Oak Tree

I've never seen a Scout do anything that appeared to be at all intentional to lead to this situation. From what I've seen, once they've decided they want to get the next rank, they are eager to get there. I don't foresee a Scout saying "I think I'll delay Second Class for awhile just so I only have to do one BoR." But maybe our Scoutmaster conferences and BoRs are not painful enough. I suppose at some threshhold a Scout might start doing that. :-) Seriously - I agree with you - but I can't imagine a problem.

Wait, don't tell me, let me guess: Personal Fitness and Personal Management. Or Family Life. This struck me as a humorously accurate prediction, based on my own experience. Just for kicks I went back and looked over our troop's records to see how true it is. For all those Scouts where we know what their last two Eagle merit badges were, or will be, or would have been (a total of 14 Scouts) Number that had two of those as the final two: 6 Number that had one of those in the final two: 7 Number that had none of those as the last two: 1 (this young man came right up to the wire and needed two non-Eagle merit badges, so he earned Archery and Basketry.) For all the Scouts where we know which 5 Eagle-required merit badges would be the 5 that count towards Eagle (a total of 23 Scouts): Number that had all three of those among the last five: 12 Number that had two of the three among the last five: 9 Number that had one of the three among the last five: 2 Number that had earned all three for Star or Life: 0 Alternatively, here are the top 5 most common merit badges, in order, to be the last two: 1. Personal Management 2. Family Life 3. Personal Fitness 4. Citizenship in the Community 5. Environmental Scient And here are the top 11 to be among the five Eagle-required badges that are used for the Eagle rank: 1. Personal Management (87% of the time) 2. Family Life 3. Personal Fitness 4. Environmental Science 5. Camping 6. Citizenship in the Community 7. Communications 7. Emergency Preparedness/Lifesaving 9. Citizenship in the Nation 9. Citizenship in the World 9. Hiking/Swimming/Biking (2 Hiking, 1 undetermined) The one merit badge that was never used for Eagle was First Aid. Everyone had that by Life. So NJCubScouter, your specific prediction would have had an accuracy of 43% in my troop, but the general principle behind the prediction appears to be 100% on target.

Eagle92, that point about proving you've earned it varies by council as well. No proof needed in our council's shop, at least not for any knot I've tried to buy.

jet526, that's an interesting interpretation. As written, the current requirement is "Have a record of proper use of the Boy Scout advancement program, resulting in a majority of Boy Scouts in the troop attaining the First Class rank." Since it says "a majority of Boy Scouts in the troop", I was interpreting it to mean that a majority of the Boy Scouts who are currently in the troop are First Class. It does not say "a majority of Boy Scouts who have joined the troop". Plus, in terms of logistics, it would be harder to effectively calculate the percentage as you describe it. How far back do you go? Any Scouts who have been in the troop in the last two years? Seven years? 18 months? And if you say that it means a majority of Scouts need to attain First Class during the Scoutmaster's tenure, that would be effectively impossible for a new Scoutmaster in our troop today. Over two-thirds of our troop is already First Class. Even with a new class of Webelos crossing over, there aren't enough Scouts who could possibly earn First Class in 18 months. While the council would theoretically have the data to check this award, I strongly suspect that in my council they just take the committee chair's word that the percentage has been attained.

I'll also point out that the current page describing the Scoutmaster Award of Merit hasn't changed, and still links to the old form. http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts/Resources/ScoutmasterAwardofMerit.aspx http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/58-413.pdf Not sure what to make of the new form.

