Eagledad

Maybe the BSA should consider a flying ban for Scouts considering traveling to Canada. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/trudeau-airport-radicalization-security-concerns-1.4045525 According to the report, at least one had access to runways and had been the subject of a police investigation. One suggested committing an attack similar to the one in Paris in 2015 that killed 130 people, while another shared ISIS propaganda on his Facebook page. ........................ Tyler Stoute, who works at a duty-free shop in international departures, said he's concerned by the level of security. "It is a bit concerning, because there are many people who just walk through security every day without being searched and that is definitely a concern," he said. Barry

That's how I got mine. The SPL did most of the leg work to get the award. He wrote a very nice letter. Quite an honor when it comes from the scouts and the only knot I bother sewing on my shirt. Barry

The scout law is not: A scout is trustworthy or loyal or friendly or.....Like all the traits In the law, obedience is balance or completion working its single application with all the applications in the law. The scout is not guided to use one trait of the law at a time. Is a Scout obedient if they are not being friendly, courteous or kind? Are they being scout like? Barry

The school has 2800 students spread over four grades. I cant agree with your cynicism. Not one of those Scouts ever mentioned their honor to the SM. I Learned it from a freshman proud of his troop. Kind of funny, we have dozens of discussions on this forum of the behavior benefits of the patrol method, but when someone gives proof, SMs here justify it away as adolescent selfseveringness. Why are you here? For those who are less skeptical, the program works because I witnessed it both as a youth and adult. Barry

Our scouts come from three local high schools. The students each year at one of the schools votes for the top 8 students who provide leadership qualities. The student body population of this school is 2800 students. One year 7 out of the 8 students selected for the leadership award were scouts in our troop. The eight was a girl. That is an interest coincidence to me. Now imagine the odds that 7 scouts out of a troop of 80 scouts at the time being selected as the top student leaders from 2800 of their peirs. The power of the BSA program is only limited by the vision of it's adults. Imagine, all eight of the students selected as leaders might have been in our troop is we were coed. Ah, different discussion. LOL Barry

That is interesting. Troop Guide is an entry level position in our council. Doesn't matter really, you are part of a team that makes a difference. Barry

There is some concern that a recent aviation accident, or accidents (not in the US) were caused by materials that could be hidden in a lap top size container, or even a coke can. The reason the phone is not part of the concern is because the amount of material required to create enough damage for bringing down a plane wouldn't fit in the phone. I have a feeling we will see a tighter tolerance of other objects, like coke size cans, as well. I believe the change did not originate on the US, but cooperation was requested. That is the simi official explination I heard. Barry

You described it perfectly. Barry

Based from my experiences of life, we will have to agree to disagree. Barry

We went three days without seeing a single person. The first person (couple) we saw was naked. We all just quietly paddled past their camp. Barry

COHs would go away because adults are the reason for the ceremony. But maybe you have a point that the adult scouters unintentionally hold the scouts back. One of our scouts wanted his Eagle COH at the next campout. Nobody had experienced that, so the scouts came up with a pretty good ceremony on short notice. Still one of my favorite ECOHs. Barry

I've never heard anyone reference the Scout Law as only juvenile actions. I encourage scouts to learn their adult behavior by measuring all their decisions against the scout law during their younger years. Every decisional situation, no matter how small, has a moral right or wrong fate. The 12 points of the law are life long value traits that guide every decision toward a moral outcome. I learned in my life that integrity is directly related to ones ingrained principles. Rarely are an individual's principles developed after their young adult years. No situation is without applying principled values during any decision. Every decision has different possible outcomes that are directly related to how we apply our values. What adult wouldn't want the integrity of a scout? Barry

That's quite good! Barry

Yea, maybe the Ten Commandments was a wrong example, but I disagree with the rest of your posts. The law It's not and apples or oranges analogy. The traits of the law don't have exceptions. Exception are excuses to not be trustworthy, loyal, friendly or courteous. We are the scout law and servants of the scout law. Once we pick and choose which laws we don't have to apply, then our egos become masters. And we are nolonger scout like. Barry

