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I often invite adults to join me on the orienteering races that the local club puts on. Sometimes that is the best way to get them up to speed with map and compass.

In the 70s and 80s, I always wore my uniform to school on Feb 8th. Never got ridiculed by anyone while wearing it. Enjoyed the company of female classmates who came up and asked me about one patch or another (thanks De La Renta). Got plenty of ridicule when I wasn't wearing it. I guess my Arab American showed through more without the uniform. Scouts younger than me felt intimidated to wear the uniform at school. The question never came up on a BoR. Our MC's never wore uniforms. Our ASMs hardly ever did. I don't think it was out of shame or anything. Maybe cost was a factor. But, I think they believed it was out of respect for the SM who was doing the "real" heavy lifting. In any case, they weren't all that focused on uniforming. That was the SPL's responsibility.

Maybe he should start addressing the SPL as Mr. Turtle.

Wouldn't fly in the community where I grew up. Formalities had nothing to do with the patch on your sleeve. As soon as I was old enough to toss a keg on the beer truck, I had the right (obligation, really) to call any driver, including my dad's business partner by first name. Veterans: first name. College professors, if they were in your church: first name. Associate pastors, first name. Pastor, if on a youth service trip: first name. ASMs who never spent a day in the mines: first name. Active duty servicemen, teachers, farmers, retirees, coal miners, mothers, and journeymen: last name, with pride. Now, when we were in uniform, doing some public service: title and last name to adults and youth. So, when I was SPL addressing a PL for roll call, Mr. ___ was in order. But most camping activities and meetings, the above rules generally applied. So, I feel a little odd in my current community. I, by upbringing, would expect to be called by first name. (At the very least, among Arabic speakers to be called Abu-Son#1). But, all of the youth have it pounded into their heads to never do that to a senior. I remember when, in our Bible study, half of the parents (especially transplants from west of the Mississippi) were concerned about their little children addressing us by first name. I thought to myself, "What an odd conversation to be having." It's a big country.

Really great points, @@bsaggcmom. This isn't about the guy who huffs and puffs up the steps. Okay, maybe it is a little. These incidents are frequent enough, even in adults vetted for thier HA base. But that guy or gal might not be in our troop. We might come across him/her on the trail. This is about equipping scouts with the gear that, when the Bad Day dawns, they won't doubt that they will have had everything that can be carried to forestall death. The tech might not be ready for us, yet. But no harm pushing it there.

(@kypton_son, it's like you're my evil twin! Except my first ASM patch is probably a little more faded than yours. ) Every young adult is different. But the goal is to make him feel respected as an equal. Have him set up camp with you adults. Let him hang with the SPL and ASPL during free time. Let him sit in on a few SMCs. Have the SM ask him for feedback. When there's a one-off project that one of you adults might do, set him to it. (For example, at summer camp, I noticed a permanent orienteering marker was missing. So I called the ASM out of his electronic device funk, walked over to the QM, requisitioned the fallen post a shovel, and he and I dug a post-hole in a swamp.)

If there are three MCs and a quarter of an hour to spare, they will drop everything and have the board on the spot. (What else are they going to do? The boys are running the meeting.) Lacking that, the CC will will make sure adults are available next meeting. My troop growing up, the committee met on one meeting night every month. Reviews would start after the meeting. Boys would wait downstairs and go upstairs when called. Then SM would give his report and the meeting would be closed. I remember because my dad was an MC, so I sat downstairs after the troop meeting waiting for them to finish.

@@RichardB, thanks for stirring the coals! In some of our preferred super-activity locations, extraction times are >4 hours. Combined with weather and fire risks, they can take up to 24 hrs. That said, delivery of a medic to a known location can happen relatively quick, weather permitting. An AED that doubles as a GPS/Signal beacon upon activation might get some traction among the back-country market. Emergency 2-way communication would be gravy. Maybe not voice, but texting extraction way-points or shelter-in-place instructions could turn it into just enough of a multi-tool that hiking clubs would consider it.

That's like me observing the greater numbers of western Pennsylvanian teens who hike and camp with their mates independent of BSA or GS/USA and betting BSA lifting it's ten-year-old ban on patrol overnights. Not gonna happen. Unless ... Venturing does a turnaround and becomes overwhelmingly popular, or Major political upheaval and an opinion from POTUS, or Market surveys show large segments of young males who will only participate in co-ed organizations, or Boy Scouts start demanding that BSA open to girls. Although I believe the last scenario the most likely after the next world jamboree, I don't see any of those scenarios making boots-on-the-ground leaders happy. We would likely follow the Brits' trajectory and loose many units until a new generation of leaders could be trained to fill their place.

Yes, the bishop is playing fast-and-loose with the advancement method. But if your son still thinks it's a good idea -- even if it's not required, he should talk to some clergy ... starting with someone closest to what he'd likely believe. Needless to say, some clergy will have a harder time with a post-modern scout like your son. He is defining reverence on his own terms, and that's okay for some practitioners of religion and not others. You'll only find out by asking them.