Good link. Where did you hear about it? My immediate reaction is that this sort of makes sense from a Boy Scout/Varsity Team/Venturing Crew perspective. I see that they don't mention Sea Scouts or Skipper. The 60% advancement requirement is trivial for Cubmasters, can be pretty tight for Scoutmasters, and could possibly be out of the realm of possibility for Varsity Coaches or Venturing Advisors (advancement isn't even a method of Venturing.) There is no requirement that the unit earns Quality Unit, despite the fact that they start off by saying "Quality unit leadership is the key to a quality unit program". Overall for a Scoutmaster it's not obvious whether this is easier or harder - I think it might depend on your unit. When we were a very young unit, we barely got 50% of our Scouts to First Class. Now that we have bunches of older Scouts, a lot of them are happy to coast along at Star or Life until they hit 17. So now the First Class requirement is easy, but the 60% advancement is harder. For a Varsity Coach, this could be much harder. Getting 50% of your Varsity Scouts to First Class was nothing. Getting 60% to advance in a year? Much less likely, and close to impossible among ours. For a Venturing Advisor, I don't really know how hard it is to get 60% to advance in one year (or even what it means). My guess would be that it's much harder. For a Cubmaster, this whole process seems almost like a freebie. If a Cubmaster is already getting the Cubmaster knot, I would guess this would just come along. Did we really need another knot for Cub Scout leaders to earn? Getting the annual plan out seems like a good requirement. Picking a successor does not strike me as quite so good. I'm sure that one of the big reasons units fold is when one unit leader leaves and no one is ready or prepared to step up. I can see this award encouraging units to have a succession plan, although you'd think you might have that somewhere else (like on the Quality Unit award, say). But I'm not really a big fan of that, either. If there's an obvious time and switch coming, then great. But otherwise, when a leader is only 18 months in, that doesn't seem like the most likely time you'd need to have a successor named. Plus, naming a successor can 1) be difficult because oftentimes no one wants to volunteer if they don't have to, 2) create awkward conversations, 3) name someone that you will later realize was not the best choice. If I had to fill this out now, it wouldn't be a pleasant chore. I might just suggest to my CC that he put his name there, knowing that it will be his job to find someone anyway. I don't see any form number on this web page, no copyright, no version number or year of printing. It makes it seem not quite official. Might this be something that they are preparing to roll out? Is there any announcement as to when it takes effect? If I were to redo it, I would combine the four older youth programs (Boy Scouts, Varsity Scouts, Venturing, Sea Scouts) and leave out Cub Scouts. (I don't want to see a Cubmaster's key, either, unless they turn the current CM knot into a three-year award.) I'd keep the Quality Unit requirement, although I'd put some teeth back into that program. The unit program plan is a good addition.

Just checked out their website: http://www.post53.org (which is a pretty good site and a pretty inspiring organization). Everything about it appears to be consistent with an Explorer post. Kids join at age 14. But if they are associated with Explorers, they sure don't make it obvious. I think I went through the entire web site before I found one reference. On their 2004 newsletter, their return address is "Explorer Post 53". So maybe they were Explorers but decided they didn't need the benefits of being associated with them? Or maybe they still are but decided to really downplay it. What would be the advantage for them of being associated with Explorers? They appear to be a *very* self-sufficient organization. Darien must be a pretty well-off town. People donate ambulances, cars, etc. Their annual operating budget is $200,000. That's some serious fund-raising.

Stosh, You may laugh, but our district Eagle board will not approve projects that have the Scouts working with any wood that has been treated with arsenic. We did have one such project approved on the condition that only adults would work with that wood. The industry is phasing out the arsenic. The current wood treatments use other types of chemical preservatives.

The optimist says the glass is half-full and is happy with it. The pessimist says the glass is half-empty and therefore gets more. My son thus believes that optimists are always thirsty. There's an engineering problem here too. The engineer says the glass is too big. Design an appropriate sized glass. The mother just sees another glass to wash. Looks like a patrol cooking requirement.

