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Putting the pieces together - Where are we headed?


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13 hours ago, FormerProfessional said:

...How many of you will stay or leave with what we know now about girls, “boys” life, and OA changes?

 

I really hope no one will actually leave because Boys' Life changed their name. Or because there will be pictures of girls in handbooks, as was suggested in another thread. 

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New uniforms, Venturers and Sea Scouts in the OA are both program changes.  Changes to two deep is a program change.  The military has different PT requirements for men and women so expect changes to

Thank you.  Let me provide what I hope is an equally well stated rebuttal. I don't see the addition of girls to the program as adding a layer of richness, I see it as replacing a layer of richnes

Fair enough, here goes... I pushed for inclusion in the BSA for many reasons. Sometimes because I thought that doing so would benefit the programs, sometimes because I felt that morally it was ri

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related/unrelated question. Is there a date for a new handbook for 11-18 scouts to arrive? (not sure how to state that without saying boy scouts and being clear enough that I"m not talking about the various cub scout programs, LOL)

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4 minutes ago, Buggie said:

related/unrelated question. Is there a date for a new handbook for 11-18 scouts to arrive? (not sure how to state that without saying boy scouts and being clear enough that I"m not talking about the various cub scout programs, LOL)

I don't know if there is a date, but I imagine you could just call it the "Scouts BSA Handbook" and I think most folks will know which book you're talking about. 

Making an assumption based on the release of the Cub books less than a month from the official start date, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Scouts BSA books show up in January. 

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5 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

My last year of summer camp (between my Jr. and Sr. years of HS) my SM asked me to tent with and generally buddy with a first year camper.  He was our only first year and his parents were concerned about home sickness.  I was in camp to hang with my Tribal brothers so no big deal to me.  For that week I was his big brother and he was my little brother.  If there had been a two-year age differential tenting restriction at the time that relationship wouldn't have been a beneficial for him or me.

I don't know when that was, but I was a Boy Scout 1969-76, before YP even existed, and there are MANY differences between what you could do then and what you can do now.  The two examples that strike me as the most glaring at the moment are (1) When I went to Philmont (1974) the majority of crews had ONE adult leader.  There was a ranger (who as I recall was probably barely an adult, but he was an adult) who was with us part of the time, but I don't think he was with us most of the time.  And (2) if there was a communal shower facility somewhere, it was the adult leaders (men) and Scouts at the same time.  None of this "respect for privacy" stuff.  And, just as in your era (which may be the same era, I don't know), the idea of an 17-year-old sharing a tent with an 11-year-old would not even have raised an eyebrow.  Nobody at the unit level thought about this stuff at all - and yet at various places in the country, bad things were happening and the BSA was basically covering it up. 

Yes, complying with YP sometimes does affect program, and we can debate about particular aspects of YP that might seem a little unnecessary, and, some of it is driven by insurance, but what is the alternative?  If YP hadn't been adopted the BSA when it was, I don't think there would be a BSA now, so the program wouldn't matter.

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1 hour ago, FireStone said:

I really hope no one will actually leave because Boys' Life changed their name.

Oh no, I must have missed that. They really didn't have to do that.  But I don't think anyone is going to leave over it.

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55 minutes ago, NJCubScouter said:

I don't know when that was, but I was a Boy Scout 1969-76, before YP even existed, and there are MANY differences between what you could do then and what you can do now.  The two examples that strike me as the most glaring at the moment are (1) When I went to Philmont (1974) the majority of crews had ONE adult leader.  There was a ranger (who as I recall was probably barely an adult, but he was an adult) who was with us part of the time, but I don't think he was with us most of the time.  And (2) if there was a communal shower facility somewhere, it was the adult leaders (men) and Scouts at the same time.  None of this "respect for privacy" stuff.  And, just as in your era (which may be the same era, I don't know), the idea of an 17-year-old sharing a tent with an 11-year-old would not even have raised an eyebrow.  Nobody at the unit level thought about this stuff at all - and yet at various places in the country, bad things were happening and the BSA was basically covering it up. 

Yes, complying with YP sometimes does affect program, and we can debate about particular aspects of YP that might seem a little unnecessary, and, some of it is driven by insurance, but what is the alternative?  If YP hadn't been adopted the BSA when it was, I don't think there would be a BSA now, so the program wouldn't matter.

It's about the same era, close enough anyway.  The alternatives are tough.  It probably involves harshly punishing the perpetrators of bad deeds while not restricting the rights of innocent actors.  It's the same philosophy as the knife discussion.  Blanket policies restricting anything mostly serve to punish the innocent.  Anyway, thank you for acknowledging the YPT does affect program.