They aren't necessary, but they are fun. And, yes, for me they were a bit of a retreat. But they gave me hobbies (e.g. Orienteering, Astronomy, and Geocaching) that I enjoy to this day. They also put me in touch with lots of different caring adults. I think that last bit is the angle you need to work with your son. Every time he tells you about a MB, ask some leading "people oriented" questions like ... Who was your counselor? How did he/she do? Did he/she teach you boys anything special or let you try something cool? What would you do differently if you were counseling a scout on that badge? What from what you learned would be cool to do with your patrol or troop?

@@NJCubScouter, as @@Stosh describes, venturers like to live the differences. But, VOA officers and crews who would rather identify with the national movement their unique unit ... those members are supposed to be in The Green Shirt and any convenient grey pants. When it looked like my crew was settling on an activity shirt, I wore the prototype. But when they did not implement it, and I was attending a lot of council and area events, I sprung for The Green Shirt.

Yes, if Scouts UK membership's trajectory has leveled, then they have only about 80% of the male membership that it did in 1990. However, there is no indication that this is a mere return to baseline. If they recruit another 20,000 boys, and 80,000 girls they will exceed thier historic number of boys served and be nearly 50% female. A thirty year wait for a recovery? Not sure BSA would withstand that in our environment of caustic punditry. However, unlike the Brits, we have had a 50 year decline with no end in sight. We are serving fewer American boys every year. Continuing to do so will open the door for an organization who may "crack the code" to attracting boys. I personally don't believe that extending membership to sisters and girlfriends in itself will be part of that code. But if the people who attracts those million boys also happen to have some couple hundred thousand girls who hike and camp independently along side them ... BSA may be found to join them under some new U.S. scouting federation.

Pride does get in the way. When my dad was a committee chair, they suspended a boy who had brought beer to camp. They told him if he came back in a couple of months (right before he became 17.5 years old), they would complete his Life BoR and support him in whatever he needed to complete Eagle. He chose not to return.

The deception may have started at the scout shop http://www.scoutstuff.org/venturing-uniform.htmlwhose lackeys stand to gain from ignorance that, for a person to be nationally recognized as a venturer, the hat is not required, and belt and grey pants may be purchase from any vendor and be of style appropriate to the needs of the venturer.

I think you either heard your instructor poorly, your instructor was misinformed, or your instructor's zeal for uniforming drove him/her to deceive.

I do not have census data from scouting organizations with respect to the membership regulations. Nor have I seen anything like that online. (That said, look up each country's website.) Like I said, I don't think the information will shed much light on the issue. The context in each country is diverse. Sweden has had co-ed scouting since the '60s. It was a placement of guides (i.e. girl scouts) and {boy} scouts under one umbrella organization. There is a white paper of statistics from 1993 (http://www.usscouts.org/internat/wosmstats93.html) with their membership at 146,215. Scouts Sweden's website (http://www.scouterna.se/other-languages/en/) currently puts that number at 70,000. So, after being co-ed for 30 years, one observes a 50% decline over the next 20. Czech, had no (legal) scouting movement for 49 years until '89, at that time scouting was allowed to be coed. So ignoring the political circumstances, one would observe that from the time scouting there was coed, membership soared from near 0 to the current 50,000. There have been ups an downs in membership numbers over the past three decades. Italy, had their scouting bottleneck with the rise of fascism. After WW-II they reconstituted as a loose federation. And, having lived there in the 80's, I can assure you that they had striking regional differences from town-to-town that would defy national edicts be it in language, food, religion, or culture. Scouting was no doubt the same. Forming a unified organization has been a rocky process. And, sex-segregation played a role in that, but it's not clear when that decision had the widest impact. Their numbers were 106,485 in 1993, and 102,066 in 2012. However, all of those numbers are favorable against trends in overall youth population. Of which Europe had been in decline. Here's a by-country report in great detail: https://issuu.com/worldscouting/docs/wsbero-membership_report_2013 The one striking decline that outpaces all others in shear numbers: BSA.

