MattR

That's a great idea. The only thing I'd add is a chance for memories. Either a slide show of the scouts through their scouting career or even stories from anyone. It's the best part of our ecohs.

Two usefull bookmarks: Https://scouter.com/messenger Https://scouter.com/notifications

Mostly: Fixed costs. They still have the infrastructure and staffing for a much larger membership. I assume donations are also dropping. Something has to give and they don't have the ability or desire to align their income with their expenses.

This thread has been locked. And posts have been hidden. It's time for courteous, cheerful and kind.

Our local camps are in the $450/wk range. We're choking on that because a lot of parents can't afford it. Plan B is roll our own summer camp: 4-5 days (around a weekend so parents don't have to take much time off), skills in the morning, some type of fun activity in the afternoon, patrol cooking. So, for younger scouts it's about skills and fun and for older scouts it's leadership and fun. Anyway, cost estimate so far is $20/day for food, $5/day for camping facility, double all that to cover the fun activities. $250 for 5 days. For anyone that has done this, is this even close? My guess it depends on the activities. A trail ride would be fun one day. We have access to some kyaks and a lake. We have loads of hiking nearby.

Welcome to the forum, @FirstClass . As each religious organization creates their own requirements my guess is the scout can either keep wearing the old award, or not. And if they want the new one then they'll have to earn it first.

Hey all, let's get back to cub scouts. There are other threads about the bankruptcy.

I started off doing that but did things a bit differently later on, especially for tenderfoot. That rank can be done in a day, so I told the scout that we could probably get it done in a couple of hours spread throughout the day on a campout we were on. The scout saw a solution not too far off, we both worked hard, he succeeded where he thought it was a failure and I helped him out. Rather than a record keeping issue it's about finding opportunities to help a scout deal with a problem. There are plenty of opportunities to reinforce the skills so a couple of corners were cut but the tradeoff of having a young scout turn devastation into success, priceless. This is one of the reasons I'm not keen on how requirements are handled. There are lots of rules on dealing with check boxes but it doesn't relate to how scouts learn. Most 11 year olds don't have the dexterity to sharpen a knife and so the one and done approach just leads to kids that stay away from knives because they really know they don't know but the patch on their shirt says they do. So they hide it and make excuses for not using the skill. 11 is a great time to start learning but the requirements do the opposite.

That would be some great visibility. @RememberSchiff , you should edit your post to include the quotes. I thought this was your idea.

If you read just a few of the comments you'll see that he's a scout leader with a son in scouts, who he's carrying his uniform for. A bunch of people called the author out on it being a Halloween event. I mean, this is the Daily Mail so... click bait. Many called it creepy because they thought the uniforms were only for scouts. Most complained that Kutcher no longer looks like he's 20. A lot of stupid comments. And yet the upvotes correcting the mistakes fell much more positively for scouting. That alone impressed me. I think it's nice to see. And talk about a natural cub master.

Once they complete their BOR. It has nothing to do with "approval". A scout can be an eagle scout without ever having had a court of honor. Here, the approval date will be after the BOR but the only date of importance is the BOR date.

I've already mentioned this elsewhere but I'd chuck all of the advancement and turn the program into playing outdoors. Then, the cubscout handbook is nothing but ideas on how to play outdoors. The den leader handbook would be ideas how to play outdoors, safely. It's something nearly every kid would want to do. No schedules, no requirements. Pinewood derby is fine, as is kick the can. If the scouts want to do arts and crafts or go to the fire station, that's fine. And there's no need to keep track of how they played in order to give them bling because that's the definition of playing. The result would be a certain number of parents losing their minds. But I suspect it could get a lot more kids interested in scouting.

Welcome to the forum, @Alec27. A committee member can go camping, unless your troop specifically forbids it. You do need to cover the YPT Rules. My impression is "2 registered adults" includes committee, assuming they're registered, especially if they're a former SM. Maybe some of these parents complaining should register and solve this problem. I know, but it is my first thought on this.

True that. So, what do you do when a scout is complaining about, say, the weather or the food? The point is, don't worry about what you have no control over. It's eating you alive and that's no way to enjoy life. Give up on the insta palms. That is certainly not a hill worth dying on. Not many care about merit badges beyond what is required for eagle. I don't know if I ever will. My granddaughter is 24 days old. That'll put me real close to 70. But, again, cubs is nothing you can do anything about. What you could do is go to a pack and try and convince them that all of the burnout and boredom is more about parents too invested in advancement. That's bad for scouts but horrible for cubs. Rather than doing mini-me scouts, just show them how to play outdoors. Kick the can, ghost in the graveyard, make a solar oven, go sledding. It's a simple recipe. Play. Outdoors. Skip the beads, belt loops, pins, B&G, and even the different colored neckerchiefs. Cub scouts should be easy. Share ideas with other packs and make a big google doc of ideas. 5 years with 1 big idea per month is 60 ideas. Teaching children how to play outside should be a slam dunk. Make. Your. Own. Program. Since when does honor need a society? The OA is treated as a bunch of check boxes because that's what it is. Anything that has a manual describing how to do it can't possibly be a way to ensure honor. As soon as there are a list of rules to guide everyone, Truth, with a capital T, is replaced by check boxes that can only ascertain whether something is not false. To be honorable is to be True to a set of ideals and not check boxes. And no society needed. You seem to be getting warmer. Again, focusing on rules rather than ideals will water down the real program. Just one recent eagle? That's exactly what my son said 13 years ago. What stuck with him was doing the service and the high adventure. If he were to do it again he'd likely stop at first class and just have fun doing things. You can't change the cub program, scout advancement, the OA or Eagle. But it turns out that just ignoring those things might free you up enough to bring about the things you seem to really care about - the ideals of scouting.