Scout Commish, Thanks for asking. The position of National Commissioner is so far removed from what I do on a daily basis that it can be hard to put myself into that mindset, but Ill give it a try. First off, lets think about what we want to have happen down at the unit level. What do the units want? In my case, we didnt have a unit commissioner for the first four years of our pack, the time that you might have thought we would need it most. We didnt need one then, and dont really need one now for either the troop or the pack. But would we appreciate help? Sure. Id be looking for a helpful volunteer who can serve as a contact point with the council office. Other groups may need more specific help to resolve problems, or to learn about what resources are available. I think a unit commissioner should come bearing gifts as often as possible. A new book, or some contact information, or some awards for the adult leaders, or a tutorial on how to do internet rechartering, or maybe even ice cream. The last thing we need is a person from outside the unit coming in and telling units how things should be done. Maybe they could talk about how theyve seen other units do things that could be useful. What would happen at the district or council level? Why do they want commissioners in the first place? I think you want to clarify the mission of the unit commissioners. Its a pretty vague assignment to say help units succeed. So what could the national commissioner do to increase more helpfulness from the unit commissioners? First some comments on your specific ideas:An increasing focus on unit visits and the gradually improving UTVS. More visits are fine, as long as there is some value to the visits. I dont know what an increased focus means, though. Isnt this what they are supposed to do now? How will you encourage more? (and other than Utility Terrain Vehicles, I have no idea what UTVS is) A volunteer driven national support staff for Commissioners. Sounds ok. Be interesting to see how much use it gets. I dont know how big of a need this is for commissioners. Increased communication. These support staff folks even have email addresses so that you can let them know your ideas and opinions. Yes, this would be a welcome change. Right now it seems very difficult to find out how to talk to someone at National. This may be by intention, as they dont want to hear about every unit level problem, but when you do want to get in touch with someone, it would be good to know how. Improved Philmont Courses including a Council Commissioner course. Hopefully they are also improving the level of instructors. Seems like a reasonable thing for the top echelon. Pretty far removed from the unit level. Appointments of Area and Region Commissioners to put an increased focus on Commissioners. What would the area and region commissioners do to increase the focus? An increased emphasis on Council Commissioners leading the commissioner staff. Again, I'm not sure what this emphasis looks like. Increase pride in being a Commissioner. It is a little thing but the new centennial Commissioner position patch is a great example of this. Again, increasing pride is great, but its not specific. How is that being done? Then you ask Now if you were the National Commissioner, what else would you do? Here are some ideas to chew on. Emphasize boys not units as a goal for the professional staff. Most Commissioners would rather see a successful pack of 30 boys instead of 2 packs of 15 boys with mixed dens. One reason that we have membership issues is that we lose boys when these weak packs fold. Ok, this is definitely true. Units are focused on succeeding, not on creating new units. A unit commissioners goal, it would seem almost by definition, would be to help an existing unit. This may not align with the DEs goal, though. Youd want the DE to have the same goal as the commissioner staff, ideally. Who cares if we have a 3-1 ratio if the Commissioners are not making visits? It is time for a new ratio that is based on the average number of visits per Commissioner. To improve this ratio, the DC would need to add more functioning Commissioners, get rid of paper Commissioners, or increase the number of visits that the Commissioners are making. Sure, more visits are fine. But this simple step of adding more commissioners is often the crux of the problem. Teach the DE in PDL that a good functioning Commissioner Staff can make their life easier. Teach them to remain in the background and utilize the Commissioner staff to answer everyday unit leader questions. Maybe this new support staff can outline what professionals need to know about Commissioners. Again, this sounds great. Absolutely true that a DE can utilize the commissioners to do many parts of his job. But first they need to be there. There needs to be a registration for older scouters. Go back to the Scouters reserve. This can become the pool to pull from for FOS, Camporee staffs, etc instead of asking the Commissioner staffs to do everything. Its almost like a commissioner-at-large. Seems like a reasonable idea ease people in and then maybe theyll also be willing to step up as a commissioner. Add a Commissioner position to Wood Badge Staff that can only be filled by someone that has had Commissioner Training. Not sure what value this really has I think that youd want to give the person something to do. Increasing the visibility of the position is ok. Make visits with the CORs or institution heads part of the Commissioner service plan. I think this is largely a waste of time. If units/CORs want a good relationship, they probably already have one. If they dont want to be too involved, Im not sure that this visit would help. Id at least ask the unit leader if he or she thinks a COR visit would be useful. Add Commissioner support to the initial training for leaders. I wouldnt do this. So many other things to cover. Better use of the Commissioner service plan I dont even know what this is? How can a Commissioner get to know a unit if they visit only every third month. Increase to 2 visits per month per Commissioner. If a commissioner visited once every three months, that would be way above average. Roundtables need help. Create a Council annual service plan for Roundtable Commissioners. Have an ACC for Roundtables. This seems like a whole separate topic. Lets not hear more war stories. Do you have any concrete ideas that you would implement if you were the National Commissioner?I would focus on making the commissioner job fun and respected and useful, and on recruiting more of them. I think Id start with a survey of district commissioners. Ask them why they have trouble recruiting commissioners. How many do they have, how often do they visit units, etc. Ask them what theyd like to see unit commissioners do. Ask them what they personally like about being a commissioner. I think Id revamp the mission to focus more on helping units. Get them to do more of things that both the commissioners and the units want to do. Right now the job description is so vague and the return on your volunteer time is not readily apparent, and its hard to recruit commissioners. I think you really need to focus on those issues before all of the other items, although some of them could be a bit of a help. At our last University of Scouting, we had a course on how to make the most of your unit commissioner. Four people signed up. The average class was more like twenty or thirty, Id guess. Units just dont see the value, and since people dont see the value in the position, I think thats partly why they dont volunteer for it. Before you focus on increasing the visits, ask yourself, Why do we want to increase visits? Unit commissioners can be nice guys/gals, and helpful and all, but from what Ive seen, if the entire commissioner corps disappeared one day, I dont think most units would be affected. I know mine wouldnt. Until you fix that problem, its hard to see what else would help.

