Eagledad

Lots of good suggestions here about teaching skills. My advice is use as much everyday useful activities as possible so the scouts are learning how to apply their newly learned skills in their activities. Each knot is designed for a specfic purpose. Learn the purpose and use it for camping. Using a small tarp as a tent can require at least 3 knots. Have the scouts race to set up that tarp using only the materials of tarp, rope and a couple of sticks. Look at all your skills that way. Well done. Yes, dodge ball in not an authorized scouting activity, but the approach and planning by the scouts and the hanging in the shadows by the adults letting the scouts do was great practice. Keep practicing. Questions? Not every action should be a growth review. Let the scouts have fun and learn from the fun. You will know when to push it for growth and when to let the scouts go home remembering how much fun they had. It's very OK for adults to be passive with scout growth so long as they are active in giving the scouts a place and process for the growth. Finding ways to learn scout skills is a place and process. A new SM called me to ask how to keep his campouts from getting boring. His campouts for the first six months of his new troop were scout skills for advancement all day long. My first suggestion was give them at least 2 hours of free time. His response was the scouts would get into to much trouble without controlled structured activities. Scouts cannot develop the skills of self control and self discipline until the are given the freedom to practice. The troop needs to be a place where scouts feel safe making the wrong decisions because wrong decisions are the teachers. Our troop never does advancement at troop meetings or campouts unless those skills are required for the theme. We save two hours on Sunday after breakfast and Scouts own service for the scouts wanting to learn skills. Skillls are for making scout activities more fun, not for advancement. One complements the other, but your scouts will get bored if you go in the wrong order. Good luck. Remember, adults have to learn more faster to keep up in a mature scout run program. If the adults aren't learning and changing, they are likely taking to much control from the scouts. Barry

I was not expecting this answer. I assumed wrongly that the abuses (reports?) were categorized. I know of a hand full of sexual abuses that occurred in the council while I was leader, and none them were physically sexual in nature. There could have been some, but, the few I knew of not only were not physical, the complaint was at scouts. Not adults. Just seems the numbers shouldn't be used in these discussions. Could the number just 10 percent of the published discussed numbers the circumstances are whittled down to specifics? Who knows. We know scouts were physically abused, but seems we have no idea how many. Barry

CO's rarely know all the adults except for the leaders who suggest the approval. To say CO's dig in for a fight requires context because CO's don't like to dig in an fight in normal situations. There has to be more to the story. I'm questioning how a CO would turn down an application that isn't checked for abusers. Aren't all applications checked now? Barry

I understand how it works. And, I also know how much leverage adults can have in the process. I blame the adults in our lodge. In our case, it wasn't adults having fun running the program their way, it was adults ignorant of how to let the scout lead the program. They were terrible. I was even recruited to fix the problem, but my one hour a week was all used up fixing other problems. Barry

I'm curious, Do we know the 637 is sexual? Do we know if they are physical? I ask because the abuse situation I know of that was physical was not sexual. And the sexual abuse situation was not physical. The sexual report came from an adult who was standing outside of a scout tent listening the scouts having a sexual discussion about girls.. Barry

I'm good with it. I have 30 years of scouting experience in one of the most violent storm states in the union. We've camped in zero degree weather as well as 110 degree weather. We have camped in more thunderstorm than I can count. Take the training and know what to do and you are good to go. Barry

There is a saying, "If you are uncomfortable with the weather, you aren't dressed right.". Barry

Covid alone throws the data out-the-window. The other stuff, at best, would just be polling opinions. The smart action would be for the BSA to stay the BSA for a while and for them to work together with the GSUSA on a national marketing campaign to promote scouting. More difficult for the BSA because it is a co-gender program, but it could still be done if the two groups worked together. Barry

Record making stuff? Probably never enters their minds. And if it does, that is also choice. My son had some friends in another troop who were famous for never wearing long pants. They always wore scout shorts, even in the coldest weather. I'm sure they some kind of record. I don't think this is that hard of an accomplishment. Our troop had a least one outing a month the whole time I was there. It wasn't about records, it was about adventure and activities. Patrol method needs a place to practice. Provide the place and the scouts will grow from practice. Very simple and it works. As the program matures and grows, so will the activities. There are some years we have at least 8 outside the program adventure activities planned and run by the scouts. We had some months with three activities. We were busy. Scouts weren't required or expected to attend all activities, so some of them were small. Some of those are a simple weekend experience and some are two weeks. The Scuba experience required several months of training to get certified. There was no sight on getting a record, just having fun. Some troops are more active than others. Good for them. Barry

There is something there. Individuality? fairness maybe, I don't know, but we had several special needs scouts, who struggled outside of scouts, excel in the troop. Barry

I look at it as providence. I was an ASM while I was the CM, so I gained the experience to know what the Webelos needed for a FUN program. While we couldn't find another Webelos leader, three volunteered to assist. And, the other parents were great. So, I did the planning and let the parents lead the activities. I think we did it right because one scout who went to a different troop told me at his Eagle ceremony that his Webelos experience was the most fun he had in scouts. Barry

