qwazse

@yknot and @5thGenTexan, you all are confusing the program with its administration. If scouts aren’t reading the handbook, they are working from a variance of the program. My scouts read the handbook because I teach them that the first step in teaching a scout skill is reference. If they come to me for a sign-off, I ask if they’ve read the pertinent section. If not, I tell them to come back when they have. No doubt this contributes to half of them taking 2-5 years to advance to 1st class. I have contacts with property for camping. Our scouts have not made a plan to go there. We don’t go there. We reserve the same camp (maybe a different location on the camp) until they are bored and ask for something different. This lot loves toying with knots, doing community service, and watercraft on a small flat lake. (I even offered them a Great Lake that’s rarely knows flat. No takers.). I have kept contact with really capable adults who I’ve watched carefully and have grown to trust. Like the SM’s and Advisors before me, I’ve learned to not suffer fools. BSA has not done me any favors by diminishing the roles of 18-20 year olds, but just enough capable parents keep showing up. But, I view the people I have to work with as a problem with administering a program among post-modern nomads. Bottom line: our youth are sticking around until they age out. I see no reason to blame the program.

Deflection? I'm not the one passing the buck on to the BSA. The program is there to work. And scouters need to work it. Three steps: Scouts read the handbook. They decide what to do. Adults provide adequate qualified supervision. That third step has necessarily become harder as the specifications for "adequate" and "qualified" expanded. Nevertheless, the program is designed to vary greatly across the country. It is has a core curriculum around which electives can be built in a myriad of ways. And it was designed to be built by local talent, not national policy wonks. Invariably, when someone has asked/demanded National to weigh in (usually because they didn't like how someone in some other troop was performing, sometimes because there was a measurable risk to scouts getting hurt or acres of wilderness burning away) it has discouraged membership. Anybody who thinks that for a hundred bucks per kid per year gets them national professional supervision has never looked at a church youth program budget.

I am weary of these imprecise arguments. Exactly how many troops nationwide do this? I can say with certainty that a lot of troops don’t have any advancement timetable for their scouts. The program is precisely what you asked for: Core: master first class skills when you may. Elective: 130+ MBs at your convenience. Or consider other awards. Have fun ASAP. Keep physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight in order to help others always — thereby fulfilling duty to God and country, and upholding your honor. This is the program. Any deviation from it — including FCFY, cold weather camping, adults inspecting uniforms with rulers and calipers, snake handling — is local adaptation not in the handbook. Then verbosity of advancement requirements has indeed gotten worse. The addition of “silent” MBs (e.g., pedagogy, a.k.a. the poppycock EDGE method) has not helped. But, to be fair, so has America’s penchant for paperwork. Still, the fact stands: no scout has to check off any requirement until good and ready.

You’ve got it wrong. The “common core” is First Class Rank. Then one could branch out and pursue Eagle, STEM, or some other award. That’s the program we already have. In none of that, is cold weather camping required.

See what the merit badge pamphlet ( not just the requirements, but he content in the body of the book) says. Beyond that, trust your intuition. Like you, I’d consider it to be road biking.

This is a limitation of nationally administered online YPT. My first training was from a council president who outlined recently filed accusations of abuse -- especially at the camp where we were receiving training. I am a strong proponent of incident reporting ... not in terms of numbers, but in terms of rates. A small council with one incident over the past ten years may well be more "risky" than a large council with ten incidents in the past year. On the other hand, that kind of information can backfire. Low incidence in an LC may lead its members to be complacent. That could enable a safe haven for a predator.

A troop in our district did. This was more than a decade ago, sI don’t think I have the materials online. But is was cost effective and they seemed to enjoy some challenging hikes above the tree line.

Just to be clear about risks: rest stops have higher airborne transmission than airports, and consequently truckers are at higher risk of Covid or flu than flight attendants. But being tall, I already have several knocks against modern flying. I can respect that masks may be the greater discomfort for some. If we’re talking about conditioning, I wouldn’t spend more time traveling than I would hiking. If we’re talking about touring, give yourself margin to enjoy a half day before and after the hike. Also, mid-week, many places are much less crowded.

I find coordinating with a friend to be the most challenging part. I had one friend who wanted me to hike with him, but we had a terrible time syncing vaccination schedules. His one week free turned out to be our troop’s summer camp. There are a lot of people who prefer solo hiking. They also don’t complain much about dragging themselves out of the wilderness with busted ribs, twisted ankles etc … The nice thing about the AT is that it’s popular. For some folks, that’s the worst thing about it.