Bob, I too am a big fan of Packmaster (and Troopmaster). We don't do the email (point 1 on your list) since we use a yahoo group for that, but the other reasons are all true in my experience as well. I especially like the .net version since everyone can see the current data with no effort. However, Brad asked for a solution that would also run on a Mac. Packmaster doesn't have that support. I suppose you might be able to get it to run with some type of Windows emulator on the Mac, but Brad said he couldn't get it to work. That seems like the biggest advantage of the web-based pack management software. You could get to it from any browser, be it on a Mac system, at a library, on a friend's machine, from Linux, from your Blackberry, etc. It's not enough of an advantage that I'd consider switching, but I can see that if you were starting from scratch, you might prefer that option.

Hal, That sounds like a pretty reasonable explanation. I'll go with that. jet526, this happens on a fairly regular basis in our troop (maybe 2-3 times per year, I'm not sure). The most common combination is Second Class/First Class. It usually happens with Scouts who are only attending half the meetings/campouts, and they've missed the several opportunities to complete some of the Second Class items, so they'll typically have one of them left: five mile hike, sharpening an ax on a campout, flag ceremony, first aid, swim test, drug program. Then they decide they want to finish First Class, and in one weekend they'll blitz all the remaining requirements. We used to actually do two Scoutmaster conferences and two BORs (you don't have to have completed the first BOR in order to do the second Scoutmaster conference, as far as I can tell). But now we will typically just do one conference and one BOR for both, because as you note, it can be hard to think of new things to talk about. Sometimes we've done two BORs with two different sets of committee members.

Venturing is so flexible that it's hard to see how this award hurts. I think that that's actually one of the prime weaknesses of Venturing. Since it stands for nothing all that specific, it's hard to attract people. "Why should I join Venturing?" "Well, we let you decide what you want to do." "Ok, but what does the group do?" "Whatever we want to." Now I know that some specific units have better recruiting pitches than that, but it seems like there's very little brand identity there. Boy Scouts can have some of these things - help explore careers, etc - but they don't really change its primary identity of a group that does a lot of its training in the outdoors. I don't really see all that much point in duplicating things that can be done in other contexts. Badges like Scholarship, Music, Sports - they are essentially awarded for stuff you can do in school. Schools can have computer clubs. They have math and science classes. I'm not sure I see the attraction of offering an award in Venturing for this. I'm not really opposed to it, but I'm missing how this will help Venturing be more attractive

I don't believe it. This is a strange way to go about it. If they wanted the Scout to spend time between ranks, they could just make that a requirement ("Be active as a Tenderfoot Scout for one month.) Since they recommend that BORs are held at least quarterly, it just seems like this rumor would be a crazy change. They're usually all about not adding additional obstacles to the national requirements.

Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving!

