Eagledad

Can it get safer than YP at the unit level? Maybe the changes should be toward reactions to abuse reports. Isn't that what the real complaint is? Barry

Great post, but this one line sticks to me as the major problem. This generation does not agree as a community of moral behavior. Nobody in our neighborhood would dare bring up sexuality, much less abuses, because political correctness has confuse common sense morality. My neighbor who has two young boys quit talking to us when they found we voted for other guy in the presidential election. The neighbors across the street are nice folks as far as we can tell, but they obviously live a different lifestyle, and keep to themselves. There is no doubt to me that young folks today are confused about basic moral principles. The same principles communities hold each other accountable not that long ago. The media is so hypocritical on moral behavior that few people could feel safe in discussing their beliefs. It takes a strong person to admit to the religious principles.. Barry

Thanks, that does help a lot. Still, I heard discussions of sex from scout filled tents late in the night that could be construed in that list. I'm not sure I'm completely over my dads talk of the birds and the bees. I wonder how many of these claims are acts from other scouts. Barry

What constitutes abuse? We had one situation where an ASM lost his temper and hit a scout with his plastic coffee cup. The scout wasn't physically hurt AT ALL, but he and his parents were mentally worried the adult could loose his temper again. We reported the situation to district and council and restricted the leader from the scouts. We never saw him again accept at his son's ECOH. The family was satisfied with our actions, but could they go back on this litigation? We had another adult claim her son was a victim of abused because she heard scouts cussing near her son. Her son said it never happened. Could she try to file a claim? My high school teacher son has a lot of stories where students claimed unproven acts of abuse. It is a big deal because teachers are put on leave until the investigation is completed. But, students know the actions and use them to their advantage. So, I wouldn't hold 600 recent cased as an example of continued problem. There are some bad people out there and I hope they are sorted out from claims that don't rate up to those bad acts. Barry

I don't know that the culture will allow Scouting to get to it's roots. I had almost as many parents pushing their son to get elected into OA during their first year of Scouting. Many parents were irate when their son wasn't elected and demanded that the SM intercede. We live in a culture where each player of the youth soccer team is handed a trophy for just being on the team. That wasn't driven by the players. Adults encourage mediocrity so they don't have to deal with the emotions of disappointment they feel when their children don't accel. Barry

Oh, I guess. But it isn't the same. One has to be careful of defending passion in spite of reality. When I was a Scout in the 70's, OA Arrowmen held more respect by scouts than the Eagles because they were selected by their everyday scouting actions within the troop. The respect of the Eagle came from scouts who independently put in the extra effort to earn the Eagle. And, that is a well earned respect of itself. But, when I became a Scout Leader in 1992, I found my Cubs getting continued lectures by adults to stay in scouting for the Eagle. The All Mighty Eagle. I'm not sure how many of the Cubs listened to those lectures, but their parents sure did. As Scoutmaster talking to visiting Webelos families looking for a home troop, the number one question by the parents was how quickly can their son get an Eagle in our Troop. No doubt in my mind that 90% of Eagles today wouldn't have made it without a lot of push from adults. Call it cultural, I guess, but the Eagle is different today. It is still a stature of respect, but not the same. That being said, there are still those 2 percent of scouts who are self-motivated and driven to aspire to Eagle nobility. In that since, .nothing has changed. Barry

