Kudu

Girl Scout camp was where I first heard the phrase "Once an Eagle, Always an Eagle"! The Scoutmaster of my first Boy Scout Troop as an adult volunteer was an Eagle Scout. He did not allow boys to tent in weather under forty (40) degrees, so he rented cabins from early fall to late spring. Girl Scout cabins were his absolute favorite because the central heating meant that he did not have to assign a fire watch to insure against a chilly cabin at night. Without stuffed furniture, wall to wall carpeting, twin microwaves, and cable TV, it will take much longer for his future Eagle role models to log those important twenty nights of camping!

Paul, This is precisely the problem with a program based on character. To you I am "projecting" and "painting" you as a "stereotype" from my "imagination," which you characterize as "not really very fair." From my perspective rejecting a boy's touchdowns, baskets, goals, or homeruns because he could not explain the concept of "sportsmanship" to the satisfaction of some other kid's father, is not just "fair," but a perfect analogy to your desire to "send boys back from a BOR over 'idealist' issues when they were progressing in knots and fires."

Clearly you are not moved by the beauty of the passages that Jeal quotes. A pantheist would point out that your reaction is an expression of all the natural laws in the universe. Note the context: Jeal is quoting the clergy that reacted to Baden-Powell's pantheistic article "Religion of Backwoods." http://inquiry.net/ideals/beads.htm A pantheist is just as likely as a Buddhist to recognize applied Christianity ("service to one's neighbor") as a metaphor intended for a Christian audience: "Some may object that the religion of the Backwoods is also a religion of the backward; and to some extent it is so. It is going back to the primitive, to the elemental, but at the same time it is to the common ground on which most forms of religion are based --- namely, the appreciation of God and service to one's neighbor" (Baden-Powell). http://inquiry.net/ideals/b-p/backwoods.htm

Easily squared: A skeptical Scout inoculated with B-P's brand of woodsy pantheism reads that as "No man is much good unless he believes in the transformative power of nature and obeys its laws. From the very first fortnight edition of Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell used the Buddhist culture of Burma as his prime example of applied Christianity. Maybe friendly Christians do not threaten to destroy the Scouting "Movement as a national institution" if nature offers an alternative to "Revealed Religion," or announce that God had condemned Baden-Powell's namesake to hell for essentially the same reason? Certainly there is no room for speculation in history or religion!

So what do all of those age-restricted activities have in common? 1) By definition they are not based on merit.

PaulSafety: Welcome to the forum from your anti-matter counterpart in Scouting. The centerpiece of the "Personal Growth" Method when it was introduced, was the "Personal Growth Agreement Conference" with its own paperwork: the official "Personal Growth Agreement" contract. The Scout was required to list specific goals and then meet them before his next advancement. To accommodate the anticipated flood of "urban youth" who hate Scoutcraft, the goals need not have anything to do with Scouting. And yes, when "Personal Growth" and "Leadership Development" were introduced in 1972, the Scoutmaster's Handbook asserted that these new "Methods" of Scouting were equally important (bold and italic emphasis in the original) to the Traditional Methods. Camping was removed from the supposedly "equally important" Outdoor Method as a requirement (yes, in the ideal "leadership skills" program you could go from recruit to Eagle Scout without a single night away from home), "Real" Patrols (and Patrol Leader Training itself) were removed from the supposedly "equally important" Patrol Method and replaced with "leadership skills," and Scoutcraft (required by our Congressional Charter) was removed from Wood Badge and replaced with, um, "leadership skills." So Personal Growth was introduced by those in Scouting with contempt for Scoutcraft and the Patrol Method, and lives on in the "Character and Leadership" battle cry of the BSA: http://inquiry.net/leadership/sitting_side_by_side_with_adults.htm

"Previously entered content was automatically saved. Restore or Discard. "

Does the auto-save function work for you? It often asks me to save or discard old drafts from previous days.

A single Patrol unit is the purest form of the Patrol Method. Baden-Powell designed Scouting to be run by Patrol Leaders, with SPL unnecessary in Troops as large as 32 Scouts.

If you use what Hillcourt called the "Real" Patrol Method in a single Patrol unit, the Scoutmaster should want the Troop's most competent and mature Scout as the Patrol Leader, leading Patrol Hikes, to keep the Patrol members from harm's way.

Before "leadership skills," the purpose of Wood Badge was to train Scoutmasters to how teach the best Patrol Leaders how to physically lead their Patrols into the backwoods. Scouts learned their skills from a "Patrol" Leader, not a "Troop" Guide! Here is a Wood Badge participant's official "Wood Badge Training Notebook" from William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt's Wood Badge: http://inquiry.net/traditional/wood_badge/index.htm

"The mission of the BSA is to advance Cub Scout survivors to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with a pack on their backs, and to call that 'making ethical choices'." What makes Scouts uncool is that we have replaced physical distance (objective standards) with the subjective judgment of adults. We replaced Journeys (as each rank's test of Scoutcraft) with subjective adult sign-offs, Scoutmaster Conferences, and Boards of Review. We replaced "Real" Patrols (a Patrol Leader's ability to physically lead his Patrol into the backwoods), with a subjective "understanding" of EDGE theory. So for how most adults experience Scouting (Patrols squeezed together into small car-camp sites), the subjective need of adult helicopters to see Scouts "together as a patrol, talk to their buddies and on a hike maybe hear the birds and waterfall and what not, and not the Top 40 Countdown" is overwhelming. Some Troops use "Electronics Chit" cards. Real Boy Scouts (those who enjoy walking into the woods with packs on their backs) use electronics responsibly, as the videos show: https://www.youtube.com/user/At300Feet As for "On some hikes MP3s would be a simple safety hazard," do the Scouts in our videos appear to be in danger? Everyone knows that fake "safety" (along with "Scout Sprit") is the sacred wild card of our adult-run Cub Scout program for teenagers.

