Eagledad

Check you local arts and crafts store. We made bolo ties for the adults and scouts in our troop with very nice woven leather and end pieces intended just for bolo ties. They have a lot of choices for materials. Barry

OK, I apologized, but you want to rub sand in the wound. Shesh. I could go on, but someone has to be scout-like here. Scout-like we encouraged in the traditional program. Barry

Yes, but it's not an overly used term, and in this day and age of A LOT of cultural moments, it's easy to misinterupret words with no face. Barry

Ah, thanks. I guess there is more terminology confusion than I realized. My apologies. Barry

What movement? Shesh, qwazse has excellent advice. Barry

Then you haven't been confronted, yet. Barry

For me it's just changing old habits. Give it time. But your post reminded me of a concern I had the other day; is it inappropriate to call the scouts in a totally girl patrol "Girls"? "Hi girls, I need to ask as question." I never worried about boys in a patrol, "Boys", but there seems to be some sensitivity with the girls side. There were even times I would refer to a group of men, or mixed group of male adult leaders and boys, as boys. "The boys and I are meeting over by the fire". But I'm guessing that is also inappropriate with a totally female group of leaders. Trying to be respectful of feelings is getting really hard. Barry

Thank you. Your experience was impressive and expected. I am a firm believer that even in the faceless world of forums, posters can set the tone (role model so to speak) of a discussion with only a few words. I look forward to watching your productive discussion. Barry

Cburkhardt, since you are using a passive-aggression to promote your opinion of the new scouting program, tell us more about yourself. Your past scouting experiences and your future experience goals. Are you a father, mother, grandparent? Barry

That is much harder than it sounds and requires dedicated adults. Even harder are two dedicated CCs and SMs. Don’t just ask for volunteers, seek out talented adults and personally recruit them. Barry

One of our ASMs worked for AT&T marketing. The ASM approached the Council Field leader and told him that he would put all the pictures of scouts in the local news paper that the field leader would give him. It was a gold mine offer. The field leader and I went to the same my church and he pulled me over to explain why he refused the ASMs kind gesture. He simply didn't want the ASM to get the recognition for the idea. I guess promotions in council are very competitive, so he was willing to give up the many thousands of dollars of marketing to save his ego. I don't have much respect for BSA marketing efforts. I do believe this is where National is going, and maybe even looking forward to the direction. But I think they stumbled here, it wasn't a long range vision. They have never shown me to have visionary skills. They have been reactionary the last 20 years and this is the muddy tire rut they got stuck in. There are lot of us sitting at this campfire. Barry

Do to adult mismanagement of the course, we struggled finding youth staff in our council. A youth support staff was very important for me because I wanted scouts to see that there was always another challenging level of scouting for their career,. You know, for those Sentinel947 types. You need to go out and personally recruit your staff. You have a whole council of troops, so you know there are some very fine confident young adults who can meet your high expectations. But you have to personally dig in the weeds find them. I approached it as an honor for the candidates to apply for. I wanted scouts with the right attitude. Kind of like OA candidates in the old days. I searched for NAYLE Philmont graduates. The few we got were very good and had a great work ethic. Then I queried scoutmasters for scouts that met my qualifications. Scoutmasters like to brag about their best scouts. And, I was open to past scouts older than 18. The thing is that maybe the course doesn't have the appearance of an effort worth giving. But, if you personally present the course as honor scouts presenting the best ideas of scouting to units for raising the quality of their program, you color a vision of a noble effort for the sake of bettering the community of scouting in the council. The skills they will learn and practice will stay with them forever their to be used in college and their careers. NYLT isn't just another program for council professionals bragging rights, this an advanced training program that takes the best units have to offer and makes them better with the goal to make their units better. You really want the cream of the crop because their example during the course will motivate some of the course participants to take that next challenge of being a future staff member. Eventually, you will have more than enough recruits for your honor course. If you get the word out that you are interviewing for qualified scouts and ask for just a very basic resume, I think you will get a highly motivated youth staff. And, don't kick out that husband/wife team, we can always use a great support staff/mentors. Barry

I'ts a whole new program leaving National with a lot to sort out. I know a lot of folks are relying on the idea that the program is the same, just with girls. But the question of "Demonstrate vs. Show" discussion shows that the program is taking a long step back to the basics. And I can't believe that the answers these new leaders come up with will be the same as the old boy scout program. I learned something lately, a lot of experienced males are not going back the program because it is simply not the Boy Scout program. My neighbor is an example. He is an Eagle and was planning to get evolved again with his grand kids, but neither he or his Eagle son see the new program as the program the program they earned their Eagle. It's not about girls to them, it's about the program they know. Their program is gone. Kind of like a favorite store getting bought out and changing names. I've heard several adults saying basically the same thing. I think the program is going to change a lot to meet the expectations of the new generation. National is going to have to rebrand itself. But that might be a good thing for them. Dump a lot of the traditional program baggage. Barry

Yes, I kind of read your question as "how can we work together with the other adult?" This is easy stuff, how are you going to get through the hard stuff? Whose the gatekeeper of the centralized method? Your a team. The team selects a designated leader. The leader understands the goal and serves the team toward that goal. Barry

While working my way through Engineering in the 70's, I worked as an aircraft mechanic using FAA Manuals that were written for the general aircraft built in the 40's. Large organizations are always lagging in updates to current knowledge. I remember as a scout being terrified of getting a snake bite; not because of the poison, but because of the BSA procedure to cut a slit in the bitten area for someone to suck the poison (and blood) out of the wound. The procedure has been updated since then. Thank goodness for the internet. Barry

