MattR

Just a story... I had a SMC with a scout last night. Long story short is mom won't let him go on a campout with water because of some fear she has that he'll drown. I talked to her afterward and she knows it's irrational. I told her she needs to get over it because his son shows huge promise that will be wasted if she doesn't. What I didn't tell her is she needs to start letting go or her son will suffer. But this is just one kid. Maybe 10% of the parents are like this. Just an observation... The title Eagle scout does not mean a parent understands scouts. It likely means he understands the outdoors. We created a survey for learning about the parents, what they need, and how they can help. There are a number of parents with outdoor experience that we need to make a relationship with. I don't need half the adults like that. 20% would be fantastic. 10% would be fine. It used to be they just came out of the crowd and started helping out. That is no longer the case for our troop. I do have hope for my troop although I was getting depressed a month ago until I started seeing some of the results of the survey. But absolutely, training these adults is important and non trivial. I get no help from the council.

When I was a boy I'd just put that big ol' knife twixt my teeth, jump that boar, and we'd have us some fun. I don't know, it just sounded fun to say. Actually, scouting always was, in my mind, really good at training safety and then letting the scouts do things that others would not. When I was a kid the guy at the rifle range was not to be crossed. He was a crusty old coot and he was very serious about safety. I'll never forget that guy and many years later, when some idiot was showing off his gun by swinging it around, that old coot jumped up in my mind and I told the idiot to put the gun down. When he said it wasn't loaded I said it didn't matter, always treat it as if it was. He opened the chamber to prove to me it was okay and guess what, it had a bullet in it. "wow man, I didn't know that." That's what scouts does well. I let scouts play on rocks over their waist, but we always have a talk about not screwing around, respecting nature, and looking out for everyone. That and if I see anyone break those rules it's over for everyone. They're good with it. I don't think the solution is to just say don't worry about it. I can't impact national, but I can make a good program for my troop and hopefully people will notice. The squirt gun thing is something totally different. If the ex secdef/ head of the CIA is in scouts, can't someone just say hey, let's stop being stupid?

I liked this lesson because it got to the truth much more readily than all the other activities. Competition gets the blood going. Conflict is a big part of being human. Leadership is a lot about working with personalities within conflict and competition. This game brought all this up so much better than a floating hydrogen stick game. I've been talking to each of my patrols about problems and personality conflicts are one of the biggest issues they have. The scouts can read the personalities of the other scouts just fine. The challenge is how to deal with those problems. The first thing I tell them is to cool things down. If they try and win they will lose. So I see a benefit to this lesson even if it could be cleaned up and better tied back to a purpose. Some of the other sections were not too helpful. The {f,st,n,perf}orming sequence has more to do with personalities than arrows on a chalk board.

Take care, @@skeptic.

I took that class about the same time this thread started. I remember that game and I just sat back and started to stew about how at a scout training function people were just getting so greedy. It was so much against everything we had been working on. I was disgusted and refused to get involved. The guy leading it was just a slime ball. Very good acting and he sucked a lot of people in. The difference with what you seemed to have run into and my experience is that your trainers just kept going with it. At one point our staff just stopped everything and said okay everyone, look what happened. I went from being pissed off to embarrassed I didn't catch on earlier that they had me hook line and sinker. In all honesty this game had the biggest impact on me than anything else all week. Everything else was bland-vanilla-we've-all-seen-it-before-kumbaya-acronym-hell and this game got down to the grit. Anyway, Mr Ed, hang in there.

@@Eagledad, I think the condescending remarks being referenced are along the lines of "Do I look like your patrol leader?" when a scout comes up to talk to you. It's not something here that anyone said, it's how we work with the scout that has an honest question.

