Eagledad

>>Again, a heart-to-heart about it over a campfire or coffee is more important than reading some chapter and verse on "BSA is this" or "BSA is that."

This is a great discussion and I will learn a lot from it. It's also exciting to be a friend of someone on a hostage negotiating team. Pretty cool! Everyone has already contributed some great stuff and I'm really enjoying it. My observations of natural leaders is they make us willing followers. Barry

>>I figue the best way to do that is not so much stepping in with the scouts directly ( unless real harm is immenant), but maybe taking the PL aside and saying : " Hey, maybe.....".

Every SM has their own style giving SM Conferences just like giving SM minutes. Its OK to be different. A SM should know the scout well enough to feel the Scout ready for a BOR, but not so well that the scout has everything signed off. The BORs responsibility is make sure the scout has completed all the rank requirements. The SMs responsibility is to make sure the scout knows the skills. First thing I do is check the scout book and make sure it's filled out correctly. If not, we talk a little about that then I have a nice chat about are mutual interest in scouting. If the book is fine, then I'm like Stosh, I try to guide the scout himself to figure out if he is ready for his BOR. His book will get signed whether he feels ready or not. But I also understand many adults can't do that style. I would not use the method the OP is talking about, but we can see just from this discussion that there are a lot of opinions about this. And every adult has there own way of relating to a scout. I think what we need to understand is what the main object of a SM conference compared to a BOR. Remember the BOR is a check on the SM's program. I do feel that if scouts are intimidated by the SM conference or BOR, then that is not the right style. Barry

What is an "an experienced popular boy"? Barry

Thanks Eagle92, I'm glad to hear its true because I told that story at the begining of our annual Troop JLT. Our course staff (all scouts) gave me exactly one minute to say a few words to the participants before they started the course. That story takes less than a minute to tell and nothing needs to be added for the impact I wanted to deliver. Barry

I was having a discussion with a historian about WWII and he told me that organizers of D Day went looking for soldiers who were Eagle Scouts to storm the beaches because they knew first-aid and could immediately step into leadership if their superior was taken out of action. Now he didnt say they werent officers, but I took it that way from how he told me the story. Barry

The boy run program cant go bad, just the administrators of it. In fact Im a little weary of adults who think in the possibility of a Lord of the Flies moment because they are already skeptical of a proven style of youth development. Those adults tend to interfere with scouts decisions before the scouts have time to experience the repercussions. Yes, the adults waited too late to intervene but I know from experience that sometimes the adults mess up. Im sure these adults will do better the next. But I wonder if the experience will scare them away from boy run or if they will learn how to ecoruage a different attitude torward these kinds of behaviors. Running a Scouting program is always learning process for the both the adults and boys. In fact, I teach in the SM Specific class that adults need to learn faster from their experiences than the scouts in a maturing troop or eventually the scouts will outrun them and the adults will end up being obstacles to the scouts' growth. Adults also need to push their comfort envelope enough to give the scout enough room to have to think about the reprocussions of their decisions. In the long term, the troop will eventually mature enough to where the scouts act more adult than the adults. One of the attitudes that has to be encouraged and develop in self independence program is everyone is responsible for all the behaviors in the troop. My personal motto that drove the way I ran the program was If the adults didnt show up today, would the scouts do it differently?. And if I felt the answer was yes, then we started working on the part of the program of which I was uncomfortable. If I felt that a scout could get bullied in our troop, then I would be concerned that some scouts observing the bullying would not for whatever reason step up. And I would start changing that environment. In our troop, if a scout behaved in correctly and wasnt stopped by any scout near him, all the scouts who observed the misbehavior would be included in repercussion of that bad decision. Eventually our scouts learned that if someone didnt speak up, everyone would be held accountable. Once you have a safe environment like that, the scouts would behave the same whether or not the adults showed up that day. Barry

>> I'll be honest, I do like the fact that the members of the troop elect the SPL. It reminds me more of our democratic republic format, i.e. the PLC= Congress and the SPL=President. It's just that the SPL also presides over the PLC. IMHO, it reinforces the concept that you must elect good leaders.

>>It is possible District folks have the positions they have because no one else will take the job.

>>Eagledad, I'll grant you that many unit leaders need training and are headstrong...but frankly, I expect district and council folks to be a little more astute in how they handle this.

>>To often I see the SPL being commander in chief (if not the SM) and everyone has to do what they are told. Tyranny at it's worst. Thus one gets the popularity votes for SPL and other politically run troops rather than a incubator for developing leadership in the small groups of the patrols which Boy Scouts was originally founded as.