So true. I have a lot of stories here. I'm sure elitts does as well. One story is that I gave up the CM position to be the Webelos leader of 16 scouts. No, we aren't supposed to do that. Barry

The maturity between 1 and 2 is huge. The 2nd graders are about the same maturity of 3 and 4. My thinking is pre-K, K and first grade. And, I being told by my adult kids that kindergarten is the new first grade. So, it could get worse. While I think the Webelos program is pretty well designed, I believe the 2nd year Webelos need to get more involve with Troops. Not a lot, but enough to make the program more fun. Webelos is where the packs suffer the most with adult burnout. So, if the troops could assist the leaders with program, that would be a huge influence toward improving the crossover numbers. Barry

Curious, Walmart has insurance that covers for customers who hurt themselves falling in their parking lot. Does Walmart have a reputation of customers falling in their parking lot? I imagine just as much reputation as BSA's history of child sex abuse. Barry

I don't concern myself much with competition. As much as I harp of how the Cub program hurts the Troop program, it brings in 97% of the membership. If a Scouting group wants to seriously compete with the BSA, they need to heavily market an attractive Cub level program. That would hurt, if not kill, the BSA. Barry

Well said. I agree with the how the program can impact the community. One year I learned that 6 of the 7 students voted as leaders by the high school student body were scouts in our troop. The 7th was a girl. None of those scouts told me, I learned it later from a teacher. Surely that can't be coincidence in a school of 2800 students. Barry

Sounds like a great troop. Ours functioned much the same way. I instructed the scouters in my adult training classes that if they would focus on a quality older scout program, they will inherit a quality younger scout program. Troops tend to do the reverse leaving the older scout program as more of just a hang out for the scouts and fill in when they are needed. Older scouts need to set the tone of the program just as you said so the younger scouts learn good habits simply by seeing them in action. Barry

Of course, but we are talking about taking the older mentor scouts out of the loop. prepubescent boys instinctively tend to herd for protection. Leadership forces them on the open away safety, so heavy mentoring gets them through it. But, 13 year olds are not older scouts and adults aren't good models to mimic. Barry

This is probably where scouting will go, for insurance purposes, but it is the death of scouting as a program where youth develop character through the process of making independent decisions. My experience is under 14 scouts aren't instinctively mature for leadership, leaving the adults to intercede when the growth stalls. Scouting is the one true program that develops maturity to confront the realities of adulthood. Now what? Barry

That’s all quite a reach without hard facts. That being said, what do you propose to make sure it doesn’t happen again? Barry

I don’t know, the scandal of a public school coach caught. abusing girls has been in our news all week. There is probably at least one sex abuse scandal in a public school every week somewhere in the US. That is a lot of scandals. So, let’s replace BSA in your example with “your child’s school” in all public schools and imagine how parents should respond. Should National Leaders shut down all local public schools? Inherent danger? I’m trying to imagine 85,000 school teacher sex abusers. Even with all the press, that still seems like a lot. Barry

I think the moderators have done as good as they can in holding the posters to a scout like tone. And I’ve not always been so kind with my opinions of the mods. The discussion is being dominated by emotionally fueled posters who believe they are the smartest contributors in the thread. Add newer members who expect extra leeway with the victim card, and the discussion gets very one-sided. Fine as long it stays on the facts of chapter 11, but most folks here have a vested interest in the future of the program, so any opinions about the future of the program can draw expected responses. It’s a complement to the mods that victims feel safe in this forum. But, being scout-like means there has to be fairness, balance, and respect for all the members, including the passionate members who have a stake in the future of the program. After all this is a scouting form. Barry

Our troop had a reputation for being a safe place for many reasons. One reason was it was safe for scouts to make wrong choices and not be shamed for it. Wrong choices were considered a requirement for character growth. But we also had a reputation where scouts were physically and mentally safe. Several families with physically and mentally handicapped sons picked our troop because of our reputation. We also had active scouts who were there because it was safe from mental and physical abuse at home. just from the number of scouts in our troop who used our program as a safe refuge, I’m confident there are many many times more of them than scouts abused in their units. That is not to take away from those who were abused, they have the right to seek justice. But there should be balanced in the discussion. Barry

It will be interesting to see how volunteers are guided to deal with tenting two scouts of the same identified gender, but opposite biological gender. I read where a UK Girl Scout Professional was fired for not allowing opposite biological genders' in the showers at the same time. We live in complex times. Barry

Reminds me of one Webelos summer camp in 1993 where a female Webelos leader was asked to leave camp because she walked in the shower area to tell (shouted) her scouts that they were staying in the shower area too long. The whole camp could hear those scouts laughing and joking around. The scouts where in their swimsuits and she was just being a mom walking in the shower area without thinking to tell them to quit messing around and holding up the showers for the rest of the camp. That was when we knew Youth Protection was getting really serious. Barry