walk in the woods

Ask Brendan Eich?

LeCastor: I'm interpreting "Whither the Order of the Arrow" as meaning where is the Order headed, what's the Order's future. JasonG: I don't disagree the Native American heritage is a big part of scouting. But the question is whether or not it _should_ be a large part of scouting. We have had recent and recurring discussions about "sash and dash," patrols that don't want to go camping, STEM, membership decline, getting back to our roots, etc. Inherent in each discussion are a couple of simple questions, namely, is our program relevant to the youth of today? And, how much of the current behaviors are we willing to tolerate in order to keep the traditions front and center? I think there's a really good argument to be made the Native American lore and traditions are no more relevant to youth today (on a general level) than Civil war encampments, Daniel Boone, the Lone Ranger or the Alamo. Those things will appeal to a subset of kids but won't draw kids in who are otherwise disinterested in those activities. I do know when the JTE goal for Brotherhood Conversion is a mere 30% there's a program problem. And program problems can't be solved without taking a hard and critical look at the program.

Sounds to me if you force them into camping you'll just push them out of the program. How old are these scouts? Maybe you encourage their interests now, reinforce the patrol method in whatever activities they choose and turn them into a specialty Venturing Crew when they get to 14?

I don't share Seattle's opinion of the Native American lore and traditions and I don't think it's reason enough not to be active. However, it does raise an interesting question of whether or not the Native American traditions are relevant to today's youth. Those traditions are 100 years old and come from a time when everything "indian" was painfully and chronologically relevant. Should the OA go a different direction and leave the Native American lore and traditions to say Venturing Crews?

"Eagle on Ice - Eagle Scout Paul Siple's Antarctic Adventures with Commander Byrd" by Patricia Potter Wilson and Roger Leslie

We did DO pizza casserole at our last cub outing. We had the boys get involved by greasing the DOs, rolling out the pizza crusts, jumping when they popped open, adding the toppings, etc. Mountain Man is always good. Also love doing the foil packets.

Tell your son he is only responsible for the content of his own character. Eagle is worth what the individual scout puts into it. I suspect you could find lots of people who cheated their way to a college degree. Does that diminish the accomplishment of completing a course of study yourself? You have a wonderful opportunity to reinforce strong character and values with your son at this moment. What a blessing in disguise.

We used to charge $40 dues. The dues covered $24 charter renewal, $12 Boys Life subscription, $1 insurance fee to council and $3 for the unit for miscellaneous stuff. Everything else we covered with fundraising (popcorn). The rest of your budget if fully dependent on your program, what "stuff" you want to provide to your scouts, and what you'll expect parents to pay for directly. Our pack always provided the book, necker, slide and all the awards. Depending on your activity level that could chew up $30 - $50/boy/year easily. If you provide PWD cars or bird house kits or anything like that you'll rack up another $10/boy/event or activity. A B&G Banquet could be really expensive or really inexpensive depending on if you cater/rent a room or hold a pot luck. In short, and in my humble opinion, you can't plan a budget until you plan a program. Once you have those things together you can figure out fundraising.

I personally have never cared for the ceremony where the flag is cut into pieces. To me the action of cutting the flag feels like desecration. That said, we've done it a couple of times because the pieces were easier for folks to handle. I do agree with Stosh that once it is cut up it's no longer a flag. Since burning is only the recommended way of retiring the flag, if one is concerned about all the petroleum in the nylon burning, cutting the flag into pieces might be a fitting end to a ceremony.

Well, to be clear, religion isn't doing anything to scouting. People professing belief systems (religious or not) and taking inflexible positions based on those belief systems, might be tearing scouting apart in the US.

