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Why Can't Adults Trust the Scouts


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4 hours ago, Tampa Turtle said:

We no longer have Troop tents...no one took good enough care of them.

This.

If the tent is not their own, our Scouts take no particular care in how it is used, maintained and stored. It is too frustrating to see troop funds abused in this way, so we eliminated troop tents. Most of our Scouting families are well-equipped with their own camping gear, so it really has not been a problem.

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I stand corrected.   Allow me to rephrase  We seem to have adults who think that the troop exists for their fun and benefit rather than the scouts.

Sadly, my most problematic Scouters have been Eagles.  Others seem to be more willing to not fall back on, "When I was a scout..."

I can't recall if you said the SM was complicit in this or if he just didn't care that he (and his youth leaders) kept getting mowed over by this ASM. But as a former SM I would want to know this situ

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9 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

I agree. What's sad is that  he doesn't see any problems with adults jumping in.  In fact he said I should butt out and not work with the to do things on their own.

What he means is, he doesn't want you to interfere with what he wants to do. 

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2 hours ago, gblotter said:

This.

If the tent is not their own, our Scouts take no particular care in how it is used, maintained and stored. It is too frustrating to see troop funds abused in this way, so we eliminated troop tents. Most of our Scouting families are well-equipped with their own camping gear, so it really has not been a problem.

Thankfully we haven't had this issue.  Our QMs are pretty good about making sure equipment is being taken care of properly.

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6 hours ago, Tampa Turtle said:

Hey that's my job!

And mine.

Although I must admit sometimes it's hard not to jump in when you can just see the train wreck coming.   

I think our job is to keep them safe, to remind them of the values a scout should live by, ( 10% talking-90% showing) let them learn from the lesser train wrecks, and step in only to avoid a major disaster. 

The question I ask myself is " Will what the scouts learn from this outweigh the harm done?"

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3 minutes ago, Oldscout448 said:

Unless your goal is to prove to the PLC that their research, debating, or decisions mean a darn thing.

 

I think @Thunderbird meant it's pointless to have the PLC do research and select a tent AFTER the tents have already been ordered by the adults.

Yes, I'm channeling both the previous and current SPLs. I am so tired of all this drama. I really thought this was over with 18-24 months ago between Gunship and I. But apparently it was under the radar with batch of helicopters we got, and the illness and death of our former SM. 

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Just out of curiosity, is this ASM trained? When I took my SM classroom training (and I highly recommend this over the online version if it is at all possible), the SM in charge of the sessions told us that rule one is to take a step back. He said that it is the hardest thing to do, but easily the most valuable in being an adult leader in a properly run Troop. He is correct, and any time I happen to cross paths with him in the 5 years since I took that class, I thank him again for everything he did to make me the SM I am now.

As an aside, this is one of the few reasons that we have Troop bylaws. No one is allowed to be an ASM or SM in our Troop unless they can wear the TRAINED patch for those positions. I know that the prevailing wisdom here is that bylaws are a bad thing. This is one of the few exceptions, IMHO.

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23 minutes ago, AVTech said:

Just out of curiosity, is this ASM trained? When I took my SM classroom training (and I highly recommend this over the online version if it is at all possible), the SM in charge of the sessions told us that rule one is to take a step back. He said that it is the hardest thing to do, but easily the most valuable in being an adult leader in a properly run Troop. He is correct, and any time I happen to cross paths with him in the 5 years since I took that class, I thank him again for everything he did to make me the SM I am now.

As an aside, this is one of the few reasons that we have Troop bylaws. No one is allowed to be an ASM or SM in our Troop unless they can wear the TRAINED patch for those positions. I know that the prevailing wisdom here is that bylaws are a bad thing. This is one of the few exceptions, IMHO.

Problem with most bylaws is that they are usually adult rules forced on scouts without the scouts consideration. Your bylaw is an adult rule forced on adults. I am OK with that. 

In the big picture, adults don't trust scouts because they don't like failure. Failure in the adult world is a ding against pride and stature.

In my Scoutmaster Specific class, I taught that not only is failure OK, but the more scouts fail, they more and faster they grow and mature. Adults need to learn how to embrace failure as a teaching partner.

I also taught that if the scouts don't seek help or advice from the adults, they will likely not learn from any advice  "volunteered" by adults. Failure is painful. Pain from failure is good because it drives the scout to seek (learn) a change that will ease the pain. Adults need to build a culture of developing the program to embrace failure and to wait patiently for the scouts to seek help and advice. When the scout wants to ease the pain of failure, he is very willing to seek a change.

Barry

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Regarding training, I don't know. He is wearing a Trained patch though. He was an ASM back in the late 90s, early 80s when he was an 18-20 y.o. But I also know he regards training as pretty useless if you are an Eagle, which he is.

 

Regarding failure, you are right. When I commented about the Scouts know what to do and we need to let them, he viewed the lack of blue ribbons from camporee as proof that they don't know what to do. Irony of the situation, and I know because I did hte past 2 district camporees, is that when we moved from aged based patrols to traditional patrols, and started letting the Scouts do things on their own and fail if need be, their camporee performance was a lot better this year than last year.

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