Blasphemy? Is't it like saying the Ten Commandments don't apply to everybody. Or "Do unto "most" others, but not all." When we start to RE-define principles with our personal exceptions, then we put ourselves in the grey area of judgmental. Once we do that, the compass of moral integrity starts to sway back and forth as the young person finds himself in places of difficult decisions. Even your explanation says a scout is obedient to those he is supposed to be obedient to. Who picks and chooses who we are supposed to be obedient to? Yah, try to explain that little side bar to a scout. I was advised when I was young to read the bible to understand life, and live life to understand bible. That is, without a doubt, one of the wisest words of advice I was given in my lifetime. And lucky for me, I was young. How about "Obey the Scout Law to understand life. Live life to understand the Scout law". It's simple and it works because you don't have to provide your personal exceptions to fill in the other person's grey area. Barry

Eagle project reviews (approvals) are intended to verify that all the parties involved know what to expect, and that the project is within the BSA recommendations. You would be surprised of how many scouts just take off and start a project without informing the beneficiaries of the project. And because some scouts take on more than they can handle, there are a few half completed projects littering communities. I remember one member many years ago explaining that their district was pretty tough on accepting projects because the local new paper had written a couple of uncomplimentary articles of unsightly uncompleted Eagle projects that left the community dealing with the cost for clean up. Reputation can be a tall hurdle to bring down. Not and Eagle project, but the Canadian Border Agent that our crews had to visit before continuing through the Canadian side of the Boundary Waters had a book of pictures that showed the destruction of Canadian boundary water camp sites from the Boy Scouts. Now I could tell by the pictures that many of the sites weren't from Boy Scouts, but there must have been at least a couple of incidences that created the bad blood leaving the other 99 percent of the scouts suffering the long lecture by the Border Agent. Barry

Sorry, I couldn't read the rest. Starting out with words like pandering, fear and bigotry all in the same sentence can only intended to attack a segment of readers to which you don't agree. Talk about unscout like! I am curious, did you really want to have a mature intellectual dialogue, or were you just trying to find a clever opening? If you are wondering; yes I also corrected scouts who used the same manner of dialogue. I pushed them to practice a mature form of communication so that listeners would feel encouraged (and safe) to consider or reason their words instead of being repulsed by a rancor tone. Barry

Good suggestions up to this point. Imagine doing 12 hours of work a day in 8 hours. And imagine the software developer with mediocre skills doing advanced development. I know this because I spent a lot of time asking the BSA software developers to develop software for making our lives easier. I can't remember all my request because I approached them with a lot of ideas. But I found that it's not like these folks are waiting around for Col. Flaggs to approach them with great wonderful new ideas. They are overwhelmed with the development already at hand. Not that you shouldn't try to push the ideas, I sure did. Who knows, the software you guys are using now might have some of my ideas as we speak. But I did learn how to work with them instead of over them or at them. This discussion keeps turning into a grip session at the enemy of the everybody outside of our units. Trust me, there are a lot of reasons why District, Council and National aren't performing to our personal standards, but in most cases they are trying. And it's not like I'm a company man defending their every action. I give National full credit for the mess we have now. But lets be reasonable. I spent several hours working with the BSA software developers and I found them to very patient and polite while listening to some yahoo from Oklahoma who thinks his idea will save scouting, and yet is overwhelmed with the task he was hired to perform in the first place. Another idea is you could try and develop your own software on your own computer and donate it to District for proof of concept. Of course then you find that once you leave the program, there is nobody willing to step in and maintain the software or hardware. Hmm, how do I know this! A lot of good ideas and I think many worth pursuing, but my experience of pushing new ideas in a volunteer organization is approach those you are asking for help, or to help, as your friends, because even the worst of us sense condescension and contentment. I do have one story on the subject. One of our parents was a hard working prestigious lawyer and Eagle. He once approached us complaining about the difficulty of his son finding qualified MB counselors outside the troop. He came from the more traditional days of looking for an expert in the specific field and developing life long memories and relationships from the experience. That is what he wanted for his son. The irony is that his specialty of law was the reason the BSA was having to clamp down tighter on MB counselors. Maybe NJ can help me here, but this father also liked to threaten our troop with litigation when he wanted something changed in the program that he felt was not appropriate. In many cases he was right, we were a young troop learning to mature. But he never just asked, he threatened with litigation. And we never saw him accept when he wanted something, so we cringed every time he walked through the door. Now he was asking for a policy that was changed in recent years because of the style litigation that was making him rich and prestigious. I've learned a lot about people from my scouting experiences. Sorry to get on a soap box. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm and idea person and the more the better. Keep bringing them. Barry