Go for it! Just from my own experience last week, take it for whatever you want: New PLs that haven't seen this work before seem to have a much easier time leading a small group of scouts. All those adults that want 12+ kids in a patrol create a nightmare for a kid. Even 6-8 scouts is hard on a new PL. They could easily handle 4. An older scout said he'd like to be SPL some day so I asked him to camp with a younger patrol and give some tips to the PL. Given the lack of focus of the older scout he did not get in the way. In fact the PL said it was great. This is the same PL that really struggled at summer camp.

I took a "wilderness first aid" course from an EMT and he told me there is no standard for what such a course should be. He just did more training than the standard red cross. So I doubt there will be a requirement. It was a really good course and our troop paid for half of it. The training we got included quite a bit that is not in the first aid MB. Things like checking for spinal injuries. About epipens, those are by prescription only and dosed by the weight of the person that needs it, so you can't just carry an extra and give it to someone. Give one to an 80 lb kid that is set for a 200 lb adult and you could get sued, not to mention kill the kid if you give it to him incorrectly. Epipens are only good for 10 to 20 minutes anyway. Benadryl is what you want in your first aid kit. Another important item they taught us is that we can not get in over our training. If you don't know how to reset a dislocated shoulder than don't try. Given how painful that can be I can see people trying, especially if they're days from help.

We have email lists but in all honesty, I don't think they do much. My email is certainly ignored so I've been sending out less. Sure, kids and or parents get the information but it doesn't register unless it's close to trivial information. By trivial it involves something like a number. The meeting time has been changed from 7 to 6:30 so we have more daylight. Asking someone to help at an Eagle project or sign up for a campout is too complex because the person will need to think about it. What does work is a scout explicitly talking to another scout one on one. I tell scouts to call scouts and ask them if they will come and help at their Eagle project. Not text or email, and preferably not even voice mail. When we have scouts push the campouts at the meetings then the attendance goes up. Not even text messages help. Whether we want it or not, the communication in our troop really is boy led. I want it that way but there are other adults that aren't so happy with it.

Update: The crew adviser and one of the girls had a meeting, that was prompted by the girl saying she was not going to recharter. The girl said only the one adviser was allowed to be there. She talked about how too many parents are sticking their noses where they don't belong. The adviser was shook up about this. He didn't deny it, but honestly felt bad about it and would like to make it right. The girl, and all her friends, asked me to come to another meeting and they asked for my help in fixing this mess. So they don't want to start a new crew, and this is a relief to me. Now comes the delicate part where I need to talk to the adviser and tell them what I told the scouts. All I did with the scouts was explain to them how scout led is supposed to work and we went through examples. We talked about growth, problem solving, reviewing how things went, developing leaders and helping people out, adult/scout boundaries, and how to come up with a calendar. They ate it up. The first week in November they're having a planning campout and October is to get ready for it. Other than training the scouts and adults how it's supposed to work my other job will be hit man for adults that don't get it. So far it's fun.

There are a lot o layers to that story. It's in the Talmud and it's about Rabbi Hillel. A non Jew tells the rabbi he'll convert if the rabbi can explain Judaism while standing on one foot. So the rabbi replies "What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary. Go and study it." The go study it part is key. How to treat a neighbor is just the start. One has to study the Torah to learn the rest and that's a really big deal in Judaism. Of course, there's another layer above this because there's another rabbi that previously smacks this guy with a rod when asked the same question. So this story is also about the right way to bring people closer to God (start easy and don't smack them with a rod when they ask a silly question). The next layer is that each rabbi corresponds to two diverging views of interpreting scripture. Hillel's side won that argument and was more lenient. The losing side, Shammai, was more literal. This part was true. Also, Hillel was real. He lived a few decades BCE, probably Jesus knew of him. Nobody knows if the story is true. The fact that there is lots of commentary -- very true.

@@ghjim, a lot of rabbis, non fictional at that, have talked about the balance between selfless and selfish. I saw one that says you've hit the sweet spot when you see no difference between selfish and selfless. I have a long way to go on that one. But in my defense the rabbi's example was Moses.

