Eagledad

Thanks for bringing a smile to another old fool. It's a nice break from the cynicism. Barry

Ah the memories, Water Skiing was my first MB. The first thing we did was to learn how to drive the boat. And over the course of the badge, we learned how to pull skiers. I skill I've used for the rest of my life. Barry

I used to know what Palms were for, but this conversation has me wondering now. Doesn't the advancement awards prior to Eagle recognize a scouts hard work up to Eagle? And what exactly are we envisioning of a scout with Palms? Kind of funny, my take on Palms is adults like them because they recognize additional leadership. Scouts like Palms because they recognize additional Merit Badges. Some people just naturally enjoy working MBs, are they better Eagles? Or were those other Eagles just pencil whipped? What does that even mean? This is all too hard, why can't National just threaten going coed and leave the rest of the program well enough alone. Barry

I don't know, some members here struggle with "master" in Scoutmaster. If they can't get past that, how can they understand the adult/scout relationship? The concept that this is an adult program created to develop boys into citizens of character and leaders of integrity is just about out of reach of the understanding. AND WE WANT TO ADD GIRLS! Barry

LOL, he also didn't like uniforms, but admitted in the tent one night that he was proud to wear the Boy Scout uniform. I don't think he can explain his tolerance or acceptance of the hierarchical applications in the program either, but 20 years later he still tells me that scouting as an adult in our troop is one of his fondest memories. Maybe some hippies grow up. Barry

I believe Scoutmaster is very appropriate because Master describes the skills and abilities of the unit role model, mentor and guide. Master infers ability of skills in the style of a patient mentoring observer instead of directive leader. I believe the most power character trait of a adult scout leader is humility and the title Scoutmaster reflects that trait. I also feel that the title is a serious directive to owner of the position to take the role seriously. I admit, only a humble person would turn down the position if they felt their skills weren't acceptable for the needs of the scouts. Barry

Hmmm, Scout-American? We had one adult, (actually became an ASM) who was very offended by the term, Scout Leader. He admitted that he was a 60's hippy that learn to hate any type of authority, so any name with leader attached was offensive in his mind. So, how about Scouter-American. Barry

One aspect of training does have value to the program, it sets a standard of performance. For example, the units in our district over the years got in the habit of thinking that Scoutmaster Signature was only required on MB cards after the scouts was finished with the requirements, not before. The problem it created was the general misunderstanding that Scoutmasters could approve of disapprove the scouts performance of the requirements. We corrected the misunderstanding in training and within three years all units had the same understanding as National. Of course this feeds into TAHAWK's complaint that training doesn't sufficiently teach patrol method. That is because there isn't sufficient material for the instructors to understand the subject that they teaching. Barry

No, that is exactly my point. Fix the problem before adding complications to it. Barry

Maybe, but the parents generally start their kids in scouting, and generally for a different reason. My wife surprised me last week after she read news article in the paper about BSA considering coed. Without any discussion, her knee-jerk reaction was,"we would not have joined a coed Boy Scout program". She was also a Girl Scout leader with only bitter memories of that experience. Barry

So, you are proposing that if passing ships could have handed over their passengers with bailing buckets, the Titanic might have been saved. Hmm, an interesting approach to a successful business models. My engineering mindset just doesn't work that way. If something is failing because of a flawed design, the design needs to be changed, otherwise permanent failure is inevitable, no matter how many work-arounds are thrown at it. Work-arounds only add layers of confusion to finding the fix, if a search is even being conducted. Barry

Really! We usually had at least 2 female ASMs back in 1990s. Our committee was 45% female and typically our CC was female. Our Wood Badge course averages 50/50 male/female participants. Two of our 22 troops in the district had female Scoutmasters at the same time for a couple of years. We are pretty big district in a huge council, so that is a lot of females. I personally coached one female who earned Silver Beaver. She certainly wasn't the first. I kind of though we were normal with councils in the nation. Barry

