Lisabob

"I get it. Believe me I do. Homosexuals would like to go through life appreciated for who they are and what they do. I understand. So do thieves, liars, and murderers too. Everyone wants to be accepted." Your comparison is odious. You can't seriously feel that it is apt.

Scoutfish, I believe it is also relevant to point out that the anti-gay stance of the BSA apparently was not a major focal point of the organization until somewhere in the 1980s. Every adult I've talked to about this who was a scout in his youth tells me that nobody asked or cared about this stuff before then. The focus seems to have been a by-product of the 1980s/90s "culture wars" in our society. Or anyway, that's my impression of things. I know we have some BSA historian-types on here who might have more to say. But the point I'm trying to make is that the ground seems to have shifted under many long-time members' feet, and the bit in the BSA adult requirements about not being an "avowed homosexual" is, I think, a relatively recent addition. As for the original post, I also don't see how a den leader's sexual orientation has anything to do with whether s/he can be a good den leader. Apparently, the rest of the pack leadership didn't have a problem either, and that should have been the end of the story IMO.

I've been thinking about this too. What about the approach of lending money to the scout, with the understanding that he will work to pay it back (with specific plan by the scout to do so)? There's a scout in a local troop who is running up tight on his 18th birthday and his fundraising efforts have fallen significantly short of the goal. His parents are wondering if that's an acceptable reason to step in and help with the funding so that he can buy the materials and get on with the project. Would those troops (like the OP's) who oppose outright parental funding of projects, be more comfortable with a loan approach?

I'm just sharing my view that there are boundaries within which a boy plans out his scouting activities, and this particular choice would have been outside the boundaries IMO. Apparently, you agree that there are some boundaries, but we may differ on where the boundaries are. You, of course, are free to do what you want according to your values. For me, I do not support establishments that make their reputation and profit by objectifying other people. That's me, those are my values, and so I would have told my kid "no" to that.

Well people make a lot of different choices. There are also boundaries within which those choices are acceptable. Basement, as a parent I'd have said no to that one.

So it seems to me that: 1. This isn't about the scout being in uniform. The SE was off-base on that. As I have always understood it, the prohibition is to use the uniform to try to advance a particular view, or to suggest BSA support for a particular view. For example, a political candidate using uniformed scouts in their publicity photo ops to suggest that the BSA backs that candidate. I have never understood it to mean that a scout who happens to be in uniform may not speak his mind when in the midst of a discussion about an important civic issue. 2. The boy was getting, and probably is continuing to get, a good idea of what entering public debate can be like. That's a useful lesson and part of citizenship. 3. The content of his comments aside, there might be reasonable issues with tone to be discussed here. Suggesting that all of the adults in the room are idiots and then ending with "bye." and sailing out of the room, is not a great way to enter into a serious discussion. Even if all of the adults in the room really are idiots. This goes double when it is your first foray into the conversation (how do you want people to know you - as a serious, thoughtful, engaged person, or as someone who throws bombs and then runs?), and especially if you appear not to at least acknowledge the difficult choices involved in the issue. I used to work for a city council and I know that the citizens who were rude, extremely dismissive, hyperbolic, prone to casting character aspersions, etc., tended to be ineffective speakers for their causes. Yes, they got public notice, but few people (including the elected officers) took their views seriously. Good drama, bad politics. These are all things that I wouldn't expect a typical 12 year old to fully grasp, but I bet he's learning them, now. 3. As an outcome - I hope this boy will use the experience to become more involved. Let him see how this works out and learn a few lessons about presentation and how one gets others' serious attention. Let him start to develop a more nuanced understanding of the issues and choices so he can flesh out his views based on more evidence than emotion. Encourage him to work on somebody's election campaign for the next city council race, so he gets more exposure to the system. Combine that with his strong sense of right/wrong, and he'll be a real force to be reckoned with, and perhaps on his way to a solid political career.

I don't understand why anybody would want to do a "ten mile hike" by walking 10 times around a paved 1-mile track. That actually sounds extremely boring and would likely kill off any nascent interest in hiking. It also probably isn't great prep for actual hiking on terrain that is unlikely to be as flat or firm as a paved track. Most hiking trails have hills, variable footing, etc. So, namu, help me understand this. You seem to be lamenting the fact that few boys want to pursue the hiking badge, but then with your prep hikes, setting them up to decide they don't like hiking. What am I missing, here?

Supplemental material is great. I find it hard to learn knots and lashings from a book too, same as you describe. There are lots of good knot animations online that I find more helpful for refreshing my memory- but not as helpful as doing/using the knots, of course. But the book ought to be THE place to start. Not end, but start. And it isn't like the book is too onerous to read. A fellow who is not motivated enough to at least give it a look, isn't really showing much initiative, IMO. (As for college textbooks, yep, that happens - but honestly, a lot of times, people are just being lazy. Why read the book, be forced to think about it and synthesize material, when you can find some pre-digested (and often, wrong or overly simplistic, or just off-topic) info on the web, instead. This irks me because PART OF THE POINT is to encourage development of better critical reading and thinking skills. It isn't a 30-second hunt-and-peck or google search exercise, to read a textbook effectively.)