In the big picture, what should the scout learn from the lesson? Barry

It will take some time. Everyone thought bringing mom leaders into troops in 1990 wouldn't have much effect. They couldn't have seen how much the flood of inexperienced adults would effect the traditional program. National ended up starting over and replacing all the training courses in 2000. I see a new flood of inexperienced adults again with this membership change, so I'm sure there will be some growing pains. And like the last influx, National will be right on top smoothing the path for the volunteers. And now like then, the forum will be the first to discuss these things. Barry

It’s an honor to be invited. If your family only sees it as just more work, you’re not ready yet. Give it another year so husband and son can learn what it’s all about. Then they can make an informed decision. Barry

You answered your question. Girls learn differently than boys, so the patrol method will have to compromise to have any growth. Barry

Well, maybe the problem is just the the winning and losing. I think this is the issue that will make the transition difficult, especially for the boys. Seems a lot of adults want to justify girls belonging in the program by showing they are the winners. Yes, that makes sense of course, but this got started on your defending the one size fits all basis that boys and girls do learn the same. You are going to have to rethink your wording for those of us who believe girls and boys are different and that one size certainly does not fit all. As for data, there is plenty of data for the last 50 years that draws conclusions from other mixed or single gender programs. For those of us with experience, you are going to have to rethink an approach in the discussion that is less argumentative or divisive because you certainly aren't going to experience. I have enough experience to explain how this program promotes growth in young men. I happen to believe that girls will hurt that growth. You don' that experience, so I believe the best you can say is that the program is providing you an opportunity for your daughters that you plan to take advantage of you will see how that plays out. I certainly can't argue, in fact I agree. Sameness of requirements doesn't mean the sameness of teaching methods. At least to those of us who experiences the difference between boys and girls. How did the leader in the example present the activity to the point of girls mopping up the boys? We don't know, but I sure don't see a willingness in the leaders words to do the activity different next time. In fact, the words imply the girls are just better than boys. This is the problem the BSA is going to have to deal with on the whole. Are girls really better? If so, now what? Even when adults say that girls and boys are equal, they can't wait (like in the camporee) to point out when girls are "more" equal. One poster said we need to be cheering the girls on, but how do we do that without turning the boys into losers? Did the girls have to take top honors at the camporee to be winners? But let me just say that I think we are speaking from to different places, the Troop program is completely different in that to a large degree from the pack program. The individual scout in the troop sets the teaching style because they are learning from their decisions. The adults are supposed to step back and allow that style of learning play out on the scouts terms. My concern isn't that the individual scout can't learn from their decisions when the adults inject enough interference to prevent the scout from learning. Seems reasonable, yet we have the adults at the camporee getting in the way. The patrol environment is very important to growth, but will be neglected in my opinion because of the one size fits all mentality. Right now the scouts aren't mixed, but, they will eventually be mixed because there are a lot of adults who think the learning styles are equal. Ops, here we go again, round and round. LOL Barry

Depends on how you want to express your method for success. If you want to continue local success, then why would you change? If you want consider the best method when comparing local success to national experience, you have to consider the options with humility. But, I certainly would not change local success for something less just because it works for a large population. How the data is collected is also part of the complexities. I can give several examples of program changes from National they said are supported by research. Yet, many scouters in the field say the data doesn't fit. I'm not going to get into who or why their changes don't perform as well, I'm only saying that one shouldn't shutdown success simply to appease advertised data. Do what works best. I have a question: Your basically claiming that girls and boy are the same. There is one scout leader on this forum who is claiming her girls mop up the boys in their activities. How do you take that? Barry

You also suggested not using experience to base performances. Experience is how I achieve maximum performance. There are many reasons for making choices to inject a desired approach for desired performance. The Cub age program is different from the Troop age program because the troop age youth are expected to learn habits of character by their independent decisions. I have different expectations for each group and use different approaches to achieve the results. But, I learned those approaches over the years of what works, and what works better. For Troop age youth, my experience is girls are better detail thinkers where boys are more visionary and creative. Girls will perform detailed task, like planning, faster and more efficiently than boys. Boys, on the other hand, come up with bigger ideas and creativity of reaching goals. The two together can make a great team if they work together. But Patrol method is good tool for teaching methods of working details. If girls always work the details and boys always make up the activities, they both suffer from not practicing the skills they need to learn. For the perceptive adult leaders, they force the boys to take on their share of working the fine details, but then that requires more adult interjection, which risk loosing the growth learned from making independent decisions. It's very tricky and complicated and just about impossible for low experienced leaders, which is most of the BSA. Barry

I have three grandkids under the age of 3 now. My daughter said the other day that she now sees that even at a few months age, girls are different than boys. Experience behooves making changes to find maximum performance. Logic dictates doing what works. My experience over the years is the same as Terasec's. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but instinct drives consistent human behavior. Barry

There weren't as many details given as you imply and many of the details were conflicting by the different ways they were presented. National rammed it down the throat of the units as a whole because it came fast with little information preceding the changes. There certainly was no consensus from the unit level members because they weren't asked. At least not until after it was obvious the planned change was coming. It's not the first time National has made major changes in the program without much input from the membership, it's really kind of normal. But the impact of this change is so big and controversial that it highlights National's typical way of doing business. Barry

When I was active, camporees were planned by the next Troop in line. It wasn't really even voluntary, if a troop refused district, districts wrath would bare down. I can't say if separate Camporees would be ideal, but just getting the resource to plan and run two separate events even side by side would be a huge challenge. Barry