In theory "Leadership Development" is a separate Method of Scouting, so it should have it's own forum: "Leadership Development: Lessons and questions of Scout leadership and operating Troop program". The correct tagline for the Patrol Method in a Website dedicated to the memory of William Hillcourt would be: "The Patrol Method: What a Patrol does apart from the Troop" With at least two sub-forums: William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt's Patrol Method. and Lord Baden-Powell's Patrol System There are now two (2) Baden-Powell Scouts associations in the United States. A Baden-Powell sub-forum might help with the steep learning curve any American must master when transitioning from BSA Scouting to Baden-Powell's system. As for forums "making a point," the term "Real" Patrol was Hillcourt's term. It seems provocative only because, and I'll say this as gently as possible, Hillcourt never dreamed that Wood Badge would intentionally destroy his life's work.

NJCubScouter, For instance "Camping & High Adventure" has a "Sub-Forum" listed under it, "Equipment Reviews & Discussions" Someone looking for equipment reviews need not sift through pages of Camping and High-Adventure discussions that have nothing to do with equipment. So, someone who comes to Scouter.Com because they hear that the site is dedicated to William Hillcourt, should not have to sift through pages of "Lessons and questions of Scout leadership and operating troop program" to find out how to implement William Hillcourt's "Real" Patrol Method (what a Patrol does apart from the Troop).

Yes. Where else are you going to learn EDGE theory? Wood Badge replaced Boy Scout skills with office management theory because, as Wood Badge Staffers like to remind each other, some of us spend our entire lives avoiding offices and the people who manage offices. The problem is that word gets around, and outdoorsmen avoid Wood Badge now, so office theory must be introduced in the "specific" training courses. In Scoutmaster-Specific training (the course that replaced the "Scoutmaster Fundamentals" course your dad took), the BSA's EDGE experts removed the Patrol Leader and any description of a working Patrol from the Patrol Method presentation, and replaced them with EDGE. So, to better serve the outdoorsmen who avoid Wood Badge, Angler Training must likewise remove fishermen and any description of catching a fish, and replace them with EDGE.

In both Hillcourt's Patrol "Method" and Baden-Powell's Patrol "System," the Scoutmaster takes an active role in guiding each Patrol toward its most mature Scout, and encouraging them to stick with him (for as long as he is the best leader). I talk to each natural leader individually and ask him if he would be willing to be a Patrol Leader (rather than SPL or some other office). I tell him the truth: I need someone I can trust to move the Troop in the direction of controlled risk. If the natural leaders don't get elected, I keep the Patrols with immature Patrol Leaders on a shorter leash. When I was a Scoutmaster rebuilding a "Troop in trouble," I would take a natural leader along with me on a recruiting presentation and appoint him as "Troop Guide" of the new Scouts I brought into a Troop. After a few weeks it was natural for the new eleven-year-olds to vote for this older boy as Patrol Leader. Your SPL sounds perfect for a Troop-level position: "a peace maker and the type nobody dislikes, but not what I’d call a natural leader." Good at keeping joint-Patrol activities (planned by the Patrol Leaders) on track, but as SPL he does he not deprive one of the Patrols of their best Scout as Patrol Leader. On the other hand, I'd have my eye on the 16 year-old as a potential Patrol Leader. SPL, ASPL or JASM is a waste of his talent if he proves to be the Scout you would rather have in charge of a Patrol Hike miles from the nearest adult. The other Patrol Leader will tend to both model himself on the older Patrol Leader, and compete with him. What it boils down to is, who in each Patrol do you trust to build fires during Hillcourt's "chop" hikes, and otherwise keep the Patrol members from harm's way when adults are not hovering nearby?

Yes, a Baden-Powell Troop camp is a wagon wheel. The adults are at the hub with a 300 foot radius to each Patrol, and the Patrols likewise are spaced 300 feet apart from each other along the circumference.

Most of the active adults I know listen to MP3s when they backpack, jog, walk, and work out. Why should Boy Scouts wait until they quit? The BSA program is designed to move a Cub Scout survivor to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with a pack on his back. So, yes, "No Electronics" policies serve the important function of allowing adult Wood Badge/ItOLS graduates the illusion that packing Patrols into small, crowded car camps is Scouting. But really, if to reach Eagle the BSA required even a single night of what Baden-Powell called "camping," how would you even know that a Patrol at 300 feet, or a remote Boy Scout on a required back-woods Journey, had electronics? I encourage our Scouts to bring phones and MP3 players on backpack trips but, as you can see from our videos, most of them save their batteries for bed: https://www.youtube.com/user/At300Feet

Thanks. I was also thinking along the lines of a Patrol Method "sub-forum." Scouter.Com is dedicated to William Hillcourt. It should be the repository of "How-To" implement Hillcourt's "Real" Patrol Method, before such knowledge passes from living memory.

Add "No Electronics" policies to the uncool. Show me a Troop that forbids electronics, and I'll show you a car-camping unit where the adults don't get enough exercise.

Add passworded Websites to my list of why Scouts is uncool. In sports, a boy's first AND last name are published in both the analog newspaper and the online edition to announce his accomplishments. In Scouts we hide in secret vaults what is cool about Scouts (the one thing that has proven to recruit Boy Scouts to our Troop), so as to protect young men against imaginary monsters lurking in the parking lot.

That's going on our Troop's Website!

The purpose of the page was to move the BSA in the direction it eventually took: The Uniform as an Outdoor Method. However, it is not as easy to convince parents that the place for their son's expensive "class A" uniform is on the trail.

Please tell us about your Patrol Leaders and SPL. In a Troop of twenty, you would be lucky to have two natural leaders.