Eagle92 - thanks for the response. I've thought about encouraging it for many of those reasons, but I haven't convinced myself that I'd get enough benefit from the effort. But for people who really want to see their troop or pack fully uniformed, I have no doubt that it can be done, and it can very much be worth it for them. A number of the things you list, though (like the compliments at McDonalds, the sense of identity), can happen primarily from the shirts. As for sports, I think that one reason the uniform means more is that they wear it less. They don't wear it at practice - they only wear it when they are in front of people where it actually means something. I think BSA might actually get better uniforming if we did something similar. Brent - I'll grant you there might be a little bit of "fear" involved, if by that you mean that I can foresee some possible negative consequences. I'd say it's more of an analysis of the benefit vs the cost (where the cost includes whatever effort I'd have to make, the money people would have to spend, and the list of what might go badly). I realize that in some theoretical sense troops don't have the authority to set uniform policy. But here in the real world, we do. National doesn't care. Council doesn't care. District doesn't care. Our summer camp doesn't care. My CO doesn't care. My Scouts don't care. My leaders don't care. So lastly, I'll take BDPT00's advice and say, I don't care. The reason I'm not pushing Scout pants, in the end, is that I just don't care much about whether the Scouts are wearing them. And dang, now I'm remembering why I didn't want to bring this topic up in the first place.

I'm not really suggesting that it would be a likely scenario where I would not accept what a Scout wrote down. As long as he writes something that honestly appears to be a purpose and ambition, I'm not going to have an issue with it. But if some Scout got it into his head that he was going to prove to me that I had no say-so and wrote something just intentionally stupid, then I can say "Oh, come on. Give me a break. That's not a statement of your purpose and ambition, and I'm not signing until you give me a real version." [rolls eyes and walks away]

