ThomasJefferson 33 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Personally I don't think its about outdoors or adventure, my scouts do and did a lot more high adventure stuff than I did as a scout. But I definitely think that scouting is more prissy. I think it's there is less freedom for boys to express themselves as boys. Adults are A LOT more guarded today about what boys can say, do or even meet. We put limits on knives and other woods tools. It was no big deal for my patrol to go on a five mile with a map and compass, but adults today would struggle to let a patrol hike through the safe parts of our town without some kind of oversite. How many boys can ride their bike accross town without getting permission? Our culture has closed in on our youths freedom of expression and freedom to move about. The culture is more prissy, and we don't have very many adults who remember how it used to be. BarryThere is in fact a pile of scientific evidence that your beliefs about being emotional and making emotional judgments are gender based are nonsense. Proven probably by about 80 years of scientific data with none showing the opposite. If you study theories of personality, you will find that men and women are divided almost 50/50 between those that prefer feeling based decision making vs. thinking based decision making within each gender. Says every expert on the topic ever. Oh, and horsehair ropes don't repel snakes, either. Link to post Share on other sites
ThomasJefferson 33 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Incident Information Report http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-016_fillable.pdf More proof God does not exist. If God does exist, he hates the scouts, because the scouts are seemingly targeted for termination via natural selection through every process our nation has. Link to post Share on other sites
packsaddle 753 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Incident Information Report http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-016_fillable.pdf RememberSchiff, thanks for that delightful reminder. It supports my long-standing belief that there are few things as professionally gratifying for an administrator than to create a new form that others have to fill out. In this case the subtitle is delicious, "Events or allegations of injury, illness, or property damage including employment and directors and officers issues" Some management type must have had a multiple orgasm over that one. Link to post Share on other sites
Stosh 3452 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Personally I don't think its about outdoors or adventure, my scouts do and did a lot more high adventure stuff than I did as a scout. But I definitely think that scouting is more prissy. I think it's there is less freedom for boys to express themselves as boys. Adults are A LOT more guarded today about what boys can say, do or even meet. We put limits on knives and other woods tools. It was no big deal for my patrol to go on a five mile with a map and compass, but adults today would struggle to let a patrol hike through the safe parts of our town without some kind of oversite. How many boys can ride their bike accross town without getting permission? Our culture has closed in on our youths freedom of expression and freedom to move about. The culture is more prissy, and we don't have very many adults who remember how it used to be. BarryScientific theories are what people believe, Scientific knowledge on the other hand is what people think (know). "Says every expert on the topic ever." which is bogus and disingenuous. If one wishes to convince anyone in a debate or argument, it isn't wise to speak in absolutes and for sure not twice in the same sentence. One's credibility pretty much tanks at that point. Link to post Share on other sites
RememberSchiff 3667 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Incident Information Report http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-016_fillable.pdf Agreed, but don't forget the lawyers who see a new "list" to lock away. I only offered proof of the form's existence. I would not use it. In the previous forum, I listed the shortcomings of this form and mentioned other outdoor organizations such as NOLS and AMC who do a better job collecting relevant information and making this information publicly available for safer activity planning. Link to post Share on other sites
King Ding Dong 540 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Incident Information Report http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-016_fillable.pdf NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Link to post Share on other sites
Stosh 3452 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Look, in this day and age, you can't be the mythical "Man's Man" anymore who shoots from the hip, and wrestles bears for fun. Let's just think about the post trip briefing: SM Wayne: "Well pardners, we're back. We completed another trip with acceptable losses." Concerned Mother: "Jimmy? Jimmy? Where's my Jimmy?" SM Wayne: "Sorry ma'am." Removes Stetson and holds over heart, "Jimmy was one of the acceptable losses." I'm an Engineer and programmer by day, and a confessed proceduralist. I shoot for JTE gold annually. If ISO-9001 or six-sigma certification was available for Scout units, I'd have that too. There is a reason successful businesses, the military, pilots, and doctors all use standard procedures: Acceptable losses these days are 0. By making the mundane automatic, you can focus on the exceptional situations. (I do take offense to comparing my type to The Donald. He's a bigger cowboy than John Wayne ever was. Let's call us the Edison type.) I see my checklists, spreadsheets and briefing