Stosh

The dynamics of the Japanese really didn't take off in America unit Management got over it's Peter F. Drucker infatuation and began to realize the Japanese were making huge headways into the American markets. In many respects even after 50 years, we are now only beginning to understand it. I first saw the balance tipping with Robert Greenleaf's explanation in his book Servant Leadership (70's era) and it made complete sense to me, more so than my management background and training. I have applied the principles in whatever I do. Well, the jury is still out. I have found that most businesses and especially the not-for-profit organizations have been rather slow on getting on board. They just can't seem to understand how the Orientals (Japan, Taiwan and China have done so well and we sit here insisting on our "Made in America" excuses as to why we are falling further and further behind. Well, I've known for a long time and that's why I am really not much of a fan of WB. Sure, the management is there, but that's yesterday's news. After all, if the Japanese can fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds, they are always going to beat out the Americans with the cumbersome and archaic methods oi management.

Why thank you for your insightful personal attack. Now if one has something to say on the subject, we would all like to hear it.

Kaisan is basically the Japanese version of Servant Leadership and isn't management at all. Management is not the impetus to make things happen, it is the result of the effort.

What a lot of people today fail to realize and have taken power control is the direct attack on the First Bill of Rights. Our government has accepted the principle of a separation between Church and State. However, in reality they have increasingly encroached to the point where they are consistently claiming and processing through the government their own brand of bigotry and persecution. If there is a separation between Church and State, how can the State through the Legislative branch make any laws pertaining to Churches, expect enforcement of those laws and find it convenient to use the courts to force churches into compliance to civil laws when they are not honored by the Church? We spend an enormous amount of time dictating to religious organizations what they must believe in order not to lose their freedoms because of what they believe. Well it is quite obvious that when our country adopts more and more Sharia Laws, this issue will quickly go away To a Christian all he/she asks is that outsiders not come into their homes and pee on the carpet. Under Sharia Law, there will be those out watching people to see who's drinking water. Now that the government no longer honors the Separation of Church and State, that pretty much opens the door for no longer having to honor tyrannical laws. At my age, I'm not really too worried about it. Either I get cold meals, 2 showers a week, bed at 7:00 pm, live in a small room and pay $4,000/month, or I can go to prison, get a shower every day, video surveillance to make sure I'm safe, library, TV, gym doctors on call and free medication and it costs me nothing. I'm still thinking on that one, I'll get back to you.

No one wants to see my mug, and I won't use a picture of any of my boys. So I'll just explain it. Buy a bolt of 45" cotton or cotton blend material. My boys picked blaze orange. Cut 36" squares. My wife then double surges the edges so they don't need to be hemmed. She has thus far used black thread for the boys and white thread for the adults. The next patrol can pick another color. She surged the edges twice because the first time around they looked kinda bad. Second surge took care of that. there are no other markings on the neckers. Fold in half diagonally. Take the folded necker and put around your neck. We do not "roll" them. When the woggle slides up the necker stays rather "poofy" and will stand up and protect the back of the neck as it is supposed to. I never, never, never have tucked the necker under the collar. It negates the whole purpose of what the necker is supposed to do on a practical level. Under the collar is for decorative purposes only. By not rolling the necker one does not need to tuck under the collar. Take your woggle (Yes, the adults have woggles made of white parachute cord and the boys are black). and tuck one end into the woggle. Then take the other end and put through the woggle the other way Hold woggle vertically and put one end in right side the other the left side. Pull both ends and the woggle will slide "up" to your chin. Then tie a small square knot in the tail ends and there is absolutely no way one can lose the woggle without losing the whole necker. I think PB is wearing the woggle in this manner in this picture: http://www.pinetreeweb.com/bp-pix123.htm

The handmade neckers of my troop are full 36" square. They are not rolled, they are merely folded diagonally and put around the neck and the slide slid up. The boys do it that way, I use the slide vertically rather than horizontally and tie a square in the tails and that way it is impossible to lose the slide.

After 20+ years I don't wear my WB beads anymore..... They were presented to my best Eagle Scout who showed me that Real Deal Eagles are still possible. He wears my beads to carry on the legacy they represent. They have been to Philmont, BWCA, and the Centennial Jamboree, besides every place I have been to in scouting for 20+ years. I wear his beads to remind me of my accomplishments in scouting. They represent to me more than any Silver Beaver given by my peers ever will. Well done @@HICO_Eagle.

