Scouting changes in your lifetime?

[Oldscout448 697]

Briantshore, bacon? TWO strips of BACON??? we just got the egg and a cup of water, then chopped down trees until lunch,a cheese sandwich and bug juice, then cut and split said trees into firewood all afternoon.

Without hardhats.

or goggles

Any way guys thanks for the replies, some of them made me stop and take a trip down memory lane for sure.

To finish the story: I told this young scout that much has changed, but the really important stuff that makes a boy into scout has not, the oath and law are the same, and our duty to live up to them remains the same today as it did in 1971 or 1910. I hope I didn't preach. But they were important to me as an 11 year old and remain so as a 53 year old

Old scout

 

ps anybody else do a 50 miler, with no adults?

[desertrat77 1144]

Old Scout, well said, the values are the same. And outdoor adventure can still be found in the BSA. Which leads me to one more observation, for good or ill:

 

Philmont past - fire to cook meals

Philmont present - stoves

 

I suppose the stoves are an improvement. Carry a saw and axe, or a stove and fuel. As a scout on a late-summer trek during the cook fire-every-meal days, the woods at Philmont were picked pretty clean near the campsites.

 

Did two 50 milers (Grand Canyon, and then Philmont)...adults along both times. A couple of the adults were more trouble than they were worth, particularly from the scouts' point of view. A few were truly the real deal, outstanding scouters.

 

 

 

[Oldscout448 697]

thanks Rat, amen on the stoves at Philmont I staggered into camp after trail peak (our first 10,000 footer) on day 3. my home elevation was about 400 ft as we sat or laid on the ground, it occured to me that if we wanted to eat hot food tonight, we had to get up,find and drag some dead aspen logs,and start cutting. O flipping joy! and as crew leader, I had to set the example. Thanks be to God I was 17,not 47.

Old scout

[desertrat77 1144]

Old Scout, your experience brought a smile and jogged a memory, hadn't thought of it in years--hiked all day to Clear Creek in a very cold rain...set up camp, still raining...oh yes, a hot meal would be nice...it was a struggle as every stick of wood seemed soaked thru but the job got done. Concur 100 percent, easier done as a teen than at the half century mark!(This message has been edited by desertrat77)

[Tampa Turtle 1011]

(This from Cubs only)

Then--Den Mothers only in the Blue Coat Dress. Mom showing boys how to hammer.

Now-Dad's in Khaki and Mom's in pants. Must have googles to hammer.

 

Then-Heavy canvas army surplus tents--sleeps 8. Cotten leaked, pole in center. Weighed a ton, smelled horrible.

Now-Nylon tents with rain-flys. Gets old--throw it out.

 

Then-Blue and Gold was a box from KFC and a couple awards and the local TV weatherman as a speaker.

Now-Blue and Gold is a 3 course meal, 2 hours of awards, and a FOS lecture.

 

Then-Soap Box Derby.

Now-Pine wood Derby.

[OldGreyEagle 5]

"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.

 

Socrates

 

I wonder if its true the older you get the softer the new generation is, seems to be a historical thing

[allangr1024 71]

For me, the biggest catalyst for change came in the 1970's as a result of sexual predators being found in the ranks of scoutmasters. I cannot say that we always had that problem, but in the early 1970's it seemed that every month we heard news of a scoutmaster molesting a kid. In fact, I remember a story about the danger of the BSA being sued out of existence if something was not done. The solution was the two deep leadership policy the BSA came up with. As a boy I remember often going camping with only the Scoutmaster as the adult leadership in camp. The BSA also went looking for the molesters to boot them out.

 

As a result, troops had to get more adults involved in the program. If you needed two adults to go camping, you needed five or six to ensure you had enough to choose from, since scheduling more than one is more difficult. Our little troop of 10 to 15 had a scoutmaster and an assistant, and one year we got a guy just home from the Vietnam war who wanted to go camping. Now, I am always looking for enough adults to register so I can get a second or third adult to go.

 

When you have that many adults registered, they will be bored and drop out pretty quickly unless they have something to do. So troops decided to sign some up as merit badge councilors, scout advancement trainers, patrol advisers, and the like. I think this caused the rise of adult run troops, as adults scouters took over parts of the program. As a boy, I never heard of doing merit badges as a class in a troop meeting. Now, I have to push hard to keep it from happening.