I think this is a little complex. For example, Scouts Sweden was coed in the 80s so these (maybe before that, I don't really know). I have scouts from Italy and the Czech Republic. Both countries have had coed scouting for decades. Both have a local option for sponsors who want single-sex units. The scouts I know we're from coed units and were quite pleased with how thier units operated. So in terms of morale, they are everything you'd want to see in a scout. (Then again, it takes a certain amount of optimism to be a young person making yourself at home on the opposite side of the world.) The Iron Curtain having quashed volunteerism and scouting especially, Czech scouts have had bigger problems than membership requirements. The scoutmaster is responsible for a group of 100+ 6-12 year olds. So the older scouts are cub masters and den leaders for the younger. They also plan and organize summer camp for the entire group. It seems that the SM selects a balance of male and female youth leaders who work together to implement the program. They have had steady growth since the collapse of the Eastern block in the 80s. But, I would credit that to the inspiring youth-led movement. The Italians have been coed for as long as I've been a scout. (In fact in the 80s, an Italian college girl once ask me to help start a scout group. I shrugged the idea off at the time. In retrospect, I regret not at least making the effort to ask around some local churches to see if any would like to sponsor one.) My current scout is veery enthusiastic about her program. When she joined our crew, she had her mom ship her uniform. Her unit operated along a nautical theme. And she dressed as sharp as a sea scout. (Although she made very clear they were more like our Boy Scouts, not Sea Scouts.) Their service projects included helping senior citizens boarding cruise ships. By her description, the sexes are never separated. By that, I think she means that patrols are mixed, and there are no restrictions on who bunks with whom. (It sounds like accommodations usually sleep 4 or more.) "We've been brothers and sisters together for years, so we don't think anything of sleeping in the same place." I don't have census data on either country, all I can tell you is that is that these kids really got a lot out of their respective programs.

There was some discussion in another thread about portable AEDs only 2.5 pounds in weight. However, I'm not sure if that includes a dry blanket or other nonconducting insulation. (Lots of places around here would require some distance to "clear".) Of course backpackers tend to be miserly in with weight. So, chances are it won't be carried unless the group is large enough for load balancing. Furthermore, making sure that the person with that component of the first aid kit is near the person who will need it is a non-trivial challenge. Secondly, maintenance and recertification procedures need to be in place. Field tested gear is a significant requirement. Which runs counter to bottom dollar cost constraints. Finally, every piece of gear is assessed for dual use. AEDs are specialty equipment. Is there any other emergency situation when the electronics in the AED might prove useful? Hikers favor one-time-use tools that cover a range of scenarios.

My sis-in-law once gave a plaque from Boston with the saying, "A good pun deserves to be drawn an quoted." Not sure how that translates in the age of +1/-1 buttons.

Son #1 and his wife, both trained as engineers, are in a leadership class through our church. Our young-adults' leader is an avid reader in the humanities. We love the guy: Eagle scout, his words always met with action, so he commands a lot of respect. His reading list for this class ... not so much. My poor linear thinkers are struggling to wade through these authors (Lewis being the notable exception): "Why is he taking 5 paragraphs to make one point?" "I started this supplemental survey online, four questions on the first screen, clicked submit, and 37 questions later ..." "I have no idea what we were supposed to glean from these five chapters." I'm on the verge of asking them if my suggestion to study some Islamic philosophy is starting to sound less far-fetched.

It is not the SM's prerogative to strip rank. I think, in the first years of scouting, it could have been the SPL's under certain conditions (e.g. failure to demonstrate a skill). But, I get the impression that that processes was not uniformly used and soon abandoned. We get the discipline a troop needs from its boys because, having achieved a certain rank, we ask them to live up to it. (E.g., simply saying, "You're a First Class scout, act like it." can quickly modify a lot of behavior.) Therefore, sending a boy home when there is no risk to life or limb is pointless. Creating drama of a youth who respectfully disagrees is detrimental to morale. Was the root cause was the SM or the boy? Transferring to another troop might be the best way to find out.

O/A and Venturing have the same challenges. Their target youth have available to them: a profusion of scholastic activities, competing non-scholastic activities, and financial pressures, the ability to self-select your associations on grounds that don't require physical presence, a la carte activities put on by adults who have the time to dote, and (you all will love me for this one) bloated troop committees who channel adults to dote on their unit and nothing else.

LDS is now "another faith" to him. So why not start by studying that religion? The advantage of the religious awards is that they help foster a constructive relationship between a youth and their (or their parent's) clergy. Most scouts who I know tell me that their work on a religious award is much different than sitting in a service or attending Sunday school. Also, if he is of venturing age, he may want to join a crew and consider the Trust award. Regarding duty to God, yes scouts have boundary issues. This goes straight back to the army of Baden Powell's day who had to incorporate fighters from all walks across the British empire. As St. Paul said, "forsake not the assembling of yourselves together". At the time, according to his and other apostles' writings, he was addressing folks from a broad swath of cultures and classes -- an intersection of bubbles, if you'll allow the use of a recently popular term. So, the proper exercise of religion is one of bringing people together -- a humanitarian endeavor indeed.

I agree with @@Stosh, the handbook says it all. If there's a doubt -- sometimes there is -- you need to allow for the notion that because of the goings-on in the troop, your son may not have mastered the skills the way he should have. It's a matter of the new SM contacting the old one. We do talk to one another from time to time. It doesn't take much to tell if a boy is "all that", and a caring SM will push the paperwork through to make sure his transfer scout is recognized by council to be at the appropriate rank on the appropriate date. It's sad to see an SM get all heavy-handed. It doesn't always end badly. I've seen them wise up and correct their course after a few boys transfer out.