walk in the woods

To lend an air of legitimacy that all voices were heard before the pre-ordained decision is approved??? Not that I'm cynical or anything .

Yeah, I'm not so sure of the premise. My little adopted and actual home towns are just a sample of two, but, my observations include: Sports: Lots of kids involved in summer baseball, basketball camps, etc at the grade school/middle school ages. Way more than participate at the HS level. It's a trade off between skill/effort and reward. Extracurriculars: During my son's HS time he saw multiple friends drop or scale back Drama Club and Scholastic Bowl in favor of a job or other more rewarding extracurricular. Karate: I see way more 3rd, 4th and 5th graders in Karate than soph

Actually, I don't know that it's all that difficult. The local option is a decent example of how to get people pulling in the same direction. The BSA should simply give organizations a goal (support and develop leadership and independence in youth), the freedom to execute against that goal (pick your own leaders and the youth you want to work with to meet your organizations goals), a basic framework to use, and get the hell out of the way. It's only a problem when the powers that be want to tell people what to do AND how to do it.....

I think you're reading the statement correctly, but maybe the Commissioners words are a bit isolated? Depending on how we parse the language....There is this from the Q&A published by the church: To me that suggests only boys 14+ who are interested in continuing toward Eagle will be registered the the ward's Troop, not all boys. The list of activities published for the 14+ boys look a lot like Boy Scouting/Venturing in many ways. If they allow the 14+ boys to be registered in the Troop but give credit for the activities they're doing anyway in the 14+ program, rather than act

It's been a couple years but my district used to request the form and any supporting letter be sent to the SM or Eagle Coordinator of the troop. The expectation is the letters would be received in sealed envelops and delivered unopened, with the Eagle package.

I always find this a bit circular. The BSA is the best program, but we want it to change to accommodate different membership, because we've been unable to replicate the program, which means the BSA is no longer the BSA that created the best program. It's possible that one can hold everything else constant and convince oneself that changing membership criteria won't affect program, but, it's difficult to prove unless one runs the experiment. I don't find pointing to the rest of the world a particularly compelling argument. To pick on our UK friends a bit, the size and population of the U

Hard to judge Stosh. With boy-mostly sports like football falling out of favor the last few years I suspect the numbers could be skewed. A young man who had previously focused on playing football and/or wrestling, might not find another structured sport in which to participate.

Your statement suggests a single culture, or even a majority culture, in the US. If that was the case, we wouldn't be having these kinds of debates internal to the BSA or across the country.

This is actually trivially easy to solve. Venturing has a 4-level recognition system. Move Star, Life and Eagle into Venturing, exclusively, with the merit badges and such, as Levels II - IV. Make the first level of Venturing recognition the equivalent of Scout-First Class requirements. Scouts coming from Boy Scout Troops as 1st Class would start working at Level II, girls and boys without Troop experience could choose to work starting at Level I. SLE could be presented as a parallel track to the other awards in Venturing to give scouts options. Expand the Eagle brand to include Ranger,

@@Eagledad, you just summarized a sort of pop-culture self-help book I've read recently called "The Power of T.E.D."

So I'll be the heretic again and ask the simple question, "So what?" It's great that you're deeply involved with the unit and want to see changes to make it more boy-led. I applaud your work in reading and thinking about scouting. I think it's great you didn't go into the committee as a ramrod and you are considering the impact to everybody involved. You've gotten a lot of good advice about how to talk with your son, his patrol, his troop leadership. And plenty of options from finding a new troop to building a neighborhood patrol. You should pursue all of them, right after you pursu

But why does participation in scouting create an obligation to the specific unit or to scouting at all? Isn't the actual obligation, if we can call it that, to put the principles into practice in your own life? To give back to your community? If being a scout creates an obligation to the BSA shouldn't the Eagle project be required to benefit the BSA rather than the community at large? Let's use an analogy. If a young man signs up for military service, serves with distinction for 4 or 6 or 10 years, then voluntarily separates from the service, is he less of a veteran than a second youn

If a boy gets Eagle at 15 and then quits the troop for a Venturing Crew so he can continue his personal growth does that count for or against him? Does it matter if the crew is chartered by the same CO or not? Does it matter if the Crew is focused on Drama rather than the outdoors? He clearly left and isn't giving back to the troop, so that would suggest you'd view that scout negatively. Or since he stayed in Scouting is it a positive? And to whom is stewardship owed? Does the scout owe stewardship to your unit, or your CO or scouting or to the ideals of scouting? What if your scou