I want to go on record as making sure Jodie knows that I'm not faulting her in any way. The issues she raises here occur all the time in scouting and what she has experienced is nothing the rest of us haven't gone through as well. I make improper assumptions all the time. I've had some scouts over the years do a pretty fair job of pulling the wool over my eyes on occasion, and I suspect that even after 40 years someone is going to come up with something new to try and jerk me around. It's part of the game Obviously this scout is not a candidate for sainthood, but if this is FC, he is probably one of the younger scouts that just needs more maturity. I don't see that at a young age omissions are even considered when answering a question to adults. Okay, there are 3-6 adults vs. one lone scout in a BOR. He is not going to give a long and elaborate answer to any question. He's going to be nervous and will answer only what is asked and that's exactly what he did. I have seen 17 year old EBOR candidates do the same thing. 45 years of working with youth in a variety of different settings has gotten me a long way down the road, but I'm still not completely there. Here's the lesson for today: "Trust, but veryify." The lesson for tomorrow is: "Ass-u-me"

Once the courts felt it necessary to step in on religious issues, the First Amendment began to deteriorate.

Prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, the sending them back to Africa was Lincoln's solution as well.

I don't think many of the Founding Fathers were pro-slavery and were working hard on eliminating it. The only reason the slavery issue was not addressed in the original documents was to entice and keep the southern colonies in the fight for independence. Their writings indicate this quite clearly. It was a kind of a necessary evil kind of approach to getting everyone on board with the revolution. Soon after the revolution the whole issue of slavery was waning because of the low price of cotton and high cost of slave maintenance. Had it not been for Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin, slavery would have died out on it's own. Just another bright idea from the industrial revolution. Some of Whitney's writings indicated a sense of regret for having made the invention.

It seems to be the normal necker, VERY neatly rolled and somehow fastened out of view at the bottom of the picture.

It was my reading of the situation that the Little Sisters don't have any employees, but were expected to sign anyway. Some Bamacare thingy rule. The signing would state that they approve of a third party providing contraceptives. What they are saying is they want no part in the contraceptive issue and by signing they are participating and saying it's okay for a third party provider to do so. I'd love to see the government lock up all the Little Sisters in the Federal Prison System for wantonly standing up for their religious beliefs. Definitely a Max-Security facility like Forence, CO should do the trick. This whole First Amendment Bill of Rights issue is getting interesting. I'm thinking it's going to get ugly quickly.

First of all getting the boys to wear a necker WITH the uniform is difficult. Getting them to wear a necker WITHOUT the uniform? I don't see it happening. As far as the neckers being visible from a distance? Why do you think my troop has blaze orange neckers?

Yes, I would agree if I thought the scout actually was trying to pull one over on me, but in Jodie's case, I think the boy answered legitimately, but that's just my opinion. Jodie jumped to the assumption he did it willingly and never pursued it any further than that. It's not the fault of the boy not to correct the adult in a group setting. I'm sure the SM was fully aware of how this issue all shook out so as to get the punishment in the first place. Maybe his punishment was a result of him slacking off while others taught knots and now the SM made him follow through as well. Whatever it was, it was to the satisfaction of the SM. Totally agree, but the BOR is not the time to have these conversations and they need to be initiated by the SM or ASM at the SM's directive, not the personnel on the BOR.

Got to thinking (dangerous proposition, I know) but if Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Bedford Forrest are US Veterans are they not heroes, too? Makes for a kind of an interesting debate.

This is going around the internet..... Just for the record: Confederate soldiers, sailors, and Marines that fought in the Civil war were made U.S. Veterans by an act of Congress in in 1957, U.S. Public Law 85-425, Sec 410, Approved 23 May, 1958. This made all Confederate Army/Navy/Marine Veterans equal to U.S. Veterans. Additionally, under U.S. Public Law 810, Approved by the 17th Congress on 26 Feb 1929 the War Department was directed to erect headstones and recognize Confederate grave sites as U.S. War dead grave sites. Just for the record the last Confederate veteran died in 1958. So, in essence, when you remove a Confederate statue, monument or headstone, you are in fact, removing a statue, monument or head stone of a U.S. VETERAN. If that be the case, then has it just become politically correct to disrespect our veterans? Kinda makes one at least pause and ponder. I guess my journey every Memorial Day to put Confederate 3rd National Flags on confederate veteran graves will soon be something someone's going to sue me over.

....and yet don't be surprised when those religious groups do not go along with mandates that they have not voluntarily chosen to follow as someone else's rules. This is one of those cases where one side demands compliance of the other, wins some court case and thinks they have won the war. Doesn't happen like that in real life. There are those whose faith will enable them after 20-30 years of scouting to just simply walk away. It'll be interesting what the LDS units do....

