yknot

I'm also not that worried about the PC aspect unless it''s something that is truly offensive but the scoutmaster title has always given me pause well before I ever heard of issues with it. I'm probably repeating myself but I have always thought that for an organization with a history of child abuse, any title with "master" in it is maybe not the best choice. I've heard too many jokes and snide comments over the years. It's also headline fodder, like the most recent, horrific one this month in Overland Park. I also agree with your opinion that the title encourages certain types of personalities to take the title literally and become authoritative and dictatorial when dealing with youth. Advisor, mentor, guide is more in keeping with what I think the job description is in my opinion. I wouldn't think it matters much but we seem to have ongoing issues with units that struggle with scout led.

I was interested to read somewhere that Scouts South Africa does not use Scoutmaster because of the master/slave connotation. Instead they use Troop Scouter.

Is it being disenfranchised or is it an opposition to everything that is part of Western culture, which the BLM website actually states? I have colleagues from overseas whose diction over the phone is indistinguishable from anyone else who shares their nationality. You would only know their skin color if they were sitting in front of you face to face. In the United States, that is not the reality. Students come here from Africa where their only classroom is a dirt yard underneath a tree, and yet they are able to succeed in our educational and university system where native born students struggle. Here, we have spent trillions trying to improve educational outcomes and yet we still have failing school systems. BLM wants us to divert billions away from law enforcement to community services. Some of it makes sense. Police are ill equipped to deal with mental health issues, which is a growing crisis in our country. But the idea that more money will truly solve the issues that plague our disenfranchised communities is worthy of skepticism. I despise that this is constantly framed as a race issue. To me it is an American issue. We cannot continue to leave generations of young Americans behind and expect to be a functional and thriving country. I just do not think that BLM's strategies will solve anything other than further divide us.

Godspeed, Mashmaster.

It's not a tribute to horses. Their appearance is accidental but of great historic interest. Any kid who did 4-H horse bowl could tell you how big Traveler's ear is. They could also tell you the name of Gen. Ulysses Grant's favorite warhorse -- Cincinnati. It's history. If we're going to start blowing things up because of offensive views, we'd have to start with our own racist and imperialistic Baden Powell, another great cavalryman. Many of the earlier guides his scouting books are based upon had useful horsemanship sections -- something largely lost in modern day scouting. If you are interested in the role of war horses or the role of the horse in general through human history just do a google search and you will come up with some good titles that will be interesting reading.

Obliterating artwork and history set in stone is not going to accomplish any of the human aims we want. All it's going to do is erase a piece a of history. Also, you would be erasing a monument to a different kind of slave. All three men are mounted on horses who mutely served their masters through no wish of their own. Almost all of humanity of every color, ethnicity and race has only survived because they were able to enslave the horse. The only monuments that exist to these poor beasts are military ones like this one at Stone Mountain. Traveler, Little Sorrel and Black Jack are the names of the horses depicted on Stone Mountain. Traveler, despite the side he served on, is one of the most famous war horses of all time, often listed in the same breath with Bucephalas, the beloved war mount of Alexander the Great, Napoleon's Marengo, and the Duke of Wellington's Copenhagen. Little Sorrel, Stonewall Jackson's war horse, was stolen from Union troops and made to serve the Confederacy through no equine choice of his own and yet people want to erase him.

I think this an area that National should have addressed before now and I hope will do so in the future. We've got some properties in our area that seem to be utilized year round with some patronage by the general public that can be used as models. It really comes down to having professionals involved in scouting that come from outside the scouting world. These properties need more sophisticated business plans, and the programming and marketing that goes along with that, in order to survive. My hope is that Covid will spur more interest in outdoor activity and the councils, or properties, that remain and are able to be imaginative and innovative may have a shot at surviving.

What is the alternative? Be on the hook yourself?

I hear you but you are simply being a babe in the woods. No organization today can exist without liability insurance. You can't get liability insurance without infinite safety regulations, waivers, etc. Scouts, like many youth organizations, will never be able to operate the way it has been able to do in the past without significant tort reform. Every youth organization has to be a safety organization today or the doors don't even open. I don't know why people even rail about this. Fight it politically, lobby for tort reform, but you can't fight it individually or you will just get sued.

Whatever it is, if kids don't want to wear it, then we shouldn't be doing it if we are trying to increase membership. My baseball kids love to wear the hat, the jersey, the team T, the team towel, whatever. Not seeing the same kind of enthusiasm with the stiff and itchy button up scout shirt or pants.

Agreed. But where else does the paramilitary mindset come from other than the LEO or "para" paramilitary outlook? Random SMs and ASMs or religiously affiliated COs don't come up with it.

I don't think you are being honest. My unit does not have a team wear or spirit wear site associated with it but all the teams I have coached do, where the kids and parents buy oodles of local team gear. Hoodies, t shirts, warm up pants, shorts, sweatshirts. etc. It is not a hard sell, because the stuff is well made and is suitable for active wear, unlike the scout field uniform which seems designed to be an item of torture. I wear my (free) coach shirt made by underarmour in 90 degree weather and I'm pretty comfortable. I wear my (not free and quite expensive) BSA leader shirt and sweat to death.