documents justified by those two simple words: "Be Prepared." I don't see that as prissy at all. As for the prissy part, there does seem to be a problem with prissiness in Scout units these days. I'm a CM right now, and I have that problem with my CO's Troop. Our pack camps more often than they do, and has more autonomous boy leadership than they do. I know that I can spend my time on a trip distracting the helicopter parents while they boys be boys. I have the confidence to bring up the rear on hikes, because the boys in the lead know to bring the whole group to a stop when there is a question about which fork in the trail to take -- and my like-minded DLs (two engineers and an accountant) aren't far behind them to jog their memories if needed. As a youth, I had a John Wayne-type SM. He was memorable, but a control freak. When he retired, it took a few years to rebuild a truly autonomous PLC and committee again. It would have been really easy for the unit to turn prissy in the vacuum after his personality left. I'm glad it didn't. BasementDweller is right. It's the adults who make the program prissy. You want an un-prissy program: Give the PLC a JTE scorecard and a blank calendar and tell them to earn the Troop a gold ranking. Tell them the leaders are there to help them, but this is their Troop and their job. You and the rest of the leadership have to be willing to let them make mistakes that get them into trouble, while secretly having that 24-hour store of firewood in your back pocket for when they need to steal the bear's kill (or maybe a backpack full of Power Bars and a water filter instead). In the end, they may not remember you as much as they would if you were John Wayne, but they'll learn more, be less prissy and better prepared. @jblake47: I feel really sorry for you. Apparently, you've never had a good mentor in your life. Have I had bosses who showed me something, and then threw me to the wolves? Sure, and most of the time the company paid dearly for my hard-won experience. The good ones I've had took the time to explain why each step was important, and let me prove I knew things on a smaller project before going full scale. Don't need pity, and I've had plenty of good mentors in my life. I have a boss right now who considers what I have to say because I have had 40 years of business management from Peter F. Drucker to Lean Mfg. Just recently I let him borrow my Greenleaf book on Servant Leadership which he totally appreciated. Once one is in on the Value Stream Analysis team of a billion dollar industry, one really doesn't worry too much about small projects unless one is a RIE leader. As for some of your other comments, you don't seem to understand that Scouting is about functioning as a group. If a team of Scouts has the responsibility to load the trailer, and they fail, then they should be accountable to the boy they failed. I can't imagine how one could conclude I am not understanding group dynamics. I promote the patrol method more than most. I know it's potential and teach to it with the BOYS leading the process. This is why we have trained PL's so this kind of thing doesn't happen, but each scout is responsible for his own actions within the team. If the leadership team failed because they gave that assignment without properly supervising or training the individual, then they should be held accountable too. Leadership team (? I am assuming you mean the adults here) that supervises is just that THE leadership team. That means the scouts are nothing more than followers. The "assignments" here are patrol method training. The boys pick their best leader in each patrol and they work from there to work out their problems. If all one wishes to identify in these situations is blame, then one is not even following proper modern managerial practices. Identify the problems and correct them. That always gains better traction than finding the culprit and punishing them. There comes a time in the program where the boys are expected to lead and that means the adult leadership team shuts up and moves aside. Assuming of course they were properly trained, which is the student's responsibility to learn. If they didn't learn, they need to take to initiative to make sure they get their questions answered. If the Scout incorrectly assumed someone else would take care of their stuff for them, then yes, that's his own problem, and he needs to deal with it. Yes, Scouting is a boy-led program. However, Scouts are minors, so as the adults on the trip, we are morally and legally responsible for their well-being. That doesn't mean we have to take over for them, nor do we have to keep them from having fun, but an occasional prod to make sure they are making the right choices is warranted and welcome. If one trains the boys correctly and completely, then they have fulfilled any and all moral and legal responsibilities. If every time something goes awry, and the legal people get involved, the question will always be asked, "Would a prudent adult make the same decision and do the same thing?" If the answer is always yes, it makes no difference the age of the respondent. If one is going to expect these boys to always be boys, then they will stay that way. However, if one expects them to act and function as adults, you'd be surprised on how many will step up and surprise you. And if someone gets hurt, as the adult in charge, I'm going to be held accountable, so yes, I'd better know about it as soon as it happens. And herein lies the problem, "adult in charge", means the program is adult-led. I inadvertently deleted part of my original comment that after a scout gets hurt, the others shouldn't be allowed to run off and play. They need to attend to their friend's injuries -- if appropriate -- or stay with him until the professionals arrive. If a boy gets hurt and his buddies raise the alarm, get's the EMS involved, stabilize the boy, and attend to him until help arrives, the SM could be notified well after the boy is on the way to the hospital and still be within his legal responsibilities because he trained his boys correctly! Seriously, in an emergency situation, does one really want their resources going for EMS support or off looking for the SM? I have had many years experience with both the adult-led, troop-method programs as well as the boy-led, patrol-method programs. Hands down, boy-led, patrol-method is by far the most effective in developing excellent Eagle scouts. I have seen way too many paper/Parlor scouts coming through the adult-led, troop-method program. 