Eagledad

Yes, I saw a picture of a two headed snake once, but that isn't normal. All things being equal, a healthy family starts with a mom and dad. Barry

A healthy family relationship, which is mother and father. Barry

The question is how many were kicked out?

My editor doesn't work well with the Scouter site, so I will keep the answer short. Please forgive the bluntness of the answer. I have much better answers to the question buried somewhere in the archives. I have seen no evidence in my life time that the homosexuality behavior is any more natural than humans who desire sex with animals. Their is the mental and physical health issues of the person who desires to participate in the behavior as well as the the health issues of continued behavior. That being said, I have close friends and relatives who are gay, so I'm not ignorant to the behavior and lifestyle. I have a lot of compassion for them because I see them suffer greatly. Barry

""I learned a few years ago to do my best to avoid the garbage that comes from our local council all the way up to National. I feel if we bring that stuff to the troop level, we are doing a dis-service to those we serve."" Agreed, but this has gone way way above National into the limelight of the national media and political process. Every person (youth and adults) who considers going to a scouting activitity (recruiting?) is wondering which side of the "us against them" they are on. And there will constant reminders by the media and politicians of just who side you should be on. We the people (sheep really) let the Pop Culture take our program away from us. Barry

We will just have to agree to disagree. Barry

Yes, even Packsaddle couldn't keep focused on the orginal intent of the subject. The media and BSA dissenters has stigmatized the organization enough that the average Tiger parent isn't going to want to hassle with it. Barry

One of the differences of today is parents are a lot busier. Sure Den leaders are hard to find, they have been working all day long and we ask them to take on another dozen young boys for a couple of hours when they come home. Moms didn't work in the 70's and early 80's. The added complexity of running a pack over the last 30 years hasn't helped either. By adding the Tiger program, adults can see themselves stuck for five years. I'm personally amazed that we get as many adults as we do. I am a pretty good recruiter, but I do it by getting them to commit to just one small step and hope they get hooked for climbing the whole mountain. Climbing a mountain isn't so hard when you look at one step at a time. The problem I see with troops is adults have a hard time seeing their participation in the big picture and there is very little incentive to put out the effort. Unless they are one of three or four key leaders, they simply don't see how their time makes a difference. They either do way too little or sufficate the program with way too much. I've said before that 50% of my Scoutmastering was working with adults just trying to get them to see the mission and where they fit in that mission. Troop programs are attractive to narcissists who want full control of steering the program. You see a lot of them even here on the forum. Twocubdad and MattR types of leaders are rare.

Nine out of ten parents want to work with the scoutmasters, expecially with their sons behaviors, or misbehaviors. I found that most SMs want to go it alone thinking they have something special that parents don't have. And maybe the title of Scoutmaster does give some extra power, but we only see these kids a couple hours a week on average, the parent a lot more. So I worked with the parents as a team working together to build a man. I hid nothing from the parents and usually kept them up to date on their son's performance in the troop. In fact while the scouts are usually loading or unloading their gear for camp, I walked around bragging to parents about their son. Usually they take bad news pretty well when they get good news most of the time. Base did very well. Barry

I think there are many classes of adult leaders, I know my Eagle Scout neighbor who was arrested for making and selling adult pornographic movies was turned down by the BSA. He didn't even have kids. I know of a drug dealer older brother (bad one) that was turned away as well. Should we be afraid of stigmatizing the kids by those behavior classifications? What you are really saying is the BSA legitimized homosexuallity as a dangerous behavior, which you don't agree. Is homosexuality a dangerous behavior? I think it is, so we agree to disagree. Barry

Was always my number 1 fear as a SM. Oklahoma is well known for its energetic storms, but so were all the areas we seemed to do our high adventures. Barry

It's a lot more complicated than just a changing program, the BSA had more scouts after their big changes in the 60s and 70s than before. All the Scouting organizations in North America are suffering from the same problems of money, membership and camps. The Girls Scouts have struggled the longest but Campfire Kids wasn't that far behind them. The Canadian Scouts (largest Scouting orgnization in the world in 1990) is 30 percent of what they were of the early 90s. The one common event with all these organizations that marks the start their dramatic program decline is changing to a more progressive membership policy. Canadian scouts was most dramtic, but they all have the same trend. Take that as you want, the data doesn't lie. It's been said for several years that the BSA would follow the same decline as other organizations if it followed the same path. I attribute the BSAs slow membership decline the last 15 years to a top heavy Pack program that has become so complicated for average parent to manage that it burns out its members in three years. I could show graphs at the time that predicted todays deline based from big changes in the pack program. I don't think we have seen the real decline of the BSA yet, but we are about to. After watching all these other organizations decline the last 25 years, I personally conclude that Scouting is a values program which makes it a concervative organization. Once it gets away from concervative values, it's just another after school club. If you want to camp, join scouts. Otherwise go play chess. It will be left up to the churches to support the kind of scouting we have today. But without support from National, it will just be local.