Over the years I heard the struggles of friends building or remolding their house. They found that if they weren't watching the building contractor crews in person, the crews tended to build toward a different plan, or no plan at all. I later had the same experience. There is the visionary, then everyone else. The problem with great visions is the people making it a reality don't see the vision, so they work to complete their personal vision of the task. If there isn't a visionary mentor watching, guiding and teaching, the vision fades into easy tasks that have little to do with the vision. As the District Membership Chair, I worked with a lot of new units at all age groups and I found that if there wasn't a general understanding for the purpose of the unit, it likely would not survive. Even units that split off from another unit rarely survive two generations of leadership if the leadership never really had the vision and passion of the original unit leadership. More often than not, they merge back into the original unit. Success is almost fully dependent on "Relationships also provide the exchange of ideas, and mentoring, needed by new Scouters". My problem was trying to get our DEs to understand the importance of Relationships and mentoring the vision and ideas to the next generations. It was a numbers game for them. Not that I'm blaming DEs' for the ills of the dying units, they were following orders. But, as I said, if the visionary mentor isn't teaching and guiding, how can the workers at ground level reach the goal? I think many people have the time, but aren't recruited. The key is first finding the Visionary mentor who gets it and understands how to structure the program so that it functions efficiently toward the goals. Then to find and recruit the folks who AGREE and SEE the vision and WANT to give energy to the effort. An expert in building successful businesses said that the most successful business's have workers who understand and agree with the vision of the company. When they all do their small part, the big vision is achieved. The hardest part is finding a Visionary mentor with the skills of selling refrigerators to Eskimos. Most Councils don't know how to search and recruit that person. Barry

It is interesting. Have to be careful though, National has a reputation of using research to justify changes that they wanted to implement before the research was started. Barry

There is a saying in our district, "If you aren't comfortable in the weather, you didn't dress right!". Barry

Interestingly hail is becoming the common concern the last few years in Oklahoma. A result of climate change? I don't know. But damage cost from hail far out weighs cost from other weather events. I'm not sure how well a tent will hold up to hail that breaks windshields. Barry

Most troops in Oklahoma been there and done that a few times. It's not always cut and dried and the risk of moving 100 scouts and scouters can certainly be more dangerous than leaving in the tents. I will say that lightning was my greatest fear as a SM, and a member of high adventure crews. Of course Tornados are a risk here in Oklahoma. We had one patrol on a patrol campout that abandoned their camp in the middle of the night so they could drive out of harms way. There was no damage to the camp when they got back, but it was close. We had a huge storm during a Camporee with lightning hits all around, but the only unit that moved was the one on the hill. They stayed in cars all night. The leader (cook) who slept in the camp shelter said that lightning was hitting all around and he hoped nobody was heading there to get away from the lightning. Actually the real risk was the flash flooding in the creek. So, getting low campsites can have it's own risks. I don't think there is an easy answer short of cancelling due to forecast. But, storms are so common in Oklahoma, troops would rarely get out. The most damage our group has incurred over the years was broken tent poles during 50mph winds at Philmont. The hail was eye opening as well. By coincidence, Oklahoma is getting fire danger warning and 50 mph winds as I write this post. What is a troop supposed to do? Barry

And then what? No we don't have to have that discussion. The Oath and Law set how to judge others around us. Anything more is about who is judging, not the person being judged. The uniform code is specific. The discussion is really about how lenient we should be to ignoring the code. If you really want to pull your fitness generalizations, or rather unfitness, that is on you. My experience is youth are more accepting of other peoples physical and mental abilities and disabilities than adults. Ironic since adults generally view themselves as idealistic role models. Scouting is a great program for youth until the adults get involved. Barry

Wow! Let's see; long hair, ear-ring, nose ring, tattoos, body odor, bad breath. I guess we like to talk inclusion, but when it gets down to it,........ I think this discussion took a left turn into somewhere scary. Barry

I don't know Latin Scot, I've watch a lot of scouts ask adults about their knots with a real curiosity. You may be offended with the appearance, but a lot of folks are very passionate about their scouting experiences and express it different ways. I agree with qwaze that when folks push the guidelines, "neat appearance" should be the overall guideline. I once watched a one legged scouter at the Council Scout Show, show off his wooden peg leg that had dozens of scout camp brands and signatures all over it. If a scout asked kindly, he might even let them sign it. He was very popular with the scouts. I don't remember what his uniform looked like.😂 Barry

Yes, well this could be a Pandora's box. What if the unit choses to only recruit one gender? One member on this forum adamantly pushed letting units choose as long as they include both genders. His point was that since the BSA membership now includes both genders, they must recruit both genders. I think that is called bait and switch. Barry