 

Get more adults in the troop, especially if their day job is sales or marketing, and you have troops becoming very sophisticated in recruiting, identifying unreached teenagers, contacting cub packs and Webelos dens, and putting on good cross over shows. This has resulted in large and very large troops. We have two or three troops that are over 100 in youth membership. Mega Troops. Combine the size with the larger number of merit badges to earn, and the ease in earning them, and you come up with the Eagle Mill type of troop. One of our mega-troops uses troop T-shirts that say "Eagle Factory" on them. They have 150 to 180 boys, 40 adults, and have 4 to 5 Eagle courts of honor per quarter. Crazy. For a while the council told smaller troops to emulate these big troops, so many had merit badges in troop meetings, and had adults responsible for guiding scouts through their advancement.

 

I think the youth protection policies have had unforeseen consequences in the scouting program.

 

[Horizon 97]

Fire. The mark of a Scout was rubbing two cliches together to start your cooking fire. Now everything is stoves. Where I camp in Southern California, fires are flat out illegal most of the time.

 

Competition with other youth activities. We had coaches running shuttles to the campout after Friday Night Lights. Nothing like two guys still in their pads showing up for a campout. Now we have coaches telling boys that they won't make Varsity if they waste time on that Scouting stuff. Youth sports has gotten so competitive that we have lost a lot of the athletes from our Units.

 

Academics. We didn't have SAT prep classes on weekends when I went to high school, and I went off to a top 10 school. Now my high school youth have conflicts with ACT and SAT prep days, and the actual SAT and ACT testing days. I lost a bunch of them over several campouts to these sessions as they were heading to college.

[Horizon 97]

For some other Scouting changes:

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Skill Awards. I actually liked them - they put the whole skills training into buckets, instead of the T-2-1 separation we have today.

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Boards of Review:

1 - Tenderfoot, Second Class and First Class applicants had a review with the PLC - NOT adult leaders. Our Troop used the Leadership Corps, which was Eagles only in our Troop and they did the review. I remember being both scared, and then elated when I passed THEIR review.

2 - Star and Life were reviews by ASMs I think - I know that they were in uniform. They were not that big of a deal. My old Handbook calls them Progress Reviews.

3 - Eagle BOR was a room of 10 businessmen I had never met in suits asking me about Scouting.

---------------

Women. No women were ASMs or SMs. Moms were Den Leaders, Dads took over for Webelos (and Cubmaster - though I don't remember our Cubmaster at all).

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Gear - floorless canvas tents.

 

[frankpalazzi 62]

Stole my thunder on the BORs and the Skill Awards, Horizon! Remember the annoying little advancement book? It was washable, too, if you left it in your pocket!

 

I remember when fellow scouts had time for sports, homework AND camping. We made it all work somehow.

[packsaddle 753]

Horizon, I had the same Eagle BOR experience. There weren't 10 of them but they were like bank executives or something in a board room way up in an upper floor of what is now BankofAmerica. The Eagle BOR had to be attended by reservation only and it was crisp and formal and lasted about 30 minutes. They knew the right questions and it was direct and efficient.

[qwazse 4344]

Back in the day ...

No geocaches!

Rock climbing? Nope.

Compound bows? Rarely.

Trap shooting? Not at camp.

Rifle? Yep, but buy your own ammo.

Line up at the trading post by the pay phone to call mom.

[Oldscout448 697]

all this talk of fires, or lack thereof, sparked yet another thing changed. No more hot rocks. When the thermometer got down around the zero mark,we would place football sized rocks all around the fire, at bedtime they were so hot you could barely hold em, a dozen or so in your tent kept you warm (well warmer) all night. Now that tents have floors, I suspect this thick would result in a melted, smoky mess.

Old scout

[koolaidman 110]

I was 12 at my first and only summer camp. It would have been 1983. As a patrol, or couple of patrols, we strip down to nothing and put on a small leather loincloth. It was nothing but a piece of leather and a strip of leather lace.

 

We all went into an Indian wigwam type "sauna" where we had rocks heated by the fire with ladels of water poured over them to create the steam bath.

 

The loincloths were small enough that the adults could only cover their front side.

 

No "funny" business happened.

 

Was I uncormfortable? You bet. But the swim in the cold river, was perhaps the most refreshing experience I had had in my lifetime (up until that point at least).

 

Would I even be allowed to tell that story to scouting youth today?