Scouts and sports complement each other. I like them both and liked them both as a kid. But times have changed. Everyone knows horror stories like the kid that couldn't go to Philmont because he was going to miss 2 days of 3 weeks of band camp. But maybe we aren't so innocent. Unfortunately sports and scouts are similar in one way, the drive to succeed (win or get Eagle) is watering down the program. I ask scouts why they're in scouts and most will bring up the fact that having Eagle is good for getting a job or getting into college. I usually want to puke right then. I've yet to hear a scout say "I hope to be a better person." I use their greed to encourage them to do things they normally wouldn't do. If they're afraid to lead and I tell them lead or forget about Eagle then most of them will suck it up and try, usually with good results. In all honesty I'm not proud of it. I wish I was charismatic enough to convince a scout to try with no award, no threat, just a you can do it. But my talking about being a better person is just that, talk. Spread that over 60 kids and it's a lot of hot air. I guess I'm really no different than the coaches.

The thing with the older scouts dealing with the change has been one of the biggest surprises to me. Before I was SM I offered to help any scout that wanted to organize something fun for the older scouts. Just ask for help and I'd guide them through the rest. Go hiking, mountain biking, backpacking, anything. I told them that even if they didn't know what they wanted to do I'd help them. I got nothing. If I just told them the date to show up they'd be there. We went caving, rafting, biking and something else before I made my offer. Zoom forward to about a year ago. The older scouts that stepped up and started getting involved were the ones that wanted to work with the younger scouts. They're doing a great job. Nobody wants to organize something for the older scouts. I think it's a combination of poor planning skills, peer pressure to just fit in and not lead, and being lazy. The only thing that seems to get them over that fear is the fact that they now have to do some leadership to get POR credit. A scout came up to me last week and said he'd like to plan the December campout. I told him the SPL would certainly like to hear that, but thanks for telling me. This is a first. Now I have to get all those adults that spend time teaching Life scouts how to do an Eagle project to do that exact same thing with Star scouts that want POR credit.

Try this. I'm not the scholar, I just looked it up and condensed it. The 3 letter root of the verb used in the 6th commandment is R-Tz-Ch (you can't pronounce it without the vowels). It is used in numerous places throughout the Bible. In Numbers 35, Deuteronomy 5 & 19, and Joshua 20 & 21, it refers to accidental deaths but the word accidental is explicitly put in the text. In Deuteronomy 22, Judges 20, 1 Kings 21, 2 Kings 6, Isaiah 1, Jeremiah 7, Ezekiel 21, Hosea 4 & 6, Psalms 42, 62, and 94, Proverbs 22, and Job 24 there is no modifier and the deaths are willful and premeditated. There are a few other words used in other places that describe killing someone. I didn't get into it deep enough but the meanings of these words are vague when it comes to accidental or willful. So, murder it is and not kill. I hope that helps. @@cyclops, you say that the churches have not removed any homeless from the streets in your town. That sucks. My temple along with a number of churches in our town have done just that. We take turns providing a place to sleep, food to eat, and time to talk. We haven't removed all the homeless but we do what we can and focus on homeless families. I don't know of anyone that has the resources to do this on their own. It takes a community that is intent on doing it. Back to my comment about motivation, where does the motivation come from for any community to attempt this? For me, it's Torah. I don't care where anyone else gets it. Sit on a rock and watch the sun rise, that's fine. I'd just like to see more people get it. It's just very impressive to me that some 3000 years ago someone said "to leave the unreaped corner of the field or orchard for the poor." This is about the time the bronze age has replaced stone tools with metal in Egypt.