So when exactly in the process of recruiting boys do you tell them and their parents they owe a debt to the unit? Do you have them sign a letter of indentured servitude? I suppose one could argue the opposite just as easily. If the boys are expected to "pay back" why shouldn't we raise the age limit to 25 or 30 or whatever we determine is the correct number of years of service required to repay their debt? If a boy's interests change at 14, 15, 16 years old, and he's able to take the principles of scouting into his new interests, he's the best kind of ambassador for the program we

It's curious. If our goal is develop character in the boys, why do we care where they practice it? I can think of several examples where boys left at age 15 with their Eagle badge. They went on to practice the leadership and personal development skills they learned in any number of other programs, school, sports, etc. Why is that looked down on? Seems to me that's exactly the kind of success we're looking for. Putting some sort of life-long debt on a 15 or 16 year old boy sort of diminishes the good work we're supposed to be doing, no? Good work, and watching a young man succeed in the

Looks Army to me. Double eggs on the brim of the cover so "up there" a ways.

The RCA shows the problem isn't the person in the Presidency, it's the ridiculous amount of power our spineless congresspersons have abandon to the Executive Branch and the President specifically, and the leviathan monster our federal government has become. Write your congressperson and demand they take back the power of the Legislative Branch. Roll back the unaccountable beige bureaucrats sitting in nondescript DC office building writing tens of thousands of pages of law (regulation) every year. Tell them to roll back the AUMF and use the power of the purse to set the agenda. Then there'

I have to disagree with this as well. Authority is what authoritarians wield to control their subjects. The Board has no authority here but rather the responsibility to challenge and coach the scout. Teenage boys can be unpredictable; adults should anticipate. Based on Q's description it's not clear to me the scout presented his information in a disrespectful fashion to the board. He may have but it's not presented as such. The board members response is given as second-hand info (from the scout?) so it's not clear we can take a lot of meaning there either. It would be interesting t

Or this one: https://youtu.be/i4VxbnGbWbM

Why not? When I was in I had three types of uniforms, Dress (which we almost never wore) and two types of working (one for office folk and one for working folk). They all counted as uniforms and you could potentially see any of them on any given day (a guy headed to Pier watch might be in Dress, a guy who worked in an office might be in his Johnny Cash or Good Humors, and a guy headed into the power plant was definitely in dungarees. When I wasn't on duty I wasn't in uniform. So from my perspective the analogy would be BSA Field Uniform for fussy indoor stuff and formal ceremonies, reasona

If you have boys that want to do the ceremony, and the committee is opposed, tell the boys to ditch their uniforms for black slacks and white shirts and perform the ceremony as members of the community. Deterring boys from participating in a Veteran's Day ceremony is, well, something unscoutlike.

We've done fire events to boil an egg or fry a pancake or similar. The last compass course I put together I used a ROT13 cipher to make the course into a secret message. Each control point had two letters of the message. When the patrols found all the control points they came back for the start to get the key. Maybe instead of a message the cipher would be instructions for something. I just used landscaping flags wired around tent stakes with the info written on the flag in sharpie.

In fairness, the flooding in Louisiana was right at the beginning of the school year and Matthew hit during the school year. It would be pretty tough for kids (and their parents) from outside the area to get extended time-off to travel to either to volunteer. Additionally, there's almost no way to know how many scouts and/or units did local food drives or clothing drives or fundraisers in an attempt to help. As for the local youth, did you query every football player and helper to see if they were also scouts? How many scouts and scouters were so impacted that they were busy evacuating or

I think I recall you being from beyond the cheddar curtain. If you're not too deep into the woods, the Burpee Museum in Rockford used to offer Indian Lore.

1. At the next committee meeting discuss your vision with the COR, CC and members. Explain to them what it means, what it looks like, and why they want it. Ensure they are on-board and explain that you have some legwork to accomplish to set the table. 2. At the next meeting with just your adult ASMs have the same conversation. Ensure they are also on-board. Review the youth roster to flag who regularly misses meetings, campouts or activities. Be prepared to minimize impact on the patrols. 3. Quietly take a review of your current camping patterns and equipment, ensure you have the infras