Yes, that would be interesting to learn as well. Here is what I know through research, the old Wood Badge course (one example) was designed to teach experienced scouters new methods for teaching scouts. It is that simple. But I remember talking to a Council Wood Badge Course director in 1995 who was frustrated because even the staff resisted the purpose of the course mainly showing teaching techniques and styles. He said that even then the newer generation of staff was becoming more focused on the scouts skills and patrol activities part of the course than the teaching skills part. Nationally, the BSA was finding that adults were going back and turning their troops into copies of the Wood Badge program. Even to the detail that adults were eating meals with the scouts, just like in the course, but not for the same reason. The course syllabus was completely changed. It wasn't just females who were the problem of course, many males without a scouting background were joining the program as well. But, they were a smaller minority before the induction of females and could be assimilated into troop program easily because most of the leaders were experienced. It's uncomfortable talking about female leaders like this because some of them are the hardest most dedicated volunteers in scouting. Many are very close friends who are highly respected. I worked and advised four female Scoutmasters guiding them in patrol method and the value of it's purpose. I'm sure you are right, I have been out long enough that I couldn't give a fair observation. A LOT of things are contributing to it's decline, but National is also doing harm to itself. One thing that is important to understand is that 95% of troop membership (give or take) comes from the Packs. If the pack program fails, the rest of scouting fails. And I think most pack leaders will tell you the program is hard work for adults. And it shouldn't be. Without getting into the details again, adult leader burnout is killing the pack program. It's even predictable. When National change the Tiger program in 2000 to required more adult volunteer time, not less, we predicted that the Troop membership would show a decline in about five years. And it did. If the National wants to at least slow down the membership decline, they need to start at the bottom, the pack program. It needs some bold changes. Help the packs and you will help the troops and venturing. Barry

This is reflective of "one" of my concerns. I believe the boy run or patrol method (which ever you want to call it) took a big hit when females were brought in at the troop level. Not because they were female, but because they were a large portion of the adult membership without a youth scouting experience. In my experience, troops of adult leaders with a youth scouting experience have a three year jump on adults without that experience. Scouters with experience simply know how to apply the game to the purpose. Scouters without experience tend focus too much on the purpose and loose the fun of the game. I believe going coed with increase the percentage of unexperienced scouters even farther and push the benefits of patrol method even farther out of the program. Ideally the young women will eventually become scout leaders of the future and percentage of experienced scouters will grow. But I believe that is twenty years down the road and the program will be so watered down by then, Patrol method will be little more than the small groups the scouts are placed in. The benefit of experiences for making independent choices without outside influence will be gone. To survive, the program will reshape itself so that the youth are having fun and want to continue scouting. But I see the impact of the character growth side of the present program greatly diluted. Some folks here believe resistance of change is base more from tradition than performance. Being conservative because they are conservative in nature. But learning life by experiencing life is a method of teaching in simple program of outdoor activities is the heart the program, not the outdoors activities themselves. The fear of progressive changes isn't in the tradition of the outdoor program, but in loosing the tool for learning from experience. I have other concerns with a coed program, but if somehow I was assured that the part of the program where the scouts are given the independence of making decisions without an outside influence was still primary to the program, I would feel more ease about going coed. That would require a very strong team of professionals at National who not only understand the power of independence in the program, but the will to resist change away from it. I'm not confident that adults who prohibit carts wagons on camp outs are the right team. Barry

There has been a lot of logical reasoning to make an intellectual argument presented over the years. So, I think you are presenting yourself to be a bit naive in the tropes and memes on this forum over the years. You were by no means silent through the discussions. You have either chosen to ignore opposing opinions, or, well there is no or. You are ignoring any concern by placing the opposing responses under the category of, "when won't know what will happen until we make the changes". It is still a mystery to me that when the perception of the BSA by the public after a 100 years or so is still one of integrity, some folks want to willingly change that very program. It honestly amazes me. OK, I get that the Girl Scout program fails where the Boy Scout program succeeds, but does that mean risking the successful program? And please don't use the argument of increasing the declining membership to save the program. If the program is declining under it's own weight now, how in the world would adding more youth fix the cause of the decline in the first place? The BSA other bigger problems that this change would not even address, let alone fix. Several youth scouting programs in North American have made the program change leap that included accepting membership of the opposite sex. It's not like the BSA would be the first to try this experiment. I'm an engineer that uses past data to determine future designs. Please point to something that provides some hope of success for such a radical change of a successful program? Believe it or not, I am respected as a pretty open minded and innovative person, in person. I generally like to make changes for gains and don't usually let personal biases get in the way. And those of you on this forum know that I spend a lot of time balancing data to understand trends of the scouting program. I generally don't respond too much on discussions where I don't have experience or knowledge of the subject. So, I'm comfortable in standing against the idea of such a change until someone can present me with some sensible reasoning for the change. I'm even open to other ideas of the BSA getting more involved with girls in the program. But as the direction of the discussion has gone so far, I am not in favor of going coed of the present program. Barry

Exactly.