Several rabbis have told me translating Hebrew is difficult at best. There are lots of subtleties in Hebrew that requires context to understand. Most words are built from 3 letter roots that group words in interesting ways. There are subtleties in Hebrew and consequently lots of options (and puns) in the Hebrew that never show up in English because the translators just went with a translation. Anyway, in this case the scholars have to go and look at where else the word is used in the Bible and decide the closest meaning from that. In this case Murder is closer than Kill. Kill is just a bad translation but it's been around for a long time. As for a moral code, I don't know. The 10 commandments are fairly solid (sort of) but it's still just a small part of what is moral. Asking forgiveness from someone you wronged is an important part of the High Holy days we're now in but what if they don't forgive you? There are roughly 613 rules in the Bible that might be called a moral code but they don't cover this case. The many rules are more about getting closer to God than how to interact with people, which is a roundabout way of teaching how to interact with people. There are a lot more stories about how people do and don't get along with each other than laws. The term moral code sounds like a simple algorithm. Do this and you're good. There is very little in the Bible that is simple and clear. The characters, even the good ones, have checkered pasts. Rather than moral code I'd call the Bible moral motivation. Morality has to be woven through your every fiber to encourage you to do the right thing when the outhouse hits the fan. A code is merely a set of rules and that will be gamed just like a scout gaming the requirements for a merit badge. Some people don't need that motivation but I certainly have benefited from it.

I would not say that all older scouts are not going to help out. I just went through this and some of the older scouts just shined. I sat down with each one and told them the litmus test for me signing off on scout spirit for Eagle is whether the younger scouts look up to them, and that means they need to get involved. We then spent the rest of the time searching for something they really enjoyed in scouts and how they could use that to help the troop. They really surprised me with what they wanted to do and close to half followed through on it. I'm not done yet so there's hope for a few more. Some will drop out, some will fester until they decide they want it. I did something similar with the PLs. One just decided his patrol was going to earn the National Honor Patrol award. Another came up with some goofy name for his whole patrol calendar and that worked. Another thing I stress is that the PLs are responsible for delivering the promise of scouting. So I ask them what they did to provide fun, friendship, advancement, adventure, or service to his patrol members that wouldn't have happened if it weren't for him. So making a phone call when we send out stuff via email doesn't count, but encouraging a scout to complete a requirement is great. For the scout leaders in the troop my job seems to be talk to them and help them put into concise words the vague ideas they have of what they want to do. That and a huge dose of this is how to apply the Oath and Law to problems you run into, and they are starting to take up the slack. My challenge now is my SPL. He's the one that is having the hardest time making the change. He used to look up to the previous SPLs that were sort of the superman, I will do it all, type of leader whereas I'm more interested in the SPL trying to make the PLs successful. The other challenge is educating adults. "My son is tired of burnt food, you have to cook for them or he's going to quit." No, I have to give them the opportunity to bring up their problems and solve them, but if your son won't talk about it then he's going to keep eating burnt food.

To channel the ghost of BD: Really???????????????????????? Your giving up??????????? May your avatar rest in peace. There are some interesting personalities here. A lot of good tempered by some real quirks. I think the quirks come about because what we do, motivating people, is difficult. I remember when I first came to this forum and I just had to ignore a lot of snide comments. I honestly think it's better now. Joebob mentions the good ol' boy attitude that permeates his council and I've seen it before in mine. Maybe being a scouter is like being a soccer fan, you pray for good luck and nine times of ten you're disappointed, but when it works it's bliss. Call it scouter crack. Like the kid last night that told me I helped him figure out how to get a really stubborn scout to pull his weight. The older scout has been difficult for 7 years but he got Eagle and we had some good stories. I just wanted to shout GOOAAAAALLLLLLLL!

I don't see that coed has nearly as much to do with survival of the BSA as adventure, fun, and the outdoors do. I'm excited about starting a venturing crew not because it has girls in it, but because it will get back to what scouting is all about; outdoor adventure and service. No Eagle. No kids that have to be there. No resume stuffing. No pushy parents. No merit badge schools at summer camp. No kids that are waiting around hoping for Eagle to drop in their lap. On the other hand, if you do a good job then you'll know it, your friends will tell you that, and that's all you need. You'll stick around because of having fun in the outdoors and you'll gain real experience at giving service and leadership. The greed behind getting Eagle is diluting the program with people that are more interested in getting a patch than learning anything. A few kids and a lot of parents have twisted the program into something that has little to do with outdoor adventure and service. If the boy scout side can remove that problem then the program would be a lot stronger in the long run. It would sell itself. It would also start by cutting membership in half and that will never fly.