Here are some quotes from this thread, including some questions that are clearly intended as rhetoricalWhy should scouting expect any less of a scout? Why does everyone try to find another excuse to not wear the uniform? Is the lesson of doing what you want because you want to do it the lesson you want to reinforce to your scouts? I see scouters who don't view it as important as saying "The rules shouldn't apply to me/us, if we don't want them to do so." If I see an Eagle scout in jeans and a uniform shirt I wonder which other methods his leaders decided to only go part way on. Leadership? Maybe fewer Eagle requirements? Or perhaps it was too much trouble to have a boy-led troop rather than an adult led one? When I see a scout in blue jeans and a uniform shirt, I see a scout who, clearly doesn't care to do what is right. Now, we have hashed over this topic before on this forum, and this wasn't what this thread topic was supposed to be about, but I suppose it was inevitable. :-) I know these questions weren't really posted looking for answers, but I was thinking about them, and decided I was curious in my own answer on why I don't push hard on full uniforming for the Scouts. Maybe it will be interesting to someone else, too. Just as backdrop, I'm not opposed to full uniforms. What Buffalo Skipper describes about his troop sounds great. I wear a full uniform myself whenever I'm in uniform. Here are some of my honest reasons for not pushing it (trying to be as open as I can)Scouting is system of chartering partnerships. National puts out material that each chartered organization can use to implement their own program. We are not officially responsible to BSA, we're responsible to our CO. Our CO is happy with not requiring uniform pants. Scouting doesn't push uniform pants. There are no equivalents of the $5,000 fine for wearing the wrong color chinstrap. You can come to Scout camp without them. You don't even have to have a uniform. You can earn Quality Unit without anyone in your troop wearing the full uniform. Most other troops around here don't wear them. Even a higher percentage of packs don't use uniform pants, so the intro to Scouting for most people ends up reinforcing the idea that you don't need to wear them. The Scouts, by and large, aren't big fans of the uniform in the first place. Some of the other ASMs also don't see it as worth the battle to change the culture. I've been in district training sessions where the trainer told us we didn't need to require the pants. I personally don't believe it would make our troop much "better" if we wore uniform pants. Scouting by its very nature is controlled chaos. The council and district events are always half unorganized. We're always doing different things, unlike sports teams that try to get very good at playing one particular sport. Trying to make one part of this look really organized doesn't fit the pattern. The district and council are also very unorganized at lots of the things they do. Every time I see them not following their own rules, it's hard to take too seriously some of the other rules they put forward. Why does everyone try to find another excuse to not wear the uniform? I guess I wouldn't say I'm looking for an excuse. I don't need an excuse. Other than on this board, no one is telling me that I should make the troop a fully uniformed troop. What I'd prefer would be too see if there was some good reason *to* wear the full uniform. Some troops do, but I just don't see that the benefit would be worth the effort. Is the lesson of doing what you want because you want to do it the lesson you want to reinforce to your scouts? The lesson I want my Scouts to learn is that it's always a good idea to apply intelligent judgement to situations. Some rules are more important than others. They all know this. For example, one rule listed on the national web site is that "Scouts" should always be capitalized. If I see people not following that rule, do I conclude that they don't care about other rules as well? Obviously not, although it's tempting to do so right at the moment. [deadpan humor] I see scouters who don't view it as important as saying "The rules shouldn't apply to me/us, if we don't want them to do so." The rules written by National do "apply" to all members, by definition. But the question is whether we need to follow all of the rules that apply to us. It is a fact that we don't have to follow the rules, depending on a variety of things. A few rules have obvious consequences. Breaking some rules can lose you your charter. Some rules will prevent you from getting Eagle. Breaking certain rules will almost certainly get some kids hurt. Breaking some rules will get your CO a visit from council. Breaking some of the advancement rules would have a variety of negative effects, I think. The fact that Scouting has a bunch of rules that we almost are forced to break regularly certainly does reinforce my perception that we don't have to follow all rules at all times. Other rules just seem very much optional. I tend to be a "spirit of the law" kind of guy. If I see an Eagle scout in jeans and a uniform shirt I wonder which other methods his leaders decided to only go part way on. Leadership? Maybe fewer Eagle requirements? Or perhaps it was too much trouble to have a boy-led troop rather than an adult led one? I frequently muse over the question of how much variety there is between troops. Some that wear full uniforms are much more adult led, and are therefore requiring less leadership of their Scouts and are getting less patrol method (not all, but it's certainly a pattern others have observed on this forum.) I just see uniforming as one of many points of variability. While this question appears to presume that lesser uniforming is correlated with less of other methods, I think it's more likely that these are independent variables. Some of them even have a negative correlation uniforming, I suspect. As for fewer Eagle requirements, that's not even an option. That's one place where there is in fact a negative impact from not following the rules. The district actually enforces that one. When I see a scout in blue jeans and a uniform shirt, I see a scout who, clearly doesn't care to do what is right. *snort*, *cough*, *chuckle* But then, this one actually bothers me the most, in that it is making a totally unwarranted and pretty much plainly wrong assumption about a Scout who may very well have earned Eagle. The idea that such a Scout just "doesn't care to do what is right" strikes me as almost like slander. I've known many Eagle Scouts who dressed that way and very much could be depended on to do what is right (more so than the average person, taking it for granted that no one is perfect). Possibly I have other deep-seated psychological reasons for not pushing the uniforming. That could be true for anyone, I guess. I have a bunch of seemingly well-adjusted ASMs and well-adjusted Scouts who are all happy with the status quo. I just don't see the obvious reason to try to force a change on that culture we've established.

The Troopmaster company is pretty responsive to customer requests. So Ken, if you want there to be a place to track those, I'm sure they would consider providing it. It wouldn't be too much work on their part. They are going to have to make updates for the new requirements anyway. Buffalo Skipper, I looked through my copy of the ACP&P (2002 printing) and I couldn't find any blanket statement on what happens when requirements change.

That's a long way out, and for that reason alone, strikes me as not official. The other thing is that if the course is really intended for people 14+, that would be a deal-breaker. No way would National say that they want a First Class-first year plan, and then have no way to earn Star for two more years.

I can't imagine that any initial change would involve declaring that units can't discriminate. I think that any initial change would be most likely 1. the addition of all girl units, and/or 2. a local option for co-ed units. Still, that's what happened in Canada, and then they forced all the units to go co-ed. I don't think that's likely for a *long* time here, if ever. Still, it's interesting to hear the reaction.

