ParkMan

I recognize that what I am suggesting is very difficult. I think it's probably harder to do than picking a side. Further, I've got no doubt that the BSA would make mistakes in trying to achieve that goal. Yet, I think the payoff is great if we can accomplish it. I think of it like Scouting being the Switzerland of countries. We are neutral and want to be neutral. We want to help kids have fun and develop into outstanding adults. We believe in providing a framework and coaching that adults can use with the kids in their communities toward those goals. The politics of those communities will undoubtedly be different and varied because we are a varied country. It's not the role of the BSA to advocate for the politics of one community over another. I recognize that in a world today where we take sides on everything that this is very hard to do.

You say potato, I say potato. That's a distinction without a difference. If the new standard for youth organizations is an organized YPT program, a monitoring and compliance system backed by professionals, and enough liability insurance to protect from lawsuits, then many organizations who have some youth programming today should follow the lead of the NMRA. Youth sports leagues, youth groups, 4H, FFA, smaller Scouting groups, etc. should be prepared to all organize BSA quality YPT programs and maintain hundreds of millions in liability insurance. How a local town rec league will do that I do not know. As far as I can tell no other youth organization has a YPT program as strong as the BSA today. But, if that is the new standard kids will surely be safe due to the simple fact that few youth organizations will have the resources to even continue to exist.

Are you saying that because adults are discussing the policy implications of Scouting programming that those same people don't want Scouting to be fun for youth?

A very, very sad development. Makes me wonder what the right level of protection is for an organization like the NMRA to provide. They raise a very good question. On a different note - I wonder if the BSA should work with them to transfer this program under the BSA? We don't need rail road Scouting, but I do wonder if there could be some sort of council organized activity featuring rail roading that the BSA could pick up here. A way for the BSA to provide more value to it's members.

Understood, but that's where Scouting needs to learn it's lesson. Scouting today expressly forbids Scouts from getting involved directly in politics. It should learn it's lesson and really strive to assume a non-political position. I think it's achievable if the BSA is explicit in saying: Scouting wants to focus on helping youth to grow and develop. Scouting's approach is to provide program materials which can be utilized by local units sponsored by individual local organizations such as churches, schools, and civic organizations. Scouting will look to those local institutions to make the right choices on contemporary issues affecting their communities. But Scouting has to voraciously protect that position. It has to voraciously defend it's neutrality and work to elevate itself above these sorts of discussions. It will be hard because very smart people will attempt to push Scouting in to making choices that favor one side in an effort to further their beliefs or the goals of those organizations. And yes, at some point Scouting has to say that in the best opinion of the organization a question is effectivly settled across the country and we're going to move on. None of this is easy, but in the opinion of this Scouter is what Scouting needs.

No problem @Eagledad. Yes - I fully recognize that my point is not consistent from the perspective you are looking at it. I'm not attempting to advocate a particular political agenda, but instead am trying to keep Scouting out of political agendas. Scouting has to get out of the politics business. EDIT: Sorry, just saw @RememberSchiff's last append. Not trying to inflame this at all. Sorry folks.

I recognize the inconsistency in my statement. In the case of female leaders for male scouts that question was settled years ago. Announcing a new policy that lets units now restrict leaders based on gender is going contrary to the general direction of the evolution of the country. Making that decision today doesn't help anyone. Making that decision 40 years ago would have been different. But, were I trying to come up with a co code rule, I would say that in times of transition of commonly held values, the BSA should employ local choice to avoid picking a side on a contentious decision. It's not in the benefit of Scouting to pick a side. But since decisions like the gender of leaders is very long since settled, opening up those kind of issues again only goes go create division again on topics that are settled. I don't think that benefits Scouting.