I don't believe the flag code requires anything to be done with the ashes. If your experience is like ours, you're going to get more of a molten pool of plastic than ashes. I have discretely buried them near a local veteran's memorial on most occassions. We have traditionally done the grommet thing. Again, nothing in the code to my knowledge. We allow the boys to determine who gets them back unless we have a pre-request from someone having a flag retired. We've given them to the local Legion members, city council members, fire department trustees, fire department members, etc. We always try to give one to any scout who is participating in his or her first flag retirement ceremony. If you decide to capture the grommets I highly recommend wrapping some wire (e.g. large garbage bag ties) around the grommets prior to retiring the flags. The wires are easier to locate in the char than the grommets themselves.

Along with KDD's comment about bringing the structure in line with the LDS configuration, the head-counters have already moved Varsity into the Venturing column at least for head-counting purposes.

I think you answered your own question about why 16-17 year old boys may not want to associate with younger scouts. It's not new. When I was a 16 year old scout I didn't want to hang with the 12 year old scouts either. I staffed camp and was deeply involved in the OA. They were my options for escaping from the younger crowd. I don't worry too much about the leadership issue. Leaders move up with kids. My CO had a Pack, Troop and Crew. We had three committees on paper but only one in reality. It was fine, other than the pain of recharter.

JP, my understanding is the centennial patch can be earned by anyone in the order and worn on the white sash w/ red arrow. The red sash with white arrow is for NOAC attendees. The last I knew it was only supposed to be worn at NOAC.

I was a smoking scoutmaster. I tried to keep it away from the boys on campouts by waiting until they were off and running or going to the designated area when it fit into the schedule. Most of the boys knew I smoked and I was sure to tell them it sucked at every opportunity. Is your current scoutmaster a great example in this particular case, no, but perfection isn't a job description. As for the shirts, the breast cancer crowd uses a lot of racy stuff to draw attention to their cause. It's a curious thing. Like others have said if they were on their own time and not representing the unit then that's their choice. You'll get as many opinions on both issues as there are people on the board. Ultimately, the only question that matters is what do you think of it? Seems to me you have three options here: 1. Leave the unit for another unit with leaders who better match your values. Be prepared to be regularly disappointed. 2. Confront the leaders through the CO. Be prepared to step into the vacated roles and deal with drama. 3. Use the opportunity to reinforce your values with your son. Explain the struggles people face with addiction and how we all bear our own burdens. Explain that sometimes people use the ends to justify the means and that in the case of the t-shirts you disagree with the decision. Regardless of other people's actions you're still the parent so you set the tone for your child.

The post I quoted from initially had two paragraphs. To summarize my take on it, the first paragraph said it wasn't going to be an issue in your unit. The second paragraph said you feared it being an issue in other units. I addressed the second point. I don't know if you are a bigot or intolerant or not. Frankly that information is immaterial to the discussion. I do believe that fear is the emotion that leads to bigotry and intolerance. I'm not a logician but let me try to explain how I'm reading/hearing your comments with an exercise. First, I'm going to assert and ask you to stipulate that the following logical arguments are false: 1. That person committed a violent crime AND that person is a young black man THEREFORE all young black men are violent criminals. 2. That person committed an act of terrorism AND that person is a Muslim THEREFORE all Muslims are terrorists. 3. That person is a white supremacist AND that person is a bald white man THEREFORE all bald white men are white supremacists. These arguments all fail because they use a sample size of one in order to make a generalization about an entire population. They also fail because they assume correlation where none exists. I'm sure there's a fancy academic name for it but basically it's sterotyping or profiling or just plain prejudiced thinking. When I read your arguments st0ut717 I read/hear: That scoutmaster applied an inappropriate religious test AND that scoutmaster is an evangelical THEREFORE all evangelical scoutmasters will apply inappropriate religious tests. This statement is equally as false as the first three examples for exactly the same reason. You are arguing against a requirement out of fear (your word, not mine). Fear that scouts will be unfairly judged, fear that scouting will be driven out of the schools. That is a standard political strategy no? Tell people what to fear and why? It's all politics.