First of all welcome to the forum! I would think that state law enforcement and regional emergency medical teams may not want a bunch of little kids hanging around some major crisis, but as one who served in a small town in rural America, all hands on deck were a welcomed sight. Especially the scouts who were trained in what to do and and what to not do! We held our simulations on Saturdays so as many people as possible could attend, not just the elite trained. One example that has always set well with me was we were doing a scenario of an anhydrous ammonia leak at the local farmers' supply operation. The set-up crew set off a huge smoke bomb to simulate the cloud. I was near the command post as an EMT and the local scouts were a few feet away waiting for an assignment. The one kid (farm boy) commented to his buddies to stay away from any smoke or if they smell it to run as fast as you can away from it. It wasn't more than a minute later the local fire department water truck drove into the cloud without their breathing equipment on and the judge announced they were all casualties to park the truck and sit tight. It was kinda too bad the scout wasn't driving. What did the scouts do that day for the drill? They supplied water, sandwiches and ran communications for those treating casualties that didn't have radios. They also helped out EMT teams resupply supplies as needed. Maybe they aren't a whole lot of useful in the ER triage lot, but they do free up a lot of expert personnel from having to hand out water bottles and sandwiches. We always found the kids who knew what they were doing and had participated in our drills to be a real asset to the job at hand. I remember as a kid my mother was Civil Defense trained in triage and her training wasn't anything a 15+ year old couldn't do just as well. At 15 years of age, I flew sorties for downed aircraft as an observer/spotter and worked the radio so the pilot could concentrate on looking out his side of the plane and flying it on grid. Just remember they aren't just a bunch of kids hanging around underfoot.

Welcome to the forums. Sounds like scouting has been something good for the both of you.

The requirements measure skill proficiency, not motivation. I for one do not think this boy misrepresented anything. The BOR asked a question on his performance and he gave an explanation of what he performed. End of discussion. I took a course in educational psychology that taught how to create tests and a student's performance in the test isn't always "wrong" just because the teacher created a terrible test or asked a terrible question. For example: A botanist is a person who studies ____________________. Okay? Have your answer? Well the student answered: A botanist is a person who studies hard. Well, it is a correct answer, just not the answer you were looking for, but it is still correct. I think in the future the Board needs to think through their questions and be a bit more honest with the answers they expect verse the answers they get.

.... or wear long pants and long sleeves and a full brimmed hat. One doesn't see Bedouin nomads wandering around in the desert with nothing but swim trunks on.

Natural leaders just happen along every now and then, but one cannot rely on that process to just show up at the door. If you are looking for older scouts to show up to lead, you've probably got a long wait. I have 11-12 year old scouts that are well on their way to making good leaders so age has nothing to do with it. You need to train leaders just like one trains managers. It is probably easier to train leaders than managers, but most people like to take the long back roads to get there. I have no idea what "training" program you are using, but leadership does not come out of a book with worksheets at the end of each chapter. Here's the formula I use. The BSA has for many years used the Buddy System. Yeah, yeah, that means always walk around in pairs, go swimming in pairs, tent in pairs, etc etc yadda, yadda, yadda. What they don't tell you and is an important point to drive home to kids is the Buddy System is the first step in leadership. It's probably the first time in many of these kids' life where it is expected they take care of someone other than just themselves. (Well, some of these kids can't even do that, but that's another whole story, too.) When my kids walk around alone, I always ask, who it is they are supposed to be taking care of and why aren't they doing it? Most of the time I hear leaders saying, "Where's your buddy?" The quick answer is as long as you know where he is, there's nothing more one needs to know. One doesn't need to account for their well-being, just their whereabouts. Once a scout has mastered the Buddy System and can take care of both themselves and someone else, they move on to taking on the responsibility of taking care of small groups. Now, I didn't say take charge, I said take care and that's the difference between management and leadership. So the ultimate leader is also the ultimate follower. They walk into a situation and immediately say, "What can I do to help?" Everyone wants people like that hanging around and will willing work with them (follow them) because they are walking in and immediately stating their leadership. Ever hear the expression, we couldn't do it without them? Well that's leadership identified. So, what's the reason for teaching ALL the scouts leadership? Maturity = taking care of oneself and taking self responsibility. Buddy System = marriage, taking care of someone else. Full Leadership = family, taking care of small groups of people that rely on you. What I have seen out of a lot of scouts is a 7 year struggle just to get to level 1 and they become a Paper Eagle. They may be a bit narcissistic and self-centered, but at least they aren't needing 24/7 babysitting. Average Eagles tend to make it through to the Buddy System level, but the Real Deal Eagles are at the third level. One doesn't really need to understand much to notice the difference. If you're starting a crew and are a month in with this much "individualism" that can't even take care of themselves, you need to focus on real leadership development for your scouts. It is how YOU take care of your people that makes YOU a good leader, too. I put in 15 years as a crew advisor and had far more responsibility to worry about than just sun screen.

There's a whole generation of scouts out there that have the orange year for tiger, too.

Why in the world would you expect anything coming from Irvine to make sense?