But my guess is someone that has experience in the outdoors in any of those areas would be willing to learn something new. If you like rafting you can probably pick up backpacking quickly as you're over the hump of dealing with bugs and sweat and enjoy the beauty and challenge. Getting someone up to speed for understanding scout led is another story.

Ah, yep. I'm the one with the big S stamped into his forehead. I'm in Colorado. I have to do the basic training just to figure out the program. I saw a Kodiak Training thing and I think these kids would be all over that. I sent out a couple of feelers for women with strong backs. That's the crux of this climb. Once that's in place we'll start talking training. My intent is we learn this together. You're in a much different place than me. This has nothing to do with the boy scouts. If they're interested that's fine, but the same rules will apply. They need to help out, participate, and plan on adventure.

That was an amazing discussion with four girls. I don't know how I can possibly say no. At one point I asked them what kind of events they want to do. They looked at each other and one of them finally blurted out "klondike, I want to go to klondike." They had been told by the old crew advisers they couldn't go. A little more discussion and I asked whether the adults thought all girls couldn't handle it or just some of the girls. Pause. "Probably some of both." They're hungry to do scouting in the outdoors. They are sick of photography month and living history month. One girl said "I just want to do the work for a merit badge and then get the badge and I can't get the badge because I'm a girl." She taught the MB at summer camp. I told her I'd buy her the patch if she did the work. They said they'd like to go camping every month. They haven't been on a campout in a year because the adults won't let them. The adults keep changing the girls' plans. Their current crew is so adult led it's truly sad. And it's mostly the moms that are the problem. These girls are ready to quit scouts so I said I'd help them. I gave them some goals. First, get all of the needed adults in place by Halloween and have a calendar of events. Once they have that then they can push the button, do the paperwork, and get it started. After that the focus is equally on training for cold weather camping (klondike is the goal) and recruitment. One girl asked if they could have a Halloween party with candy for recruitment to celebrate starting and I said "why not? it's your crew." Big smile. I have the scouts looking for adults, and in particular women that like the outdoors, but does anyone have ideas of where to find more? Word of mouth? Camping club at the local university? REI?

The coed thread got moved to I&P and @@Eagledad brought up an important point that really belongs over here. Namely, there's a problem with getting inexperienced parents up to speed in a timely manner. I have noticed spending a lot of time talking to new-ish parents trying to convince them there is a method behind the madness. Barry said 3 years and that sounds about right. The problem is a lot of parents are starting to get burned out after 4 years. And that happens to be about the time their sons start going into slacker phase. Anyway, is there a better way to get them going faster? There's the regular training but that doesn't get into the details like kids just want some time to hang out. I've thought about making some additional training but that's a bunch of work. This relates to the thread I started about a crew with a lot of girls. If there aren't moms that get this stuff and want to do it then the girls are out of luck. Let's just say scouts do go coed and there are 20% girls and 20% moms that want to do the outdoors. 20% of moms might mean one mom. That means she has to go on everything because if there's just one girl that goes then this mom needs to be there. I mention moms but this applies to dads as well. How do we get them up to speed faster? Both the methods of scouting and the outdoors.

Engaging. Few words. Has a powerful message. A committee could never develop an ad like that and that's why the BSA hasn't done it.

I believe you. But then what's the difference between a venturing crew and a venture patrol? This is an honest question. In my view they are the same except the venture patrol has responsibility to the rest of the troop. So in my case the venture patrol has 40% of the scouts that want to do stuff with and help out the troop, and the rest are just hoping I don't notice that they aren't doing much of anything. The crew has more leeway on setting goals and has to organize their own events. The crew has more freedom and thus has to be more focused so they don't end up flailing.