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RichardB 219 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Incident Information Report http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-016_fillable.pdf http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/HealthandSafety/GSS/gss14.aspx So why is it bad to know what actually happens in the program? http://www.scouting.org/filestore/HealthSafety/pdf/680-033.pdf Leaders may also want to use this: http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-017_fillable.pdf Link to post Share on other sites
TSS_Chris 36 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Related to this thread: Things "back in the day" always seem better than they are in the present. http://xkcd.com/1227/ Link to post Share on other sites
Scouter99 265 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Don't know about "prissy". But it has morphed into something that placates the helicopter parents, the lawyers, and those boys who would rather sit in front of a video game than rappel down a tower. LIke any other organism, it has adapted to the environment in which it finds itself, rather than go extinct. My first rappeling trip was a real cliff. My knee buckled 5 feet down, I hit the rock hard, scrambled back up and I've never tried again. If I'm a priss, so be it, hahahaha. I remember the experience fondly, but it's not one I'm interested in having twice. Link to post Share on other sites
Horizon 97 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 RichardB - before I begin, I appreciate your contributions and the tough position you are in (as I recall - you are at National). But let me look at the reporting requirements at the bottom level (where no ER / Hospital visit): NEGLIGIBLE • Near miss • Injury/illness not requiring first aid By the end of the unit recharter year, do the following: 1. Complete a Near Miss Incident Information Report, No. 680-017. 2. Keep the report in your unit or forward to the enterprise risk management contact. 3. Evaluate near misses in your unit or council each year for any lessons learned and/or program enhancements. Do you really expect a unit to fill out a report for every cut with a knife, every burn from a stove or fire, every bruise from a fall? This reporting requirement (and I have read all of this) either pushes me to ignore the BSA requirements, or to stop doing anything risky. I have told new helicopter parents the following "If you send your son with us camping, he will get cut, burned, bruised, dirty and will probably eat some nasty food at least once that he might have cooked himself. If that does NOT happen, we haven't given them enough space to grow. We are there with all of the medical records, first aid kits, and volunteers with the appropriate levels of training." Our jobs as leaders is to balance boy led, adventure and safety. Reading that table, however, with a required form for what appears to be the lowest level of "incident" does not appear to encourage me to run a good program. If I was really feeling grumpy, I could bury our DE in "near miss" incident reports. I don't think that is what YOU want, but the mere existence of the table and form infers a different level of review. Link to post Share on other sites
Basementdweller 608 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 I think Q wrote in some past post..... "As an SM my job is to take the boys to see the face of god, Just not leave them there." I really like it..... whether it is a misty dewy sunrise with turkeys gobblin,, a sunset off the tooth of time or rappelling off a 200 foot cliff...... Shame it is getting buried in the paperwork. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Basementdweller 608 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Incident Information Report http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-016_fillable.pdf Spoken like a true blooded Cubical dweller Link to post Share on other sites
dedkad 127 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Well, if anything, this discussion has motivated me to take my Webelos on an off-road bike ride rather than on a field trip to the newspaper office. Link to post Share on other sites
packsaddle 753 Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Well, if anything, this discussion has motivated me to take my Webelos on an off-road bike ride rather than on a field trip to the newspaper office.That's great! Who says these forums don't have a positive effect!? Richard B, to respond to your question, "...why is it bad to know what actually happens in the program?", this presumes that filling out your forms is all it takes for you to understand what happens in the program. Egad! What does that say about the program that you expect? What does that say about BSA National? What does that say about YOU? Good grief! I'm channeling Kudu now...deep breaths.... Link to post Share on other sites
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