Since paste doesn't work for me anymore and the editor kicks me out everytime I hit Return, I'm going to ask you to search for the article in the Wall Street Journal titled "Dessention and fiscal woes beset the Girl Scouts". It's pretty interesting. Barry

Welcome stout, this site has kind of gone through an overhaul and lost a lot of themore practical scouters, those who enjoy talking scouting. Don't limit yourself to the discussions and post of the just present lot, use the search also because their is a goldmine of informaiton from discussions over the past years. Barry

Check with the OA to see if they have poles you can borrow. They usually save their poles and are varied in lengths. Barry

Personally I don't think its about outdoors or adventure, my scouts do and did a lot more high adventure stuff than I did as a scout. But I definitely think that scouting is more prissy. I think it's there is less freedom for boys to express themselves as boys. Adults are A LOT more guarded today about what boys can say, do or even meet. We put limits on knives and other woods tools. It was no big deal for my patrol to go on a five mile with a map and compass, but adults today would struggle to let a patrol hike through the safe parts of our town without some kind of oversite. How many boys can ride their bike accross town without getting permission? Our culture has closed in on our youths freedom of expression and freedom to move about. The culture is more prissy, and we don't have very many adults who remember how it used to be. Barry

The BSA is a just a reflection of the culture and it's own progressive changes. The program dynamics changed dramatically when it allowed women leaders into the troops. This is not a female bashing rant, women are certainly capable and have proven themselves in the program. But women lack the youth Boy Scout scouting experience and camping experience. With 50 percent of the adult BSA member being female and another 25 percent of it males who also lack a youth scouting and camping experience, you start to realize how few of experience adults there are in the program to carry on the tradtions of a more male influenced experience. The program dynamics changed so much that the 21st Century Wood Badge course was a result of a more gentler kinder outdoor training course. Strangely Wood Badge is the first real outdoor camping experience for many of our adult leaders. Is there hope, well there are scouters even now on this forum motivated by political correctness pontificating for girls in the troops. The BSA is stuck between the ignorance of it's adult membership and media driven pop culture.

Yes, only the best scouts were elected in our troop as well. But our guys work so hard that only the ambitous scouts want the position. The SPL position is kind of SM in training for me, I work with them in the skills of coaching, mentoring, delegating and patience. It's worked well because they like to go back and teach those skills to the Patrol Leaders. Interestingly the SPL's typically want a break after six months because they work so hard. And they typically volunteer for Troop Guides and are very good at it. I don't know if one started that tradition or what, but they want teach, coach, and mentor and the new guys seem perfect for them. But six months later they want the SPL responsibility back because they miss the intensitiy of it. Our style seems to naturally raise the cream to the top. I can't take responsibilty, I didn't plan it that way. But it sure is rewarding to watch. Barry

Thanks MattR, I was doing that until about a week ago. Now it kicks me out of the editor when I paste. Barry

Anyone else feel the usability of the new Scouter.com forum is synonymous to the BSA's present situation. A response requires a great deal of planning, persistence and patience. My response to King Dingdong will be brief, wish me luck. Your highness, if you can't keep older scouts in your program, you are doing it wrong. Barry

Some people are just by nature lazy. I'm not meaning that in a negative way. I believe the majority of us lack true leadership ambition. That doesn't mean the scouts aren't learning the leadership skills you are teaching. It's the Scoutmasters responsibility to help a scout grow. Where you find that growth is hard to define sometimes, but admitting our failings to me is growth. I don't know how old your SPL is, but if he is 14 or younger, he may still turn into a great leader. I seen puberty do it many times. If he is older, it is rare that he will change much. But, one scout that I had this same conversation is now a very successful business owner in my town. So I fully believe they are getting what we are offereing, even if they don't see it just yet.

We had an adult just like this and eventually she left and took her son with her. She joined two other units before her reputation spread enough to keep her out of scouting. I brought this example up once in a forum discussion on the subject of whether a unit should warn the other unit leaders about these peoples behavior. In my case, I did not warn the next SM, but he did call. What I've grown to learn over time is these folks generally don't change. You did well mashmaster keeping the DE and COR in the loop. Barry

"Is my bias against SPL's showing?" Yep, and so is your EGO. Really good leaders have no bias or pride. Humiliy gives them unlimted vision to build men of character in every situation, every program style with every personality. Barry

Every new SM has the same experience. I onced asked the forum the same question and a wise SM asked me to ask the SLP how he felt he was doing. I did and was amazed at learned. So i ask you, has he grown at all in the position? Ask him what he thinks of his performance. I've had scouts who in this discussion choose to not advance until they felt they improved. Most all of us Scoutmasters start out by judging how scouts perform in "our" minds. But Our job isn't to shape boys into our image of a scout, it's to guide them into wanting to make good decisions. You can't make them do it, you need to figure out how to get them to voluntarily change. It means nothing if only do it for you. Barry

Sentine, I believe there is a right and wrong difference between mix-age and same-age patrols, but there are appropriate times for both methods. Most of the time the best method depends on the leadership style of the adults. Sometimes the best method depends on the limitations of the troop. However all things being equal, my experience is the mixed age patrols perform better with scout growth, expecially at the younger ages. Thank goodness for choices because most units are not equal. Barry