I'm a little surprised at the responses here. I agree that it is a responsibility of the scout to know the requirements. On the other hand, scouts are still kids. And in all other facets of the youth world, adults set, twist, bend, and interpret "the rules" for them, expecting youth to defer to the adults' position of authority with regard to interpreting rules. So, if a Scoutmaster tells a boy "this position will count for Eagle even though it isn't in the officially approved list in your book." And if a trained Scoutmaster of 9 years never corrects that statement until it is too late for the boy to complete the actual requirement, then I think the SM bears a heavy portion of the responsibility for misleading the Scout. Maybe part of the "life lesson" here is that young men on the verge of adulthood should not be willing to take their adviser's/mentor's/leader's word or interpretation of rules at face value - that adults often get it wrong - but I do not think that's really the primary intent of the having a leadership requirement as part of the Eagle rank. Consequently, in this case, I think the scout has a good case for appeal, ***supposing that*** he is actually going to follow through (if appeal succeeds) and hold an appropriate leadership position. However: If that's not going to happen (scout doesn't want to hold a position/feels he's past that point in his life), then the Scout should, indeed, consider the merits of graciously aging out - with plenty of honor - as a Life Scout, and be proud of his many accomplishments.

I am not buying the "they have to read too much in school already" argument. The MB booklets are written at about a 6th grade level and include a lot of pictures. They can be read, cover to cover, in about an hour. That said, they're also (frequently) boring and - did I mention? - written at about a 6th grade level. A lot of the older guys I've counseled for MBs chafe at reading them in part BECAUSE they're so simplistic. And there may be better ways to convey many ideas (easier to learn the J stroke by doing, than by reading/easier to understand the power structure of local gov't by talking to people involved, than by reading about it) An aside - Tampa wrote: "I repeat "did you look in the Merit Badge book" until I am blue in the face. Once in a great while I get a "No but I looked it up on the web". A lot of what I get are blank stares." Tampa, I get that from college students! For the life of me, I never understand why they pay big bucks for the textbooks, only to not read them and go for a shallow and often wrong answer from google, reddit, and wikipedia as authoritative sources, instead.

Are you SURE there's only one troop in your district? That seems exceedingly unlikely. (Do you mean "district" as in "school district" maybe, and not "BSA district" which is part of a larger "BSA council?") If there truly is only one troop in the whole (BSA) district, and assuming that there are at least 2 cub packs in the whole district, then I imagine a little healthy competition would be good for that troop and also popular, very soon, with other bridging webelos from other cub packs. Contact other webelos den leaders and Cubmasters and see if they might be interested in talking with you about the start-up idea. About the #s: You have 5-6 boys now; you only need 4-5 more. Do your 5-6 have friends who like to be outdoors? If none of that works - find a troop in a neighboring district and go join it. Yes, it may mean a bit more driving but it is likely to be a better experience for your boys than just the lone scout program. And there are a number of Atlanta-area folks on this forum so I hope some of them will chime in with better local resource leads for you, too.

AllFan - thanks, that's the source of my confusion. We have some scouts who signed up to do the kayaking MB at summer camp, so I was under the (mistaken) impression that it was already "live." Well, it will be in less than a week! I agree that this is a good addition to the MB options. As for game design/programming/animation - I would rather see these combined, than as 3 separate badges. I recognize that there are some differences, but a lot of the underlying materials overlap. Pair Search & Rescue with Wilderness Survival & First Aid MBs for some kind of cool award.

I thought Kayaking already existed? Where'd you find this?

depends on your scoutshop. Around here, those items aren't openly available.

Eagle92 - this is merely an op-ed piece in a newspaper. I am extremely confident in predicting that it ain't gonna happen in reality for a host of reasons, some of which have already been mentioned.

Maybe that would allow for recess and gym class to be added back into the regular school schedules?

Moose, yes I know how the system is supposed to work. I also know that sometimes it doesn't work. In the case where a scout is chasing the SM around for months to get permission to start a badge and the SM is simply dodging - as is described by the OP - it may be appropriate to try some other approaches. As a MBC, I would not want my contact info on the web for anyone to find. But that's an order of magnitude different, from a Scouter picking up a copy of the list for the unit to light a bit of a fire under the dodgy SM, which is what I'm suggesting here.

Old_Guy - you may be able to get a list of registered merit badge counselors from your council office (tell them you're picking it up for the troop - not that you are a parent who wants the list for your son). With list in hand, your boy could approach his SM and say something like "I'm planning to work with Mr. Jones on the 1st Aid MB. When can I get a blue card to start?" And of course, give a copy of the list to the SM. Also, as you may know, "boy led" means a lot of different things to a lot of different people - but it shouldn't mean one campout a year. Might be time to have a friendly chat with the CC to gain a better insight into how things got to this point. Frankly, I'm astonished that a troop that only camps once a year still has 50 scouts.

