewhere or cancel for those two months. Don't worry so much about running a traditional pack meeting for now. Just get the kids together someplace safe and fun and ad lib the rest. -
Wouldn't the liability concerns for any future charter though be the same as for any old charter? The UMC COs that are switching to facilities use around here are doing so because they don't trust the liability situation and coverage going forward with BSA. It's not just child abuse concerns either but what would happen if there was an injury claim or some other problem. The BSA has a lot of the traditional COs completely rattled and spooked and from where I sit it doesn't look like those reactions are without cause. An organization they trusted for decades and took at their word because of their promotion of things like The Scout Law has suddenly become unrecognizable. I don't know that I could ask any other community group to be a CO in good conscience right now. To me the solution for now seems to be the Council because then at least if there are any problems going forward it's not going to hurt the people at my local Elks or FD or any other group I might ask.
-
Let's not drag the innocent Harris Hawk into this sordid tale. They are lovely creatures, which is why they are so suitable for falconry. They are less likely to talon your face.
-
Not at all. I'm just saying some of them and maybe more than is realized. I also think it's dishonest for BSA to try to offload all of this on COs when they intentionally did not manage or oversee the relationship. Why did they renew charters for so many units that had dysfunctional COs?
-
I'm not a lawyer but one of the areas I have been most involved with the law has been with elder care. The standards for a valid signature for a possibly compromised senior adult are very high. Virtually everything has to be notarized. So many of the people I have dealt with in COs seem to be of questionable cognition. Just my two cents.
-
But what if the COR was not a member of the CO but of the unit, and says they were told to sign the form by the unit leader and the unit commissioner (who, in effect, are their "bosses")? And then were directed to wave forms under the IH and just get a signature. And were even directed to mark the signature lines with highlighter with the intention of getting the elderly IH to just focus on the signature and "not all that verbiage on the form"?
-
You and others keep characterizing it as an abdication of responsibility. However, if a unit leader from a trusted legacy unit year after year waves the same paperwork under a COs nose and says, it's OK, sign here, we're the boy scouts, so you don't need to worry about anything because you know you can trust us, I think there may be questions. A lot of these people are elderly. Perhaps could even be proven to be mentally compromised. In most of the units I know, the COR is not a member of the CO, it is a unit volunteer filling that role as a warm body. At some point it can start to look kind of like an elder abuse scam. I know that early in my scout involvement, I was guilty of form waving. We were under the belief that we should not do anything to upset our long term CO and elderly members. District and Council were only interested in membership and keeping the units alive. They knew what the "warm body" CORs were doing.
-
The COs I know that signed off on applications did so because they didn't know the people and unit leaders asked them to. They did so because they trusted the unit leaders.
-
Scouts Canada Position on COVID Vaccines
yknot replied to RichardB's topic in Open Discussion - Program
Canada is also a completely different country. They are used to socialized medicine and while some segments will still fuss, it is not like here. Look at how quickly they went from 0% vaccinated to 70% plus once they had vaccine. I think all pressure should be brought to bear on all eligible people to be vaccinated through the means cited by Eagle1993 but I think BSA has to stick with its policy for now. -
This is one of those many badges that need updating because it contains extremely dated information. For example, scouts should not be taught to replace cords on blinds because they are illegal. Corded blinds are no longer manufactured and may no longer be offered for sale.
-
600 straight months (50 years not 5000) of Camping!
yknot replied to RememberSchiff's topic in Camping & High Adventure
Agreed. Kids shouldn't be dropping dead of heat injury during sports practices or drowning on scout hikes. A phenomenon I've seen the past decade or so is an overreliance on phone radar apps and online weather services as if they never lie or conflict. People have lost the ability to look up or use common sense. -
600 straight months (50 years not 5000) of Camping!
yknot replied to RememberSchiff's topic in Camping & High Adventure
That is what I'm talking about -- be prepared to change plans. My nephew was badly injured during a camp out that should have been cancelled or changed because of weather. It's no joke. -
600 straight months (50 years not 5000) of Camping!
yknot replied to RememberSchiff's topic in Camping & High Adventure
I kind of disagree. Having the mentality that you don't cancel for bad weather is the opposite of what I think scouts is supposed to teach. We teach be prepared, which includes being prepared to change plans. Even D-Day was weather dependent. This is scouts, not the military. -
Maybe that benefits the judge, LOL.