So, what my brother (who is a hiking guide for YMCA of the Rockies and has one or another accumulation of injuries) did was find a county conservation park near his otherwise flat and featureless town, made friends with a farmer’s adjacent property, and commits to hiking the grounds (which includes a couple of nice ravines) at least three times a week. Your step #1 sounds about the same. For #2, look up some good trail guides at the library. Also, there AT clubs and groups online. They do some really good work, and can help pick suitable sections and let you I. On meet-ups . #3 … get a buddy. Preferably a family member or two who will start this journey with you.

To be fair. These have the common themes of “What’s the rule, really?”, “How to enforce?”, and “Does it make kids safer vs. unintended consequences?”, and of course, “Who pays when things spin sideways?”

One time I missed the sons’ summer camp to earn a couple grand instead. Hated every minute of it.

"Just and fair" depends on the estimation of your LC board members -- many of whom probably have earned 10 times that in a year, donated that and more to your LC, have seen the SE perform under difficult circumstances, have probably performed a national search and were not satisfied with the performance of other SE's whose pay was less. Regarding the governor of your state, for that position, he/she probably: didn't have to relocate from out-of-state, has amassed wealth, so accepting smaller salary for public service for a few years is of little risk, has a publicly funded residence at your state capital, has secured his job for at least one term. Please don't shoot the messenger. I've met a few of the board members -- attended one meeting with the venturing youth -- and have some idea of how they think. For good or ill, they do not use the same rubric that you or I would.

@Armymutt, take the BS out of the BSA. If they’ve done the job get them the award. Why does it matter? A uniform can get a little gaudy. But, it can pay off if a new parent comes on and you can say, “Look for the scouters with the knot, they’ve been there and done that and should be more than willing to lend a hand.”

Punctuation matters … the parts are : … to do my duty … (semicolon) … to help others … (semicolon) … to keep self … (period) The parts of are three verbs: do, help, and keep. One could argue they are in order of increasing immediacy: Physical fitness, mental alertness, and moral rectitude prepare a scout to Have the strength, wit, and ethics to provide aid to others, thus enabling Obedience to the scout law, thereby honorably fulfilling one’s religious and citizenship imperatives at one’s level best. And that, kids, is why you should put your necker on first and slip your uni underneath! 🙃

So, when I lift my eyes from the scouting bubble, I find this: There is a tremendous amount of trust in BSA. For each soul who can claim dreadful harm from it, there are 99 who’ve benefited. For many of those, their scoutmaster was/is someone to come home to and catch up with … just like you would a coach or favorite teacher. Scouting itself will happen with or without BSA. BSA simply offers a structure to make it happen without reinventing too many wheels. The bean counters see the organization as a complicated network of properties. Most of us see it as the phone numbers of a few farmers and municipal or state park rangers. There is a lot to lose. If youth are traveling longer distances to camp, their lives will be at increased risk. Folks who volunteer with BSA don’t like losing. On the other hand, Americans are innovators. They’ll come up with something. I suspect that, lacking BSA, a federation of scouting organizations will fill the void.

The local orienteering club sent an update with a new control … POTUS found it.

It has to do with leadership style and availability. For example, the SM couldn’t come to camp two years ago, so I covered the conferences for scouts so they could move to their BoR ASAP. Sometimes advancement is a trickle; other times, a flood.

Family matters got in the way of camping this weekend. Agree with the above. Keep in mind that there’s no one-size-fits all. And as our body changes, we need to adjust. Which means we tweak our gear from season to season. If you’re less mobile, you need more insulation. If you’re more active, you need wicking layers, and enough dry spares … especially for sleeping.

So, it’s a little more nuanced than that. There were clearly early depictions of American scouts’ uniforms without a neckerchief. Like most things, it moved from trend to essential over a number of years.

Depends on country. Looks like it was part of the English uni at the outset. Scouting Magazine said it became standard for US scouts around 1920. https://scoutingmagazine.org/issues/0210/d-wwas.html

Making me wonder ... does BSA have any non-fungible tokens (e.g., insignia designs that were never deployed but could be marketed for others entities to use)?

Also, if there are any badges that require fitness tracking, rehab is a good opportunity to do that sort of thing.

Glad someone got a laugh. But for anyone who wants to take this seriously … One line of thinking is that this rechartering delay is an adult debacle. So, indeed, if the scouts pull of their camp out, even if it’s essentially under the auspices of he CO with no help from BSA, they should be recognized for it. And chances are, your council advancement committee would agree. On the other hand, when I was a kid, campouts — especially in winter — were just for fun as @MattR described. If you told me the night would not meet the “under the auspices of BSA” requirement as written, I’d still show up with my pack ready to go. Given what I now know about about the current training that the Catholic Church requires of their volunteers, I’d be happy to send my kid on an overnight with their youth group. Hopefully you’ll hear back from the council’s registrar and all of this will be a non issue. But, if requirements for advancement are malleable rules “written by second graders”, why let 6th graders pursue the award at all?

Then there’s my adult children who play WingSpan.