Don't forget the nails. Barry

This is exactly me. When I was scoutmastering, I totally focused on all the scouts equally. And yes, my sons burned out once in a while, so I let them have breaks. We also didn’t discuss scouts much at home. Both my sons aged out even after I took a break from the troop. They could have taken a break with me, but they enjoyed scouting. My best memory of being with my sons was a philmont trek. My older son went as an adult leader. Scouts lead the treks, so I got to take off my leader hat. I was just a member of the crew, and we had a blast. Barry

I finally realized you were saying about a forth of new scouts dropped out. That is probably about right, but I found first year drop outs almost impossible to track. As someone mentioned in a earlier post, many scouts sign up, but never show up. I like to place them in the catagory of scouts who quit after cubs. That is important for watching the performance of cub packs. The obstacle of tracking scouts is the independence of districts re-signing their membership. And units add more confusion by their own independent definition of active scouts. I found the only accurate way to track scouts after leaving cubs was to contact them personally. And few districts have that manpower. So, it’s a hard number to track. But we do know around 50% of graduating Webelos actively joins a troop. And we do know about 1/4 to 1/3 of those scouts drop out in the first year. I’ve known these numbers for over 25 years. The pack drop out numbers used to make me mad. Think about how many boys in that 50% drop out range would be in troops if we could raise that number by just 25%. And we are just talking about 2nd year Webelos. Tigers has a huge dropout rate of over 50%. Bears and 1st year Webelos is significant as well. Except for Tigers, I attribute most of those drop outs to adult leader burn out. Barry

Im not sure what you mean by cohort attrition, but I agree with the rest of your post. The parents have to be on board to get the scouts pasts the first year, so we have an ASM team up with a TG or PL to work with and educate the parents. The ASM is there to give the scout and parents comfort that an adult is around for support. But, all communication goes through the TG or PL to show the family that the scouts manage and run the program. The ASMs main responsibility is to show outward trust of the youth leadership. All decisions go through the TG or PL. And yes, if a scout stays in the troop a year (really after summer camp), than they are likely to stay several years. Barry

Yes, that is just me. What I mean is the ability for the average parent to manage the program as intended or expected. There are several complicated reasons why the program is so heavy now, but the biggest issue is that five years is too long for the average adult to volunteer their time. Most experience leaders will say 3 years is about all we can expect before burnout. That is at all levels of scouting. In fact, we found that new Venturing Crews started to fade in their 4th year just for that reason. Before Tigers, the Cub program was 4 years long, but it was an easy 4 years. Tigers added 5, and it is not an easy program. Burned out Bear leaders is a very significant issue, and there is still 2 more years of Cub Scouting left for their son. Lots of ways to discuss that problem, but we found that when a parent burns out or leaves, the son, one way or another, is dragged out with them. If the Scout makes it to cross over, there is still only a 50/50 chance they will join a troop. And if the adult makes it through the cub program, they are too burned out for the troop. I watched several adults I pegged to be good Scoutmasters burnout in cubs. I know we were discussing interviewing dropout scouts, but up at least until their 2nd year of the troop program, parents are usually the drivers of their sons dropping out. If you keep the parents, you keep the sons. I even taught pack leaders how to shape their program so that it was more attractive to the parents. Packs that take care of the parents and leaders have low burnout rates. Barry

Ah, my apologies, I misunderstood (very embarrassed). Yes, you are correct. That was the program before National started dumping more on the program. Barry

I don't think it is a organization problem as you put it. I think it is good advice for units. I wonder if your SM already knew why the scout left without adding an exit meeting. I generally knew why most of our scouts dropped out before they left because of my discussions with them and their parents. More often than not, it was the parents. I have often suggested on this forum that parents should get a meeting with the BOR committee when their son has one so that the committee can get to sides to the story. Scouts generally don't like to tell adults something the think adults don't want to hear. But, the parents are usually more giving with the information if they think it will make a difference. But, that is adding another bureaucratic layer to an already busy advancement process. As to this specific discussion, in general the parents were supportive of their son dropping out for the various reasons. Our fix was to work with the parents along side the scouts. But, that , as I said, is a different topic.

Yes, but adding the Tigers program tipped the balance of managing the program. So, it is significant. Barry

Not Tigers.

Are you suggesting the organization prevented YOU from calling the scout? Shesh. Let's keep the discussion balanced, shall we.