​Fear is the key word and tricky phrase here. You are projecting behaviors and assuming outcomes based on sterotypes of evangelicals that you choose to belive. I think my friends on the left call this intolerance or bigotry or some such thing like that. I agree with my friends on the left who tell me that fear of the unknown is what generates hate. It applies to the extremist on both ends of the political spectrum

Perdidochas has it right. This really isn't all that complicated: 1. If you're not comfortable talking about duty to God with your scouts, don't talk about it. Mention the requirement in passing and tell the scout I'm leaving this one to you and your parents. Enjoy the rest of the conversation with the scout. 2. If you're part of a single-faith troop, have deep and long and detailed conversations about faith and theology all you want. Enjoy the conversation with the scout. 3. If you're part of a unit with multiple faiths and you're comfortable, ask the scout how he does his duty to God or how he feels about the word or how he practices spirituality. Adjust your SMC to meet the needs of the scout. Feel lucky and blessed if he's willing to share with you. Feel doubly lucky and blessed if he asks you about yours. Enjoy the conversation with the scout. 4. If you're not comfortable with any discussion of God, assign somebody else to handle that part of the SMC. Sheesh, it's really, really, not hard. Extremeist on both ends of the political spectrum really need to unwad their panties, stop looking for a fight and relax a bit.

I had a similar sized Pack. We almost never did Pack meetings in a room (ours were on Sunday afternoons). Go for a hike, go fishing, find a local stable to let you do horseback riding, visit a fire department or police station, go to a climbing gym, go to the YMCA, go for a bike ride, go to a park with a playground and have a picnic, find a PowWow to attend. Go play. Your small size is your advantage! As for awards, 5 minutes max at the beginning of the meeting, "The bear/wolves completed the following achievements, please come forward to receive your bling." About the only indoor pack meetings are Pinewood Derby and B&G (typically Jan/Feb).

If you've advised the Pack that you're done in March, be done in March. Put together a good year for the boys and move onto Scouting with your son. No regrets.

GM, I have a son with Asperger's Syndrome also. I have to call you out though on language. Asperger's Syndrome is neither a learning disability nor a mental disability. It is a developmental or neurological disorder that affects social skills and interactions, including repetitive behaviors. The social aspect may be profound or minimal depending on the person. Asperger's Syndrome may be accompanied by mental or learning disabilities but those are independent of Asperger's Syndrome. We can't expect people to understand our kids if we aren't clear about what it is and isn't. Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine.

@fred johnson: My old scoutmaster handbook includes the following as the first sentence under the advancement section: "The Boy Scout Advancement Program encourages boys to meet significant challenges that lead to personal growth."

The project should challenge the scout's ability to lead without putting an overly high probability of failure on the young man. When we start comparing projects between scouts is when we go off the rails into the realm of adult drama. A young man that is a natural, charismatic leader with loads of self-confidence should be held to a higher bar than a young man that struggles with social skills. The thing we should be judging is not the objective challenge of the project itself but the subjective challenge it presents the individual scout. If the scout is challenged to stretch and lead to the best of his abilities and completes a project the sponsor is happy with then everybody is successful. If we choose to judge Eagle Scouts by objective standards then any of us that haven't been President of the United States, Secretary of Defense or walked on the moon are clearly failures in our adult lives.

The challenge in these conversations is we're talking something that are inherently subjective (leadership and service) and attempting to apply objective criteria (hours worked, dirt moved, pictures taken) to judge boys. We have a 40-odd page workbook and a whole publication dedicated to defining, describing and setting criteria for advancement today because we're trying to mollify the people complaining that little Johnny didn't work as hard as their boy to get Eagle, or a merit badge, or a shiny stick. Let's be honest, the project didn't even exist as a requirement until the 60s. I've found one reference that gives the requirement as: "3. While a Life Scout, plan, develop, and carry out a service project helpful to your church or synagogue, school, or community approved in advance by your Scoutmaster." Seems like we're going the wrong direction.

I'll be the contrarian. The Eagle project is a Leadership SERVICE project. Who is served more, the person who needs but can't afford a coat and gets one through the SERVICE project, or the occassional passer-by that happens to sit on a bench, or appreciates the new bushes around a church front door?