Back in the mid 90's when forums and discussion groups were just becoming a tool for the interest they represented, I remember the Canadian Scouts basically dominating the Scouting Web with the discussions and resource sites to find just about anything a scouter needed to improve their program. Canadian Scouts at the time was considered by all the best of the best in scout programs. There were many discussions from the American scouters to how the BSA could change and follow some of their examples. Then all that changed overnight. I remember clearly the Canadian Scouters announcing their exit of the forums because their organization was making major changes in the program. I don't remember the particulars about it, but politics and activism was given all the blame. As I read the little bit of information of this story, I can't help but feel that the tail is still wagging the dog in Canada, and now at another county. So this is Globalism. Barry

There is no conspiracy as some seem to imply. There are two major requirements to a list, someone to develop the list and someone to maintain the list. Have you ever tried to maintain a list of hundreds of people who make no effort to join or quit. If the list is not at least maintained by a computer, it will struggle in a volunteer system because the integrity of the list depends on the efforts of a volunteer. Our district attacked the problem of creating and maintaining by providing a MB Counselor training course each year. A counselor didn't have to attend, but it was an easy way of getting the Youth Protection out of the way and learning how they were expected to do their responsibility. I would say 50% of counselors attended the training. That works real well provided SOMEONE organizes training each year and develops the list. The reason it worked well when I was on the district is because the leaders of one Troop headed the training and the list. Sounds like a good idea, don't you think. One SM on this forum seems to blame all his ills on all adults outside his unit, this sounds like a good place to show off his, um, abilties. However, the flaw in units doing the heavy work for multiple units is what happens when that unit changes leadership. I have watched countless district AND COUNCIL programs and activities just suddenly stop because that person who organized it for so many years left. OK, District should support it, but they have a lot on their plate as well. And in our cause one skill that is sorely lacking at our district is recruiting. If they can't recruit, they are limited in their ability to manage responsibilities. MB Counselors are always way down the list of things that have to get done by district. Which leaves the advice I give troop leaders and works pretty good; find a couple of troops near your location and build your own list among the those troops. You get the bigger list than your own troop, but not so big that it can't be managed. Once the counselors work with a couple scouts from other units, the system start to get momentum. MB Counselors didn't seem so hard before BSA required registration and YP, but National was forced that direction when most of the YP violations reported involved counselors. The BSA had to show an effort to not only protect the scouts, but the adults as well. Barry

It's a little corny, but our PLC tried bingo after one COH. They got prizes donated and it was a huge hit with the parents and siblings. Did pizza at another one. Their ideas for making them less boring.

The SPL did this with our PLC after every Troop meeting and camp out. And I had a motto: if it's boring, change it. Scouting should be fun. Barry

As a DIY myself, who says? DIYs don't typically know or check code. Maybe they should add "Verify local code for this application". Barry

Stories of scouts who earned these awards was one of my favorite articles in Boys Life magazines back in the 60's and 70s. In fact, I learned several life saving techniques from those articles that I passed along to my scouts. The process is long and very detailed. Start it soon while the experience is still fresh on everybody's mind. Barry

As has been said before, history does not favor a more inclusive policy to increase membership. I know it appears a contradiction, but moving the Tigers (and Lions) out of the Cub program would be a step in the right direction. Barry