How does one "Skate" to Eagle

[OldGreyEagle]

I am a little confused, given the BSA deffinition of Active, how does it contrubute to scouts skating to Eagle?

[Basementdweller]

I have seen eagle factorys......the ones that proudly proclaim on their troop trailers "Where Eagles soar". Followed by a list of boys who followed that troops 12 step program.

 

 

Son and I visited one during his webelo year, more for my curiosity than anything. It was in a rich suburb. Very nice Scout Building on The CO property. Garage for the troop trailer, heated and air conditioned storage for troop gear. 7 pm rolled around the patrols marked in lead by an ASM for the opening. SM lead the opening had announcements, they broke up into their groups for their merit badge classes. It was just like school at night. The SM was bragging their average age for eagle was 14 years 10 months, I dawned on me and I looked around, there were no 17-18 year old scouts, far as that goes no one over 16 far as I could tell.

 

Near as I could tell attendance equaled completion.

 

Every ounce of energy was focused on advancement. Camp out focused on advancement......Eagle or die mentality.

 

Son's comment was they weren't playing any games and he didn't want to sit in the meetings.

 

We did not pick that one obviously.

 

 

In this troop I believe a boy could merely attend the troop meetings and a few camp outs and recieve his eagle. At the time they were working on the Hiking merit badge, all of the hikes had been scheduled with locations, gear list and time tables. how are the boys supposed to do it.

 

 

If the troop is active enough, I believe the boy should almost be able to attain eagle with some personal effort, but it isn't like climbing a mountain and it shouldn't happen by 14.

 

I believe the BSA should make the minium age for Eagle 15 or 16 either thru direct rules or requirements that make it impossible to do at 13 or 14.

 

Nothing would make me happier or prouder than my son getting his eagle at 18......I believe it shows a richer scouting career.

 

 

 

[acco40]

How does a Scout "skate" to Eagle? Simple, my son worked his butt off to earn Eagle. But (insert other Scout's names here) had an easy time of it and did not do what my boys did.

 

As Scoutmaster, that was made plain to me every day by the vast majority of parents I came into contact with.

[Thomas54]

 

 

Most of the MB's are signed by mom and dad. Dad writes the eagle workbook. Mom tracks all the work days and the hours people were in attendance. Mom makes all the calls and organizes the project for her scout. Scout has a couple of play dates at the benefiting organization. In the end the boy skates away with an eagle.

 

 

 

 

[Twocubdad]

Same way one skates through anything else in life -- taking the easy route, doing the minimum, cutting corners, just getting by.

 

The requirements for Eagle, like many things, may be pass/fail, either/or, black/white, but that doesn't mean no one notices when people give extra effort and quality work.

[BadenP]

Thomas54

 

And thats why a parent should NEVER be allowed to sign their own sons advancement in his troop EVER. I don't care what you "but the rules say" people have to say, it is improper, dishonest, and untrustworthy, period. It is also a main reason why the Eagle Award and Boy Scout program has lost so much credibility and respect in recent years. Mommy and Daddy do all the work, and when they sign off their own kid it is like putting in the fix, while the scout himself could care less and couldn't tie a square knot if his life depended on it. Meanwhile credible, well run troops take the fallout for these bumbling Eagle Mill troops, whose incompetent leaders produce incompetent scouts, since we all supposedly running the "same program".

[Beavah]

Yah, I'm confused by OGE's question.

 

Scouts skating to Eagle is what happens when they should be spending their time ice fishing, but would rather go racing hither and yon at high speed around da top of the pond rather than sittin' like a patient adult with a line in the water.

 

Or it may be that it's when someone gives 'em a certificate for being a successful ice fisherman because they felt sorry for 'em after they came by for a bit in the cold, hard world but didn't catch a fish. Yeh have to keep up their interest and self-esteem, after all. And da requirement didn't actually specify that they had to be successful, or really pay attention even. They just had to be present some of da time (but without a fixed percentage).

 

Beavah

 

[OldGreyEagle]

Sorry to confuse you Beavah, I guess its just an occupational hazard.

 

So, its not the BSA's definition of Active that allows someone to skate to Eagle, it take adult cooperation and lots of it.

 

So, and this is the hard part, how do we stop the skating to Eagle? BadenP has one idea, no signing off of son's/relatives for merit badges, that might be one idea and a start. I didnt do any merit badges with my son.

 

If the Eagle requirements need to be beefed up, how do we do that? Where do we start? I admit that I see nothing wrong in doing the "minimum requirements" for Eagle. I needed 120hours to graduate with my BS, I didnt do 132 just to be above average. It was 60 hours to MAster's DEgree. Have I done 70, my diploma would look the same. If the "minimum requirements are to minimum, how do we change it?