On being able to discuss gender issues like this... Yes, I think it is excruciatingly hard in 2020 to discuss gender issues like this. In fact, whether it's gender, race, or another characteristic where people feel there is discrimination, it is hard to do that. My hunch is that as we've progressed in removing discrimination in our country, we are now tackling a lot of subtle and implicit discrimination. It's taken a lot of pushing for a lot of years to get this far. People are just naturally on the lookout for what they perceive as discrimination and push back. On the technical part of your comment... I'll admit - it is just my opinion. Yes, I do believe that it is better for our scouts to have the more rounded experience of mixed gender leadership. I suspect there is probably no fact based way to decide that question - it's just a policy choice about what kind of skills do we want the Scouts to develop. If we were rolling back the clock to before the choice to have female leaders had been made, then yes - I would have lobbied for a unit choice option. I would have been absolutely fine in supporting both unit models. Today, I would not roll back the decision thought and would not off this as a unit level choice. I recognize that this can be viewed as inconsistent. To be transparent, I do strongly favor mixed gender leaders in units (again a bias of mine). However, I do not believe that my personal bias is the basis for this recommendation. The basis for my position is two fold: 1) I believe that BSA should reflect the trends in our country and, 2) should actively work to stay above divisive political issues. Years ago when the BSA saw that the country was moving in the direction of mixed gender leadership teams, they should have gone along and said - "ok, this is a new idea that is clearly becoming part of accepted life. As such, we will leave this choice up to you." The would have followed the trends and stayed above politics. However, in 2020, the country is well integrated and the time for this decision long passed. If the BSA made all male leadership teams a unit choice today, it would be going counter to the general direction of the country. The BSA would be opening up yet another controversial political decision. So while they would have left this to unit choice, they would be doing so at the expense of yet another political battle. The BSA needs to be above polticial battles - not starting them.

Hah! It would be a lot quieter around here with less battling Joking aside - I find that in these exchanges we're getting to some of the more ingrained issues that normally don't get discussed. We're a very small microcosm of Scouting, but I see lots of great ideas being shared here.

From what I saw, an errant comment kicked off a side conversation about gender. That comment was that about how adding women as leaders in the program 40 years ago resulted in fewer trained leaders. That led to a debate about why it was even mentioned and pointed out. One person thought it was sexist to mention it, the person thought it was fine to mention it as a historical fact. The minute the term sexist entered the discussion people got defensive because no-one really thinks that they are being sexist. The question I see on the table is whether we should even discuss gender anymore in the context of Scouting. My perspective is that we should not.

Agree 100%. When it was people suing the Catholic Church it was one thing. When it was people suing the BSA another. When there are 6,000 lawsuits each for $10,000,000 against churches, schools, whatever, we'll have to see what happens. When those 6,000 run out, I suspect lawyers will then go after whomever was abused 40+ years ago and sue that institution. Clearly no entity was as attentive to the question of abuse as we are today. I would think it would be easy for lawyers to go after youth sports, school districts, Sunday schools, next... I suspect that you are correct. You can add the councils to the settlement because there is an obvious linkage between national and councils. Not so in the case of a church somewhere. The only saving grace for the COs is that the volume of lawsuits required may be a deterrent to the lawyers.

The problem is that in either a GSUSA or BSA discussion it's too easy to draw a sexist conclusion from this. It's certainly very probable that this are some inherent biological differences between genders that will exhibit themselves in subtle ways. As such, it would be a mistake to not have boys learn from adult men and it would be an equal mistake to not have girls learn from adult women. However, what we're seeing society tells us is that it's beneficial for boys to learn from both men and women and for girls to learn from both women and men. In 2020, the country is functionally a gender integrated place. Most every job is open to both genders. In whatever role these kids play in life they will interact with both genders. 75 or 100 years ago gender seperated Scouting programs made sense because adult life was very different for each gender. Today, adult life is not that different at all for each gender. Further, we now have both genders with equal technical and leadership skills. Some of the strongest outdoor people I know are women. Some of the strongest leaders I know are women. These women bring real value to the boys (and girls) in the program. Boys (and girls as well) benefit from having both male and female leaders. Where I think this gets sexist quickly is that despite all the benefits of having mixed gender leaders, we all too often bring up the opposite gender in examples. I don't think people are trying to be sexist, but it becomes sexist. Why else have a discussion about the impact of women as leaders if not for the purpose of making the argument that men as leaders is inherently preferable to women as leaders? This, by the way, is why I think the GSUSA model is inherently sexist. I find it shortsighted that the GSUSA believes that the path to empowering girls to become strong leaders is by having an environment where they are supported by strong women. In this I think the BSA is already years ahead of the GSUSA.

