Eagledad

A lot was going on in my life around your sons age and I had to make some hard choices, one of them was staying with the troop or move on to a Scuba Explorer Post. Without actually seeing your sons relationship with the troop and the program, I can't advise on a direction. But, looking back at the choices I made back at the age of 15, I can say those decisions followed me well through my adult life. My faith guides my life, and part of that guidance is "Patience". Patience gives us the time to get past our emotions and let logical reasoning guide our decisions. Many of our scouts were active in other outside activities while staying active in the troop. But we were open-minded to outside opportunities because they added opportunities to the scout's life experiences. That being said, I had a few SM Conferences where I guided the scout to understand the chaos in his life as a result of to many pans in the fire. As his father, I would look at the opportunities for you son to practice making challenging decisions. As a Scout Leader, I'm concerned about character growth and I would mentor him that life is often hard, and what ever choices we make will have conclusions that will lead to more choices. I would rather his choice would be to learn how to deal with difficult situations, so as to learn skills for his future in life, than to run with the possibility of regrets years down the road. I'm pretty much black and white with my guidance, but the decisions are always theirs. I've been there, these are tough decisions. Patience. Barry

The forum should take up "Conditional Scouter" as a symbol for quality scouting. Both Baden Powell and Bill Hillcourt are Conditional Scouters by definition of how they presented and protected the scouting program. Both these men are held in the highest honor for youth scouting. In the Spirit of scouting's founders, Conditional Scouters are a brotherhood of guardians that protect the mission to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law. I am a Conditional Scouter and proud of it. I am a Scouter.com Conditional Scouter and proud of it. Barry

I find National to be the big question. They seem to have bungled this enough that who knows what's next. It's almost as if they are sitting and waiting to finish development of the program with reactions to the volunteers hurdles. Barry

That was my first thought as well. All choices are, or should be, conditional on ethical principles and moral values. In fact, the point of scouts learning from their decisions in the program is developing habits of making choices conditional to the Oath and Law. My following 2nd thought was the term isn't scout like for a values program. Thanks Barry

What I said was that the phrase "family scouting" wasn't common in a boy scout discussion. Families may have camped with a troop, but it wasn't common enough to suggest family scouting. The BSA has started something I'm not sure they can stop. Even if Family Scouting will only be reserved for the pack, I'm not sure parents will leave it there. Especially now that big sister is in one of the patrols. And, if membership is the goal, would National really want to restrict it. Barry

I guess that is one way to deflect it. However, consider the scouting family of the ASM dad, CC mom, daughter Sally and son Bob in two separate patrols, and little Cub Scout Susie all on the same Troop campout. I'm not sure anyone cares who is responsible for little Susie, it's a family fun scouting weekend. Get two or three of those families involved.......... I think that's what Eagle94 referring to. For the last 100 years, family scouting and boy scouting were never two phrases mentioned together while discussing the boy scouting experience. I've heard it talked about quite a bit this year. Maybe that is a genie that should never have left the bottle. The moderators are going to eventually switch out the Patrol Method forum to a RV discussion forum. And Religion will never get it's own forum. Barry

Never mind, I found it on Google. Barry

Accountability isn't bullying, it's balance. Sorry to see you go, the list will miss you. Barry

What is a "conditional scouter"? Barry

I’m not a professional. I’m an old time retired scoutmaster with passion for the traditional patrol method program. I’ve been very critical of the recent changes, including admitting gays and transsexuals. Not because I have phobias, I believe I’m more compassionate for these kids. But National is putting volunteers in the position of encouraging behaviors that these youth may regret when they mature into adults. I don’t believe accepting girls 14 and younger is good for the program because it will take away from the boys at a National level. It doesn’t matter if some troops are totally male, National will have to direct the whole program as mixed genders. Girls and boys don’t mix well in a patrol method type program before reaching puberty because boys generally think in the big world picture while girls are very detailed oriented. Patrol method works for boys because they are forced to build habits of working details. Girls, by instinct, won’t let them do that without heavy adult interference. None of that works well in a patrol method program. But, I’m also pretty good at looking at things pragmatically. What I posted is an honest assessment of what I see coming based from observations of the program and National for the last roughly 50 years. Troops will become adult run after school camping programs and eagle factories. The addition of girls will bring in more adults without a scouting experience, and those adults typically push advancement the hardest over the other methods. They can’t help themselves; they don’t know how to do the other scouting stuff very well, but they know how to follow a checklist. It’s human nature. Barry