Even folks born with a natural gift for leading need to learn and apply the skills of leadership so they through trial and error develop into productive and respected leaders. Most Olympic athletes are born with above average talent, but even they had to develop their technique and practice constantly to be the best. Seattle Pioneer is correct, the Scouting program offers all its participants the opportunity to develop into great leaders. Barry

>>Show me a troop that wastes talent on a full-time SPL position, and I'll show you an SPL who is playing chain of command with a lot less than 300 foot chains.

>>f only 5% has the ability to lead, what's the point of Woodbadge?

>>Just to be clear, I'm one of the 75% who doesn't.

>>Eagledad writes: "Less than 5% of the population has the skills to lead" Barry, You have been quoting that statistic for years. Is it from personal observation and/or somewhere else?

There was a poll published the other day stating that 25% of cell phone owners world wide have nude pictures of themself on their phone. Thats not sexting, but says a lot about our culture. Barry

A leader here once claimed the SPL was the Scotmaster's way of controlling of the scouts. I still laugh at that skeptical statement because if not the SPL to teach and guide the younger scouts, then who? The Scoutmaster? (LOL) Your choice is clear, either SPL to enourage growth in the youth leaders or the SM. Barry

>>Actually, seems to me the worst problems are the adults who get into Scouting in order to be "in charge." They don't mind the red tape and bureaucracy because it empowers them. That's part of what I meant by National not helping.

Who teaches and guides the Patrol Leaders in your troops? The SPL is training for the SM position in our troop. Barry

>>EagleDad said: "the average scouting volunteer actually puts in far less than 20 months." I have to believe that that is because new volunteers run into the National BSA red tape that this thread is about.

>>Disagree with the term of volunteer service..

Without the the BSA, there would be no scouting. Those of us who have worked on the membership side of things understand the struggle of older scout programs like Venturing and Venture Patrols. In general new Venturing Crews and Venture Patrols are started by adults who want to experience other areas of the BSA program mainly because they are bored or feel restricted. My observation is three out of four of those programs disolve in four years. I believe Cubs and Troops have a much record because their programs have a much better structure that keeps them functioning with the passion that fuels the older scout programs. Without the basic structure of the Cubs and Scouts provided by the BSA, those individual units would only last as long as the willingness of the adults, then it spud be gone. While I do believe there is some of what Base describes going on, I don't agree it is as much of a problem as he does. One only has to do little research to learn that large churches have more enduring programs than small churches. Experts point out that the average volunteer of any organization gives less than 20 months of service. A program that relies on volunteers to function is a very difficult program to maintain and it requires a large organization to do it. Anybody know of a Badon Powell Troop in your area? Barry

We never did a free weekend like that while I was SM I guess because it just sounds boring. I know of a few troops that free weekends. The only way I would consider the idea is on our patrol campout months but even then they still had some kind theme. The troop does do one Troop outing a year on a military base where we generally sleep indoors (1 year it was inside a C5A Cargo Airplane), but those weekend is usually structured by the folks on base, so I wouldnt call it a free weekend. But our troop does two things pretty well that would prevent scouts wanting a free weekend campout. They plan fun campout themes and the scouts schedule a lot of free time on all their campouts. It is not unusual for our scouts to be jumping in the sack before lights out because they are exhausted from the day. We even encourage a lot of free time at summer camp so the scouts aren't stuck in activities they aren't enjoying. We takes lots of balls, bats, frisbees and games so that scouts can find something that interest them. I think back on one weekend campout where the PLC planned a Hiking, Biking, and Canoeing theme. The Patrols had to move a distance of five miles using bikes, hiking and canoes on a lake. AND, they also planned 15 stops where the scouts had to demonstrate scout skills. A week before the campout, a Pack of 13 Webelos and their parents asked if they could camp with us that month. Turns out that that the patrols and Webelos finished the 5 mile course by 2:00PM, so they had free time until dinner where they just did a lot more biking, hiking and canoeing the rest of the day. All the scouts and adults were so physically and mentally exhausted the next morning that the PLC cancelled the usual Sunday activities to rest. The Webelos and their parents didnt say a word as they were leaving the camp and I was afraid we scared them off. But it turned out they had so much fun that they told other packs about our troop and we got 30 new scouts that year. Any theme can be fun if the planning is creative enough. Our troop has done several night competition campouts where they do scout skills competitions most of the night. Not all that different from doing it during the day, but doing at night is different and fun. Weve done a couple campouts where the troop hiked onto a simulated accident where the scouts had to treat adults and older scouts with fake injuries. Sure its a great lesson and application of scout skills, but it's also a lot of fun. I think our guys are having to much fun doing scouting stuff to plan a free weekend. Barry