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33 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

Finally, you said "It hasn't been a negative in school classrooms to have boys and girls working together."  I can't begin to express how strongly I disagree with this statement.  Boys are loud, squirmy, and active.  Nobody who has ever actually worked with boys was shocked when taking away the unstructured play of recess, and the jungle gyms and swings, caused problems in the classroom.  But, instead of giving boys the room to be boys, we've chosen to medicate the ones that can't act like their female counterparts.  Scouting used to be a refuge from that mentality.  I fear it will become more of the same, and worse than it is today (MBUs, Citizenship MBs at summer camp, etc.).  

It has had a huge effect on the Physical Education curriculum. Boy's PE used to be a very active rough-and-tumble class. Now it's just like the girl's class used to be.

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29 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

The alternatives are tough.  It probably involves harshly punishing the perpetrators of bad deeds while not restricting the rights of innocent actors.

Well, that was really the pre-1980s/90s approach - not necessarily in BSA exactly, but generally.   But now the general consensus is that you don't know who is an innocent actor or a guilty actor in advance, and prevention (or at least reduction in occurrences) is better than punishment anyway.  A kid who has been abused is not really going to be helped by the fact that his abuser received punishment, but if you could have made it so difficult for the abuser to be alone with the abused that it never happened in the first place, that really does help.  Obviously you punish an offender after he/she is caught, but actual punishment (beyond expulsion from BSA) is really the job of the state, not the BSA, anyway

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2 minutes ago, David CO said:

It has had a huge effect on the Physical Education curriculum. Boy's PE used to be a very active rough-and-tumble class. Now it's just like the girl's class used to be.

This was exactly my experience in HS when Physical Education went co-ed.  Dodgeball, gym hockey, wrestling all disappeared from the curriculum.  Flag football went from a contact game to being kicked out of class if you bumped into a girl.  Boys weren't allowed to block shots in basketball or hit spikes in volleyball if the person on the other side was a girl.  Again, kicked out of class for the day.  They added square dancing for the love of Pete!

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1 hour ago, NJCubScouter said:

And (2) if there was a communal shower facility somewhere, it was the adult leaders (men) and Scouts at the same time.  None of this "respect for privacy" stuff.

I don't know how much of these changes are due to youth protection. I think some of it has nothing to do with YP.

Even in a school with a properly run, well-supervised locker room, we get some mothers who object to having their children taking showers after gym class and extra-curricular activities. It is not safety they are concerned about. They object to group showers.

As a boy, I never felt that I needed much privacy. Privacy was a girl thing.

 

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16 hours ago, walk in the woods said:

I would encourage the folks who believe the most recent change in the BSA is a good thing to offer me their vision of the future of the BSA.  I can't see it from where I sit.  Change my mind!

Well, I don't know whether it's going to turn out to be a good thing or not.  I do know that the departure of the LDS church is not good for at least the short-term health of the organization.  And readers of this forum know that when the situation is right, I can be almost as gloomy as the next guy.  I have made my own predictions about things, some of which have turned out to be correct, and some of which have not. But I just don't think it's productive to go from making a gloomy prediction to being in continuous red-alert panic mode over a possible future situation that may or may not turn out to be as negative as you may have predicted - UNLESS there is something you can do to change the underlying situation in the first place.  I think the only thing that can possibly change the decision on girls is if the number who join in the next few years is much fewer than they expect. Nothing that anyone says here, no matter how loud and long they say it, is going to make a difference on that front.  It's also my opinion that there are two reasonable alternatives for those who are very unhappy: (1) Quit, or (2) don't quit, by which I mean, stay and make the best of it.  Staying, but at the same time wailing and gnashing ones teeth for months or years on end, when there is no prospect of getting one's way, seems like a very unhappy way to spend one's life.

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58 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

Thank you.  Let me provide what I hope is an equally well stated rebuttal...

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm not going to do a point-by-point reply, I think we both know where we stand on this. We disagree, and that probably won't change. 

My point of this thread was optimism and looking forward, which I continue to do and continue to have about the BSA. It's not a popular opinion around here, but I truly believe that the best days of the BSA are ahead of us.

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13 minutes ago, FireStone said:

My point of this thread was optimism and looking forward, which I continue to do and continue to have about the BSA. It's not a popular opinion around here, but I truly believe that the best days of the BSA are ahead of us.

I hope you are right.

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