The next four years will be interesting to watch. The BSA looses around 50% (give or take) of Scouts crossing over to troops. Actually I believe it’s slightly more with crossovers who join troops but never show up. Those numbers don’t count as dropouts until next rechartering. Anyway, the main cause of the large drop out is a boring program. But the girls, and parents of the girls, have a different motivation for crossing over. I have said for many years that parents have a lot of say in their kids staying in scouting. More so at the cub ages, but a significant amount at the troop age as well. If you want to keep the youth, build a program that appeals to parents. We have seen even on this forum a lot of adult energy for girls in the program, so I don’t see a boring program holding them back. Eventually the passion and energy of the new program will settle down and balance back to the quality of program content. I’m curious how the numbers will fall. I believe family scouting will change the present troop program a lot. Not so much in written program structure, but more of how the adults will interrupt implementating the program structure. Personally, I believe the troop program will morph closer to a Webelos III. But, if that style of program keeps the parents more energized, then a Webelos III may not be bad when National’s main objective is maintaining BSA numbers. We’ll see.(I need a popcorn eating emoji) Barry

I got to hand it to you CP, you are consistent. Your creatively stretched reasoning reminds me of Evil Knievel jumping the Grand Canyon. And when creative reasoning doesn't work, intimidate change with threats. Yep, sounds very inviting. Barry

I didn't imply anything. I asked a question that would simply guide a frame of thought in working with Den Chiefs. A lot of times scouts of this age have a different perspective of the responsibility than the Den Leader, pack leaders and Scoutmaster. Den Chief is a lot of responsibility for both the Troop and Pack and how the scout perceives that responsibility is important or for both units. A negative experience can hurt the troop program a lot if the pack has a bad experience. So, how the SM guides, coaches and mentors Den Chief is important. Barry

Good post. I believe "reasonable" is a good base for judging performance. The struggle for many of us is the individuality of each scout in their effort to perform. I'm not one who cares one way of the other about "adding requirements" because I respect the challenge of judging a scouts performance. But, I do like to caution scouters that as soon as a fixed rule is set in stone, it will be challenged with an unexpected situation. It's great to add a hard expectation to draw lines between success and failure. But at the same time, these rule often restrict creativity of unusual situations. I typically ask adults, what is the troop gaining by adding requirements like the 50% meeting rule. I mean really, how did they come up with that number. But, I understand that some added rules or guidelines are needed for a unit to move forward, especially new units. However, at some point the unit should mature past the added rule and used their hard earned wisdom to judge individual effort. I had a 15 year old Life Scout volunteer to run a Boy Scout Skills day for a Webelos leader who had requested it. He knew exactly what to do and was excited about it. But, he informed me two weeks before the event that he couldn't be there. However, he promised he would make sure the event would occur as planned. And it did. The Den Leader said her scouts loved it. Now, was that scout irresponsible by not showing up to an event he promised to lead, or should he be complemented for his performance delegating, training, and planning a very successful activity. By the way, the scout didn't ask for, nor did he, recieve any credit for the activity. Well, I did brag about him a lot. His dad is my neighbor and is a little tired of hearing about it after 20 years. That scout has two kids now after all. Still....... When general rules are set for groups of individuals, individuality will eventually force the rule to get in the way of the main objective. Our troop pushed the PLC to take as much responsibility as possible, so they also would set rules like the 50% rule, or discipline rules, or something to help them in their responsibilities. But as the scouts learned and matured, the rules were replaced with wisdom. Always keep and open mind so the path to the goals is always clear. Barry

LOL, ok ok. Seems folks are afraid of the big questions. Maybe one of the hardened adults has an opinion. Barry

I'm not judging, so don't take this question in that context; How do you answer to the "adding requirements" question? Barry

I'm curious, how would you as a SM feel about the scout if he considered his responsibility with the den was completed after 4 months? Barry