 

Maybe, we should make sure everyone does the same work in the first place?

[packsaddle]

I'm guessing that 'skate' is a colloquialism for getting to a destination by putting in some effort at the beginning and allowing momentum and a balancing act to 'carry the day'.

The only merit badges that we had a parent to sign off on was Family Life and one other. I would meet with the mom and inform her that "here are the requirements" and that this may be the last chance she ever has to get what she wants. I think it usually worked. At a BOR, the boys often would say it was the hardest one they had done.

Oh, and there was one dad who was a supervisor for a textile mill who counseled Textiles MB for anyone who wanted. His son did that one (mine too). We had no one else anywhere to do it. BTW, from what I saw it was a pretty good MB in case anyone is interested. They learned a lot.

[Beavah]

Nah, standardization is a myth, eh?

 

I'm willin' to bet that yeh didn't do the minimum coursework required for graduation. I doubt very many scouts do da minimum coursework required for high school graduation, either. Odds are they challenge themselves with AP-this and honors-that, and this, that, and the other sport or extracurricular. And I'm willing to bet that their parents and their school counselors and teachers push 'em to do that. They aren't at all interested in everyone doin' the same work.

 

So why the emphasis on high achievement there, and the skate thing in Scouting?

 

Only reason that I can think of is that the people designin' the AP-classes and givin' out the awards actually care about making them really meaningful. Yeh can dumb any of 'em down, you can grade-inflate honors and AP classes same as yeh can with anything, and a few do. But mostly, outside strangers and individual instructors set a high bar, complete with some competition in a loose sort of way (leastways, da testing lets yeh see whether yeh fall at the 5th or 95th percentile). And the kids strive to meet the challenge set 'em.

 

All comes down to personal integrity on the part of da folks issuing awards and citations.

 

In that way, parent signers really are a bad conflict of interest, eh? I remember once reading some research that showed that more parent involvement in school governance led to lower student achievement. Yeh don't want those with a conflict of interest to be settin' da standards, yeh want 'em on the other side pushin' their kids to achieve.

 

As big a thing, yeh want the AP Test folks to have a vision for what high achievement means and to stick to it in terms of evaluation standards. Our AP test folks (National Program staff) I think have lost that.

 

So without that national vision, it comes down to individual units, eh? And if yeh have an individual unit that is mostly parent-driven in a bad way, yeh have a recipe for "weak."

 

Beavah

 

 

[Basementdweller]

Have a troop in our district dad SM signed every single requirement for every rank and every single merit badge for his sons eagle.......the kid eagled at 14.

 

That is skating

 

 

I also think double dipping is at least lacing up the skates.(This message has been edited by Basementdweller)

[Venividi]

OGE asked:

If the Eagle requirements need to be beefed up, how do we do that? Where do we start?

 

I dont think that the requirements need to be beefed up. Units just need to use the ones that exist in a manner that allows them to meet the aims of their particular program.

 

Which means that scouters need to understand their units aims, and communicate them to scouts, to parents, to BOR panels, to committee members. And also be willing to learn from experience and try new approaches when the current approaches are not having the desired results.

 

It means having high expectations for each scout, communicating them, encouraging them, and giving them feedback when they are not living up to what you know they should be capable of, and using the advancement method as a carrot to encourage them to do more than they thought they were capable of.

 

It means not accepting meeting plans where an instructor demonstrates a skill, the scout parrots it, and the requirement is signed off.

 

It means caring enough about the development of a scouts character that you are willing to deal with an angry parent whose son didn't get approved for rank advancement because the scout needs improvement in the scout spirit area.

 

[evmori]

I'm with BadenP on this. Parents and/or relatives should not be allowed to sign of ANY requirements for their son/relative and the rules should be changed to reflect this.

 

 

[resqman]

Our troop policy is that parents cannot sign off any requirements for their sons. We are a larger troop, 45-55 scouts with at least 10 ASMs. Finding adult who can sign off is relatively easy. We have at least 2 couselors for each required MB so jr. never has to rely on parents to sign.

 

I can see in a small troop of 14 boys with an SM and 1 or 2 ASMs, it could be more difficult to find an adult to sign off requirements.

 

Of course the SM's son will always be the exception. There is the SM conference. Gotta have Dads signature. Every blue card has the unit leaders signature. Dad again. Every rank card, Dad's signature. If SM son has all the individual requirements signed off by Dad, there is a problem. If Dad is only signing as the unit leader, then I see no issue.

 

This has got to be the overriding reason that national has not forbidden the parent signature.

[Beavah]

Resqman, no reason why da SM conference can't be done by an ASM. Same with blue cards and whatnot. In fact, that would give an incentive for a parent SM to recruit an active ASM or two, eh? Which would make for a stronger unit.