However, it really is the CO's unit program. They own it, they staff it, they decide what to do. If they want to go camping, they go camping. If they want to focus on just leadership development, they do that. Here is the text from the Chartered Organization Agreement: Nowhere in the agreement is text that you have to follow the program exactly as defined by the BSA. Now, one could look at this and think it's a mess. The potential is surely there for huge swings in how programs are implemented. However, in reality most units are leveraging the program because they want to utilize the program as defined by the BSA. In essence why would you go to the hassle of having a Scout troop is you didn't want to have a Scout troop? Further, I've found that the CO concept is actually a driving force in consistency across the program. One of the other current discussions in this topic is about the impact of untrained leaders entering the program. In that conversation is a reoccuring theme that untrained leaders result in derivations from the program. Leaders who do not have experience in the program "guess" on the implementation and often go in unexpected directions. What usually happens is that those leaders eventually realize that their actions resulted in something unintended and after a few tries settle in on a fairly consistent approach. In essence junior leaders become senior leaders. So, units that last for a long time tend to have a group of senior leaders that have the experience to guide through the issues and sort out the problems. This results in a pretty consistent program. In the case of the BSA standard programming, larger units with more stable leadership pretty much do the same things. It's the newer units or those struggling for leaders that tend to see more variation in programming. So, as a result, by leveraging the CO concept, we have a fairly stable program offering across the BSA.

Ahh - I find it an interesting challenge in the context of a topic that started about Wood Badge. In fact, this is one of those things that the current version tries to prepare leaders for.

It's time for the BSA to stop referring to moms or dads or male Scouters or female Scouters. It's just Scouters. You want to have the BSA change the conversation, this is one way. Almost never does gender matter in these discussions. The only time you should ever need to refer to gender is to point to the facilities - other than that, gender should never be referenced. Why? The core issues we are discussing - inexperience among adults, youth experience in the program, hovering parents, really have nothing to do with gender - those problems are generic. When we start adding gender in, we start becoming divisive. The conversation quickly gets distracted from the main issue - dealing with the behavior patterns we are trying to describe. I think we'd be better off the BSA simply stopped the practice of using gender labels in conversation altogether.

Ahh - of course, you're thinking about it from the CO perspective - as you should I still am a fan of local option. Here's how I would approach it and argue the BSA should have as well: sexual orientation - The BSA should have no restrictions on who can join the program and shall make no requirements on who can join. If a local CO has specific requirements for membership in their program, then so be it. If, for example, a Catholic Church said that their youth and adult members in their programming had to be of one particular sexual orientation than so be it - it's their youth program. If the elementary school down the street said that there were no restrictions then again, so be it. The CO is simply utilizing the program of the BSA in running their own youth program. The BSA should make no requirements on who they either can or must admit to their youth program. religious beliefs - The BSA should have no restrictions on who can join the program based on religious beliefs. If a Methodist church said it wanted all their members to be devout Methodists then great. If a Methodist church said that it didn't care, then so be it. If a Baptist church wants to open every meeting with a prayer, then great. If a Lutheran church wants to discuss religion in the context of character development - then great. But, in short - it's the CO's program. Let them run their program their own way. The only restriction being that you cannot add nor take away from advancement requirements. The BSA should not make any attempt to become a wholly secular organization. Similarly, the BSA should make no attempt to be a religious one either. At district/council functions, there should be room for this to all coexist. Scouts and Scouters should learn to respect the beliefs of others and so if there are members present who would benefit from grace before meals, then say grace. The BSA should be about respecting the plurality of it's members - that plurality includes religious diversity. Yes, some guidance would undoubtly have to be given so that this all is done appropriately - i.e., you cannot hold a mandatory 45 minute religious service at the start of a meal. But you could hold an optional 45 minute service, take a quick break, and then reconvene and have lunch. The message within the BSA should be about respecting each other, treating each other with respect, and doing the right thing.