An incident kind of like that is why I stopped playing ball as a kid. The coach in question was mine. And he yelled at us in the same manner that he yelled at the opposing coaches. Who needs that garbage. I suppose he felt big, getting in the faces of 10 year olds, and other adults, too. Eng61, I'm glad to hear you took the high road.

By the way - the parent calling the UC - way off base. That's a power play. That the parent is also the ex-SM makes it worse. I wonder how the ex-SM would have felt, if some parent called some outsider and tried to pull rank on him, back when he was the SM?

I agree with Beavah's assessment here, too. The UC position isn't a power position. When people make an appeal to a UC to come flying in and "do something about (whatever they perceive the problem to be)," it is often, itself, a power play. One side is trying to leverage the UC as a weapon or external authority, against another side. One of the reasons why I decided I wouldn't be a UC for troops is because I didn't want to get drawn into that particular power dynamic. Now - about the BOR - as described and with the details provided (and no others), it does appear that the BOR made a poor judgment. This is something the BOR/committee, CC, and SM should sit down and sort out. But I've been on a BOR that denied a scout advancement to Life rank. And while I still think it was justified, I can imagine how the same story might be told very, very differently from other interested parties' perspectives. Here's my perspective: The scout (15 or 16 years old) was a known bully in the troop. He routinely picked on the young kids, had a foul mouth, and intentionally broke troop equipment. He was a distraction to others at troop meetings and could be counted on to start trouble when not watched closely. He was also extremely rude to many adults, including hand gestures and swear words. Honestly, I could not believe the SM had signed off on scout spirit, but there he was at a BOR for Life. Where he literally barely got past grunting monosyllabic answers to any question asked, about any topic. Half the time all we got were shrugs and glares. Anybody with teenagers can probably imagine this behavior. Based on his total non-responsiveness, I did not feel he had adequately completed the BOR at that time. He received the required letter from the advancement chair outlining the issue and his options. He was delayed one week. The BOR (minus me) met again (they didn't tell me about it). The other BOR members passed him the 2nd time through. I heard later 3rd or 4th hand that the SM was miffed about the initial denial, but neither the SM, nor the CC, nor the advancement chair, nor the other BOR members or committee members ever said one word to me about it. From other perspectives, this narrative might be different. Some folks might argue that my expectations were unreasonable, or added to the requirements (that he be minimally communicative is not a written requirement!). The boy's father might have said it was unfair. Who knows what the boy actually told his father! I could easily write the same scenario with any of those twists, except I really don't agree that (in this specific case), I was in the wrong to say "not today" to this young man. Sometimes, a BOR denial isn't that they're off the reservation. Sometimes, it is a signal that there is disagreement about what the expectations should be. And that's also valuable information for all sides to examine. I have no idea if the boy changed his approach at the 2nd BOR. I do know, the way they handled the 2nd BOR signaled to me that this group of adults had very different ideas than I do about what is acceptable. And those conflicts didn't go away, perhaps because there was never any discussion about it. For the sake of finding or building common ground (or recognizing the lack thereof and decided to part ways), maybe a good UC could have encouraged the SM and CC to open that sort of conversation, even helped facilitate the conversation (if the SM and CC wanted that). But the UC couldn't have (and shouldn't have) been the primary party in the discussion because, at the end of the day, the SM & committee need to be able to work together - and the UC is an outsider to that process. It isn't the UC's problem to grapple with; only (maybe!) the UC's to help the unit leaders work through, if they (unit leaders) actually want to try to do that.

First: I don't get why this thread was moved to Issues & Politics. Second: It is absurd to live in Rochester NY and have a trailer registered 600+ miles away in Maine. Even if it is legal (and I'm skeptical), this is silly. Third: It sounds like there are a number of items that need to be worked on, in this troop. So my advice is: Focus on the things that are actual problems. Don't waste your energy finding novel ways to pinch pennies, especially if those novel ways are controversial (Do you really need to deal with dissent about where your trailer is registered? Is that an efficient use of your inter-personal resources? What will your CO say about this twist?). With a troop as small as yours, you may want to focus on things that impact recruitment and retention of new scouts, instead.

njdrt - do what works for him. If he isn't enjoying the group he has been with, let him move to a different group. Within some pretty broad boundaries, there aren't hard and fast rules on what to do with boys who repeat (or skip) grades, so as long as the family and the pack leaders are in agreement, you have latitude to do what makes sense for this individual boy.

Peregrinator, help me understand what you are saying. Do you intend to suggest that the BSA would be better off to pick not only one major faith background (say, Christianity), but also that it would be better to specify a particular denomination within that faith (say, Presbyterians)? If the BSA were to do this, would it not have a rather small pool of people from which to draw its members? Also, and please forgive my ignorance, what is FSE?

this isn't foreign aid - this is international trade. There are a few really good books about the globalized textile market; I recommend Travels of a T Shirt in a Global Economy. This is not to say people shouldn't/can't express and act on preferences for where their clothes are manufactured, but the whole process is much more complex (and global) than we tend to think it is.