We humans tend to think the worst of people and thus become a bit disparaging to sway our personal theory. And maybe you are right, the BSA simply wants to keep making money with paper copies. But, I worked with National on some ideas of improving their membership software, back in the day, and found that they were just barely hanging on the trailing edge of the technology of the day. We assume National has brilliant tech people with unlimited funding for and unlimited staff of brilliant tech people to advance the up and coming computer technology into our youth camping program. I found that wasn't the case. My guess is they just haven't figured out how to profit from online yet. Barry

And here we go, if this value in single-sex environments, then how can it be otherwise? I just don't see the logic when this kind of reasoning. Posters give examples over and over in these discussions of the advantages of single-sex environments compared to coed equivalent programs like schools. So how does going coed all of a sudden push the program into a super program? I would much rather honesty in admitting that going coed will not be an improvement for the boys program, but will the program as a whole will fit better in your view of this culture. At least that is honest and who could argue. Barry

Yes, you and NJ have been hanging on this reasoning all the way back to gays scout debates. My unbiased response is the program as a whole will have to change to accommodate the coed program. New documentation, training and unit activities of the whole troop program (I'm not even talking about cubs) will be created and designed with coed in mind. The boys only program will be forced to fit in the coed design and as a result will have to conform to the requirements of that program, whatever they turn out to be. That doesn't appear like a big deal at first, but the BSA completely rewrote and issued new adult training courses as a result of introducing female troop leaders. Barry

Ah, I see. Makes sense now. I don't agree, but it makes sense. Barry

Yah, I generally respect and enjoy your comments on the forum, but this one comment crossed over in to the "because everybody else does it" PC column. Barry

We don't often agree, but this is a good post. I tried to post something similar, but gave up because the point got lost in my wordy reply. I do think Stosh has patrol method and dynamics backwards. Patrol method is another name for the dynamics he describes using outside the troop. The dynamics is just called Patrol Method inside the troop program. The only reason Patrol Method appears different is because prepubescent males are mixed in with everyone else and that does present some different aspects of the same dynamics. Venturing doesn't require the role modeling of a patrol of younger scouts. Let me say that differently; Venturing requires a different kind of role modeling for the ages involved. qwazse has a very good grasp of the dynamics as well, which is why he makes it work in both Venturing and the troop program together. Having a name for the process of teams working together successfully toward common goals isn't important. Getting the process to work under it's own momentum is the goal. Barry

I ran into the exact same problem with our JLTC (now NYLT) course staff. The youth instructors where using bad adult-lead examples from their home troop during their subject instruction. I pulled them together and basically advise them the same as qwazse. I also pointed out that they were coming off as immature and juvenal because their personal examples sound more vindictive than instructional. They needed to present the experience in such a way of being positive for change and improvement without sounding personal. I think qwazse's line of "getting him/her to reflect on how to be an agent of improvement" nails it. The staff took the hint and did very well. Barry

Our troop used that course as a guide because it is a true leadership skills course. But we found it to be too much content without a lot of exercise or practice. Kind of a shotgun approach to throwing a lot of information at the participants and hoping they catch 15% of it. So we scaled it way way down and the Scouts got a lot more out of it. Better to use three skills well than to forget all eleven. And we added other subjects important for our program like testing and signing off rank requirements. Yes, that subject was added as a reaction. We had a communication class but not like the 11 skills communication. This was much more basic like phone etiquette. This goes back to what I was saying that course leaders need plan what they really want the participants to take back with them. Then build some meaningful activities for practice. Also maturity needs to be considered. I think the guide was designed for 14 and older Scouts. The average age of patrol leaders today is probably closer to 12. Big difference. The frustration for me about training courses is that they should only be used to teach a needed skill that is not getting developed in the natural environment. But the BSA has pushed them to be a fix for all things whether or not anything in the course content needs fixing. I grew to measure the performance of our patrol method program by the skills Scouts were lacking to perform their duties with confidence. I viewed any outside lessons needed for the Scouts to function with confidence in our program as a failure to our patrol method. Training is just a bandaid to bring skills to an acceptable level. So while we used training to build skills, I was always looking how to Build more practice of the skill in the natural patrol environment. There is very little a senior scout could take from a council level junior leadership course that shouldn't already be practiced at a patrol level. The syllabus we developed for our Council Course intended for Scouts 14 and older came from the Patrol Leaders Handbook and SPL Handbook. You don't have to guess what two resources the Scouts were issued and expected to have with them in their classes. I have harped on this forum many times that if the adults would just give their Scouts the PLHB and SPLHB and let them go, they would have a jump start on a patrol method program. I even required Scoutmasters bring those handbooks to my Scoutmasters Fundamental course so they could see just how much of the SM fundamental course material was in scouts' leadership Handbooks. Why lecture to Scouts what their books already say. Anyway, I've gone to long. Happy Fargers Day Barry

It was probably very much like your course with a few modifications here and there. But I'm not sure the use it anymore since I was on the district committee. An old Brownsea syllabus is a good start if you can find one. Barry