Neither sexual orientation nor religious beliefs are a factor in the bowling club, the tennis class, soccer team, etc... For kids in the program, both have very little impact unless we make them so. People within the BSA felt they were important issues and so made them issues - but they really didn't have to be issues at all. In the case of religious beliefs, there will need to be some adjustment to the requirements, but those changes are pretty surgical. With local option, the unit can still say grace, have religious discussions, etc.

Sorry - I was a bit too vague. Yes, I agree. Gender was never really any issue. At most, it became a perceived issue because we already were already sensitive about the other issues.

Where the BSA screwed up was in how they fought it. The BSA made an issue out of something that never needed to be an issue. The three contentious membership issues are clearly sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and gender. Imagine if instead of three, there had been just one - gender. If sexual orientation and religious beliefs were local options, we never would have had the fight we had. We never would have ticked off the politically motivated people who fought the BSA. If we had not made it the issue we did and then changed our answer, we never would have lost alumni support. We got so hung up on these issues that we picked a fight we didn't need and one that did us not benefit. If we won the argument we'd have lost. If we lost the argument we'd have lost Frankly - the argument was never all that germane to Scouting to start with. As such we had an argument we never even really needed to have and ticked everyone off in the process. EDIT: BTW - I have a suspicion that if we'd never picked the fight on the other two issues, the gender issue would never have been that big a deal.

Wonderful post. If I could like this 100 times, I would. Thank you so much for articulating this so well. The specifics are perfect. I find myself reading most of these and thinking - yes, this works very well. My big, overarching though is - program, program, program. We need to be focused on building a great quality program with youth and not get too hung up on all the surrounding stuff. It's too easy to lose sight of that. I agreed with much of these: focus on being the premier outdoor program Absolutely - I agree 100% with this. Very well said. Scouting is missing a HUGE opportunity here. cost efficient Establish a monthly fee cap of $5 per scout to fund both national and council. Develop sustainable endowments for camp properties. Fundraising should be targeted at improving services for youth - not in funding council operations. functional IT Move to an all paperless system. Eliminate the need for council employees to enter any data manually. social media platforms & marketing Develop a brand identity that is an asset and encourages people to become involved with the program. Scouting needs a much stronger marketing presence. Let's shift some of the money we spend to fielding a strong marketing presence. Solve the youth problem of Scouts being perceived as "dorky." Enough with this. Scouting needs to end this. de-emphasize religion As a national organization, we need to reflect the nation. I get the arguments and history here - but we can't be both a religious organization and a national organization. Further, youth can get 95% of the benefits from what we do now with some subtle adjustments. Welcome all kids to join Scouting Religion is an important part of the life of many people, and Scouting should always welcome that. Yet, scouting needs to recognize and embrace people who are not actively religious. To accomplish the focus should be on having a strong moral code - not having a belief in a higher power. In the context of conversations about your personal moral code, religion should be discussed as a (and perhaps the) guiding factor for those with a belief if god. But for kids who do not believe in god the path to a strong moral code could be something else. Figure out a way to embrace both those who do, and do not, have a belief in a higher power. For example, discussions of religion need to be fine. People also need to learn how to have them so that people who are not religious are not excluded. Similarly people who are not religious need to learn how not to feel excluded. We often see issues like this as binary -- either we embrace religion or exclude it. Scouting needs to define a third approach. Restructure the BSA employees and volunteers The BSA absolutely needs to end it's top down, autocratic model. As you said, the world is moving towards a much more collaborative model. The days of rigid, top down organizational structures are decreasing. The organizational structure needs to reflect that. Further, results need to be much more important than structure. Migrate away from the DE position. The DE role is poorly defined and utilized. They are an expensive way to do much of what we do in Scouting. Also, the DE model drives so much of what we do at the council level in terms of funding, fundraising, and operations. End the days of generalist DEs running around doing stuff in a district. De-emphasize advancement What you said here. Agree. Training Scouting should have an outdoor preparation program for adults that is second to none. In fact, adults should wants volunteer just to get access to this program. Imagine adult development programs on canoeing, camping, hiking, climbing, cycling, etc. I would focus much, much less on national standards for training. The culture needs to be one where we embrace strong local experts and let them teach. Build up a library of helpful videos Imagine a series of short, quality youtube sessions where real people go over specific topics. Imagine a whole series of videos on how to prepare for camp or how to run a Pinewood Derby. The BSA should invest in some teams who know how to generate such content and get them out talking to units. Whenever possible, hold in person training sessions. Live, in person training is key to building excitement. We'll have to sort out what goes on Youtube vs. what is worthy of being live, but I think we'll figure that out One where I see things differently End the CO system I understand your point here. The benefits I see in the CO approach are: It enables units to have some independence from the BSA organization. Imagine if the Council Board or DEs or National was telling you were to camp, what to do, what you could buy, etc. In the GSUSA the have requirements for what units do with money, how they spend it, etc. Those rules are a detriment to a strong unit. It provides permanence. COs enable units to survive for decades. In the GSUSA model, troops are much smaller because they lack permanence. Permanence allows units to acquire skills, knowledge, gear, and equipment. Permanence allows units to develop size and scale. The CO model is one of the biggest successes of the BSA model. Yes there are issues, but let's fix them