Once again, another really media tone deaf choice by BSA. Do they not even watch CNN? Churchill was a great man, but his statues are being toppled because of his racist opinions. What was wrong with Eagle Project? Why are we always shooting ourselves in our media foot? It's mind boggling. Is this whole organization run by 70 or 80 year old men?

As I've said before, the best thing about this forum is that it shows just how varied experiences are across this great country and that we all need to keep an open mind and strive to be relevant to our target markets if we want to survive. What makes sense to you does not make sense to me. And whether it makes sense to either one of us is not what ultimately matters -- it's what makes sense and is appealing to the kids we are trying to reach.

Along with making things cheaper and easier I would also look to increase functionality and value. There are some sharp looking t shirt like performance wear options that would be more appealing and weather/activity friendly for kids. Something between a class A and a class B that is truly functional. Anyone who has coached a sports team knows the kids never complain about wearing uniforms or team gear. That's largely because it's comfortable and weather friendly for activity. On the other hand, lots of complaints about the cub and scout uniforms -- it's hot, it's itchy, it gets caught on everything, I gotta wear bike shorts under the pants.... yadda yadda. Let's come up with something that kids don't complain about and that is cheaper and of higher value for parents. Scouts is not a paramilitary organization. I know this is near and dear to some, but I'm convinced we'd do better with recruitment if we didn't force kids to wear something a lot of them don't like. For cubs, lose all the rank related expenses. Come up with one inexpensive thing that changes in order to identify each rank, whether that's a hat or a scarf, and forget about the socks, the belt, the slide, etc. Get rid of nonessential patches. Why are we paying for JTE patches? For cubs, rather than patches I'd go back to belt loops. You don't have to sew them on and the kids love them. Or do epaulet loops for each rank as someone else suggested. All program materials should just be pdf downloads. For scouts, consider digital credentials vs. actual cloth merit badges. Make scout membership more portable. If you pay national dues, you should be able to participate anywhere nationally. Develop an online tool that allows local units to access whatever information they need to feel comfortable allowing a visiting or seasonal scout to participate in local adventures. Scout membership should be a scout passport to the out of doors.

According to the laws, ICE detainees may contact pro bono legal advisors, consulates, and certain nongovernmental agencies free of charge. Fees often apply for calls to family, which is where some of the problems occur if detainees don't have access to cash. Each detainee is also assigned a case officer. Detainees don't disappear but they can be left twisting in a dysfunctional and overloaded system. Situations like Guantanamo Bay however are completely different. People have been held there incommunicado which is why there was such pressure to close it.

You really can't compare EU to the US, or US to China or US to Russia. The cultures and experiences are very different. The EU in general is more tolerant of such things as drugs, prostitution, and other soft crimes. There is a debate whether the US should be as tough as it is. In addition, European and Asian societies are generally more orderly and respectful of authority figures than the US. But one of the reasons why our incarceration rate is higher is because our rates of hard crime are higher. The murder rate in the US is three times that of the EU; our burglary rate is four times as high. We have seven times the burglary rate of China. When it comes to capital punishment, however, we rank the same. The other problem when trying to compare international statistics on anything whether it's crime, education, or economic indicators is that the US is far more transparent than virtually all other societies. In our legal system, for example, if you are arrested, it becomes part of the public record. People do not just disappear the way they do in places like China and Russia.

Look for a local watershed and maybe he could do a stream/waterway cleanup. That might be cooler than trail clearing. Also, check with same or with municipal or county parks department to see if they would be interested in a bio blitz of a particular property. That's a cool project and totally covid friendly. Ditto bat or bird boxes. He might also build signage for an organization in support of a conservation project, such as stay on the trail, etc. See if a nature center wants help setting up a nature cam for their web site if he's techy.

I sure hope so. He's one of the ones who is hard to defend.

Walt Disney was a racist and said and sponsored many racist things.

I can't speak to girls today. I can speak only of girls in my generation. The number one item on my Christmas List was always a subscription to Ranger Rick magazine. I spent all my time in the woods. I tagged along with all the boys who were doing archery and camping and digging for worms and fishing. Thank God for them, they were all my big "brothers", and were so kind and patient teaching me things and treating me like a semi tolerated kid sister. Today, there are still very few safe places for girls that love the out of doors, love to hike, love to camp, love to explore the natural world, to do that with peers. I could be wrong, but if you want to recruit girls, find ways to reach the ones who are looking for those experiences. Those boys in my past -- some were scouts, some were not -- were the ones who taught me my love of scouting, even when I myself couldn't do it.

This is local. Our entire unit is totally focused on reaching Eagle and they are all boys. We have the opposite problem. We lose boys who just want to camp and be outside and hike and maybe advance some but are not doing like the Scouting AP level course.

Unless some has hijacked your account, in which case I understand. However you have not responded to that request either.

You have sent me bizarre personal messages and have not responded when I have asked you what the heck you mean. That is not a friendly tone my friend.

While I agree with the ridiculous trend of re-parsing language so it is less offensive to some, I have to say, Scoutmaster and Cubmaster are weird titles. At least I've always thought so, especially for an organization that is in such trouble because of youth protection issues. I don't have a problem with "master" when discussing technology, music, computer science, electronics,etc. I just really don't like it when we are talking about a youth organization where the use of the term kind of implies that youth are in a subordinate position to adults in a non educational sense. I'm fine with leader, advisor, coordinator, instructor, organizer, etc. ...