Buffalo Skipper and resqman, it is certainly your perogative to think that other programs are growing lesser Scouts or providing a partial program. And I agree that you could get everyone to wear the full uniform by expecting it. However, I just don't get the complete uniform as being a real essential part of the program. Most troops don't do it, around here, anyway. Some people would indeed be attracted to troops who wear the whole uniform. Others seem to really enjoy our troop's lesser focus on that and more attention to the other parts of the program. We've had a couple boys join our troop primarily because they wanted a group that was less rigid/demanding in that area. The boys do have standards and are not "anything goes", but we tend to focus on things they care about, not what the adults think will look sharp. I think that the national average is about 95% of Boy Scouts come from Cub Scouts (I'm not sure where I remember that from). Our troop, though, has a much higher percentage of non-Cubs than that. I've got to like the fact that we have good word-of-mouth advertising. We also have a number of Scouts who have transferred to us from other units, but I can't think of any Scouts since I've been Scoutmaster who have left our troop for another local troop. We've been growing constantly over the past five years, and our retention is pretty good (just under half of our Scouts are 14 and up). We have great camping trips, lots of fun, Scouts who really like hanging out with the group, some good Eagles coming out, and lots of adult volunteers who generally get the program. Are we perfect? Absolutely not. Are we a good troop for a lot of the Scouts? Absolutely yes. So say what you want about "lesser Scouts" or "partial program". All troops are lesser in some areas and stronger in others. I have no expectation that I'll be able to bring you around to my position, but I know that those statements of yours are certainly not likely to bring me around to yours. I would like to think that as Scouters we could discuss our programs without feeling like we're being insulted by other members of the forum. Thanks, Oak Tree

I would take the Scouting magazine statement as an official documentation of the policy. It's something written that comes out of National. It's even probably on the web somewhere under scoutingmagazine.com. In practice, other than for Eagle, it seems to me that a troop could use whatever interpretation it wanted.

I will respectfully disagree with at least one point of evmori's claim. The Scoutmaster has to sign off on the Eagle application. One thing that this indicates is that the Scoutmaster believes that all the requirements are complete. One of the requirements is to attach a statement of your ambition and life purpose. I think it's fair for a Scoutmaster to decide that the statement the Scout has given does not actually meet that requirement, and ask him to rewrite it. Once the statement is above the minimum, then yes, I agree that the Scout can decide for himself how good it is and whether it should be made better. But Scouts by and large want people to actually listen to them and give them feedback and sometimes hold them to a better standard than "whatever you write down is fine." And I do agree that it does not affect the question of the Scoutmaster conference.

Yes, good point. If a council only accepted merit badge counselor applications along with a list of merit badges that the counselor wished to counsel, they could then restrict a counselor to only signing off on five merit badges per Scout, (at least until the Scouter changed his or her registration.) However, this strict limit would be in contradiction of national policy, as I read it. I don't think our council requires a list of merit badges when you register as a counselor, though. They certainly don't ever collect the names of the counselors that a Scout uses. So all of a Scout's merit badges would be signed off by a registered counselor, even if he wasn't "officially" associated with that particular badge, whatever that means in an individual council. Quoting from my copy of Advancement Committee Policies and ProceduresThere is no restriction or limit on the number of merit badges an individual may be approved to counsel forNow, they also say that an individual must be approved by the committee for each specific merit badge, which clearly doesn't happen in my council, but even if it did, I would think that the above statement would mean that the advancement committee could not choose a limit (what part of "There is no limit" would they not be able to understand?), but I can see how it could be maybe arguable.There is no limit on the number of merit badges a youth may earn from one counselorAn approved merit badge counselor may counsel any youth member, including his or her own son, ward, or relative.I will add right away that there are all kinds of other statements in the ACP&P that don't remotely match what my council does.All merit badge counselors must be trainedThe district or council advancement committee will follow through to be sure that the merit badge counselors are working effectivelythe district merit badge list...should be mailed to every unit leaderthe council advancement committee sends a letter to existing merit badge counselors who are to continue for another year When the council and district do nothing at their level on this topic, it's hard for me to spend lots of extra time on it for no apparent benefit. The council of my youth did this pretty much the way it's described, and we had a council list that we used. But for me, with the number of adults associated with my troop, it's much easier to just go with a troop list.