Hah! We also had one of the higher output one burner versions too - for large pots of water, soups, etc... That thing sounded like a jet engine.

When I was in Cubs we had a two burner version of that stove. We LOVED it. Perfect for feeding a larger group and pretty well built. Worth every cent at retail. Nice that you got it at such a discount.

I would encourage you to ask them what they mean by that - just as I have been attempting to do with you about your ideas. When I have asked traditionalists that question, usually what I hear is a belief that in earlier times there was more integrity to the underlying program itself. That people took patrol method more seriously, that people took advancement more seriously. There is a compelling argument to this effect. Many organizations react to challenges in membership (or sales) by watering down their core offering in order to "appeal to more people." This is always a dangerous play for any organization. Usually successful organizations distinguish themselves by the quality and differentiation of their offering. In my mind, this is the basis of their argument. I think that your argument is all about broadening the membership base. I'm inferring that you're in favor of removing restrictive joining rules - on girls, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs. I would welcome you to expand that argument further.

I have no doubt that your research was correct. I myself imagine that most Scouts that quit do so because of poor program. I am guessing that your research pointed to specific program areas that needed focus. I think you're barking up the wrong tree. The debate you need to be having is why don't people join Scouting in the first place, not why do people quit. @Eagledad's research I imagine was on the question of why do people drop out. I don't think I'd argue with any Scouter of his tenure and say that they doesn't understand why kids leave the program. More broadly - I am sure there is a lot of merit in what you are saying. However, it's value is getting lost in an overly vague discussion. Are you lobbying for program, membership, marketing, changes or something else? What do you want to see changed here?

I feel like much of this conversation has morphed into some sort of ridiculous theoretical debate. The argument I see being portrayed is: The BSA should abandon it's program and turn into something completely different that is more relevant to the needs of today's families. The BSA should have a program that is exactly the same as it was in 1927. If so, this is a nonsense debate because neither side makes any sense. The reality is that the way forward for the BSA is somewhere in the middle and everyone knows it. The real debate needs to be about specifics. What would you change and why? What is important to preserve and why?