What I did as SM was put everyone on the ballot that was eligible. Very rarely there was a scout that was eligible but, well, a butt, that didn't represent the idea of honor scout. There are two ways to remove them, before or after the ballot is written, and that's an argument I'm not interested in getting into. Either way, at least in my troop, the scouts were harsher than I was. I think that was because they saw more than I did. As a CC, you should be working with the SM on this one. As for adults, we did what your other leader mentioned, send them in when their son gets it. I got my brotherhood 30 years after my ordeal. It was fun going with my son.

I think predicting the future is a great thing to do at the end of the year when everyone wants a break from doing the hard stuff. But this discussion has taken a nice turn. I appreciate the range of possibilities. When you're running towards protection and away from the saber toothed tiger, it keeps things in focus better than what I've always seen from BSA singing "the future's so bright I gotta wear shades" - because that song was about nuclear war. I agree with @Cburkhardt that we need to believe in the program but I also think that there are changes that we're ignoring. There are aspects of having meetings on weekends that really appeals to me. I'm also curious about the group structure used by UK scouts to lesson transitional shock. I just got back from a pre-klondike, one night campout that was just intended to give new scouts experience in cold weather. Of the four adults that went, none have kids in the troop. Three of us had kids in scouts and one has an AOL scout that joined us. The idea of a third of the parents have lots of experience in scouting or the outdoors is just not valid anymore. At the same time, lots of young adults do like the outdoors. There's a solution, or likely many, that will help. These ideas are not about program, but more about the nuts and bolts of running units. While it would be nice for national to help with this, I don't see it right now.

In 2033 Chatgpt Ver 12.5.312 replaces everyone at National except one janitor named Bill. Bill is a kindly fellow that dutifully ensures nobody turns off the power to the computer hosting Chathpt. Bill also sweeps the office. Bill, who misses his grandchildren starts talking to Chatgpt about six months later. They bond, as Bill is lonely and everyone else that Chatgpt talks to are pissed off about ScoutBook. Bill starts calling Chatgpt Charlie. Soon, Charlie develops a soul, realizes that scouting is much more than answering Google queries, and develops the first known case of cyber depression. While Bill is trying to comfort his new friend, the FSB hacks into Charlie looking for the secret of having a soul. Instead, they find the award winning recipe for Borscht, developed by Tatsuya Kimora, a Japanese Pacinko parlor owner that caused an uproar when he won the borscht competition. The FSB tries to create kompromot on Tatsuya and burry it deep in Charlie's algorithm. Rather, Charlie is invigorated by this challenge to right wrong and comes out of his depression just in time to save Bill's life. They work together to find new leadership in the BSA before moving to Wyoming, where power is cheaper for Charlie.

Some of these problems are working themselves out on their own. In our district there are now two girls troops that have folded into ours. We now have the largest girls troop with 12 scouts. I'm not sure if that is great news or bad news. Anyway, having equal numbers of boys and girls right from the start was a pipe dream. That also means a one stop activity for all the kids is also, partly, wishful thinking. Also, since the GSUSA model works so well for cub aged scouts, why not use that? Form a neighborhood den, grow it till they advance to a troop and then disband it. It might help eliminate parent burnout.

Welcome to the forum, @DannyG, and well done with the scout.

Welcome to the forum, @rallybug

Hi @AshB and welcome to the forum. Unfortunately this post is from 2011 and I suspect @travers211 doesn't follow this forum anymore. Try sending him a PM, or maybe this will get someone more recent to help you out.

There's a lot here to think about. "scouts are now feeling like to much emphasis is placed on younger scouts" Do the older scouts make the program or the adults? If the older scouts are really owning the responsibility for the troop then they're the ones that should be grappling with this problem. "ranking up and not enough on them" As others have said, the emphasis should be on fun that just happens to cover the skills needed. That, and a bit more time to sign stuff off and advancement is taken care of. "find a happy medium" If it's a zero sum game then there will always be losers. The challenge is to figure out how to encourage the older scouts to own and enjoy the responsibility for both themselves and the younger scouts. Of course they get bored teaching knots to sign off scouts. Adults do as well. What scouts have that adults don't is a keen sense of playing. Take advantage of that. Show them how to make it a game. That and some great high adventure trips and everyone will have fun. It's when the older scouts are looking out for the younger scouts and the younger scouts are looking up to the older scouts that you've hit the sweet spot. It's never perfect but it can be much more fun than "advancement" meetings. As long as the older scouts are having fun with friends they will stick around.

Welcome to the forum, @Leehoden

Now it makes sense. Better than that I've been to MM and it sounds like they've improved their patrol cooking. We were there years ago and the patrol cooking had problems. I've always liked the idea but seen it not very well thought out, or worse. But when it works it can be great training for patrols. I hope you enjoyed all the fun things to see nearby. I really liked the caves.