Boy, if this requirement is challenging, .......... The struggle with legalism is that it distracts away from the true intention of the requirement. Remember, scouting is about growth of character and integrity. Don't concern yourself with the details so much that you can't see the benefits of the responsibilities. Learn from the scout how he served. When the SM ask the questions in the right manner, the scout feels encouraged to brag about their experience. Along with a quick call from the Den leader, you will have more than enough for a productive SM Conference. By the way, the way our troop sets up Den Chief's duties is we start with training them with the Den Leader together. It doesn't take very long (an hour) because all we are really doing is setting the expectations for each of them. Truth of the matter is Den Leaders are clueless of how to use the Den Chief, so they are very appreciative for the training. The Den Chief is the assistant, but basically runs 80% of the meeting when he gets up to full speed. The Den Leader learns to sit back and actually assist the Den Chief. Works very well once everyone learns the responsibilities and system. Barry

Interesting post, thanks. Mrs. Barry and I brought home a new puppy to replace our Australian Shepard we recently lost to old age. My son brought our 2.5 year old granddaughter over to see the new puppy, but she was suddenly distracted by a ladder I left up after installing a ceiling fan. To her dad's (and grand parent's) surprise, she quickly ran strait to the ladder and climbed halfway up before her dad could get close enough to be a safety net. Later, my son said watching his daughter run to the ladder so quickly was the first time he understood his parent's concerns for when he took off to ride his bike down a hill as fast as he could go, or climb up large boulders at the state park. My response, "your daughter hasn't earned the scar under her chin yet", caught him a bit off guard. He paused for a minute, then smiled and asked her to go play with the puppy. In that moment, the puppy was safer. Thanks again T2eagle, I enjoyed the post. Barry

Good post. My wife broke her ankle on a trail hike near Hana Hawaii. During a frank discussion with the doctor who was treating her, he said his bread and butter where hiking injuries. Tourists come from the mainland with a, what he called, a "Disney Land" frame of mind. Meaning that most tourist from the US mainland are accustomed to sanitized risks. There are many danger signs everywhere in our culture, but liability has forced us to add additional safety with equipment like railings, paved paths, hand holds, and so on, to reduce the risk of accidents. We have become so accustomed to low accident rates as a result of the signs and additional safety that we don't respect the risk they prevent. So, when we tourist from the mainland visit areas outside of the mainland, we assume a higher level of security that isn't there. Thus, the result is a lot of accidents. Our doctor said the Hana emergency rescue professionals risk their lives retrieving many fatalities every year because hikers ignore the many signs that say "Stay on the trail", or "Do not go past this point". Hawaii is a volcanic island of very rough and very sharp rocky terrain, so falling even just a few feet causes a serious enough injury that he said often leads to fatalities because of the time required for rescuers to reach the location. As a youth in scouts, I learned a lot about recognizing dangers in the woods and environments that we visited, and the importance of training for those dangers. I mentioned recently that while I was already a petty good water skier in my youth, the Water Ski MB taught me a lot about boat safety while pulling a skier. I taught those same safety habits to my friends and family over the years. I agree with qwazse that scouting should be the go to program for learning the dangers of the environments we visit and provide the safety training for those environments. Barry

Yes, in an idealistic world. Leaders of a teams focus on the objectives, coordinates the proper resources to the required tasks, and maintains motivation toward the vision of the tasks. Without consistent direction and correction in any of those three processes , the group will tend to stall and sway away from the vision. An observer will note that the most successful organizations are, in one way or another, constantly and continually reminded and motivated toward their objective. Modern communication of emails, tweeter-twaters, texting, and even phone conversations are far more challenging in leading a group to the common task than consistent group meetings. Led properly, meetings require far less of a team members time than one on one coordinating. And, brainstorming is almost nonexistant. Doing ones job without some reminder of the big picture and some realignment of each team members task generally leads to slowed or stalled program. That being said, while I can see the committee members performing their task without guidance for a short time, team leadership should be a priority, one way or another. Barry

As a pilot, aero engineer, licensed aircraft mechanic, flight instructor, and one time EAA member, you touched my soul this morning. Barry

Yes, I've said several times on this forum that I like the idea of the administrative part of the MB process being completely out of the hands of the unit, thus giving the scout more independent control of advancement. I think that was possible 25 years ago, but not with todays youth protection culture. Barry

The white card provides 3 copies, one for the scout, one for the counselor and one to turn into the council. All the scout needs is a copy by the counselor. I like our system better because the scout is done with unit checks after the SM signs it. But that is also what I'm used to. Barry

Hmm. So, would you say then that the 2nd signature is just to prevent the scout from turning in the paperwork to the council by himself. Since I've never used the Blue Card, I'm trying to understand the overall purpose of the 2nd signature? Barry