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BP, I would agree with you if the existing programs were executed with integrity, but as shown in another thread ... http://scouter.com/index.php/topic/27086-informal-poll-strictness-of-requirements/page-2?do=findComment&comment=414342 ... many units have translated "Do your best!" to "Don't want to try? Don't worry, we'll do the requirements so you don't have to!" Of course, if that same attitude leaks into STEM scouts. It will have the same problems. But, for the moment, it seems the folks starting labs are not so badge-crazy as to compromise integrity.

So, now we know why we need STEM scouts. Because our cubs are not learning the notion of direct observation and scientific integrity. Let me ask, because some have mention concerns about a boy feeling singled out for not making rank ... if all the boys refuse to do daily observations, what's the humiliation in none of the den (aside from the odd boy who actually does the necessary achievement) making rank using that pin?

OK, I get it: distressed community. Attending two meetings on the topic is not a Readyman requirement. Knowing the material on emergency preparedness is. I bet latch-key kids are more likely to need to use the material. It sounds like you had a feeling this kid knew the material, you were pressed for time, so you moved on. That's not letting the kid slide, in my book. In general, dens are a victim of a broken program. A den chief could review the material, or the boys in the den could get the boy who missed caught up. Neither is "by the book", but when you're gagging on a smore and that kid is first on the scene, you want that pin to mean something. And if there's an unrwitten strategy that makes it so, all the better!

Since when is not giving a kid an award a punishment? The point of setting aside meeting time is to give parents a space to spend time with their kid and his buddies. But, it may work for some parents to use a different space at a different time. If they miss your opportunity, they are on their own. That's precisely what I did with son #1 for a couple of requirments (one was to visit a police station ... had to do it on a different night). You award every kid (and parent) who gets it done. The boys who don't get it done, tell them to keep trying ... and maybe give the parents some ideas on how they can do it on their own.

You are right. I would make an issue, at least with your boy. Talk to him and tell him that you won't let him have the award until he does the important part. This may mean Mom or Dad taking the time to do it with him. Get a special notebook or clipboard just for the purpose. The whole point of weather is not the clever instruments, but the persistent observation! Lacking a severe mental disability or having to live in a sealed bunker, there's no getting around that one. We have a similar problem in boy scouts with a 5 mile land navigation requirement. Folks have asked if a scout can just do 20 laps around a quarter mile track ... which misses the entire point. We need the boy at some risk of leading his patrol off the trail for a mile or so and then having to make a safe correction. A scout with a disability can do an alternative requirement involving road navigation. But, if he's not the guy with the map and compass dictating every turn, he's just joy-riding instead of scouting.

Will give the article a read over coffee. The the obvious crux: which scenarios in the long tradition of scouting constitute bullying. One observation in our shop ... the pattern seems to cut both ways. That is, kids with depression are vulnerable to future intances of abuse ... even if they had not been abused in the past.

I don't watch what our pack does, but they seem to be bringing up boys who love scouting so mind-your-own-buisness seems to be a reasonable strategy. But as a parent, here's a confession and a little bit of advice: I did let Son #2 slide on the thow-and-catch requirement. (He might have been able to go back and forth once, but catching projectiles twice was just not in his wiring. The boy could kick a ball across the field to his buddy until they both were punch-drunk.) One day he kinda sort caught a wiffle ball twice in a row, so I chalked it up to "do your best", told the DL, and he signed off on it. The guy eventually did learn to throw and catch. He just Eagled (BoR pending) in his own right and is starting on a stint as ASM. So, no harm no foul, right? Wrong! He still thinks I cheated on that one requirment for AoL, and reminds me of it from time to time ... more to point out that as a third child, a little more time playing catch with dear old Dad would have been welcome. So if you want the kid to look good for the photo shoot, be fast and loose with the bling. If you want him have no doubt that he deserved it, be strict.

Yeah, that's right. Go master that multivariate analysis ... when you're stuck, I'll offer tutoring at a reasonable rate ... or a less than reasonable rate, run the analysis for you ... you won't believe what I'm showing you ... and I won't believe you're trying to pay me to tell you what you want hear ... that's how it works. Bottom line with the bacteria experiment: Parts for enough watches in a box, shaken just long enough, not too hard, not too gently, and maybe a "1" will land beside a "2" on the dial at 12 O'clock and stick there ... that's what was roughly replicated. Generalize that to a much bigger box, much longer "shakes" at just the right amount of energy for a mind-numbingly long time ... and a whole planet full of Rolexes isn't as far fetched as some would make it to be. Or maybe it is, and we just so happen to find ourselves in the privelaged place in the universe where life-laden matter is frothing up as if someone just called up delivery pizza. And, yes, I have used all of the above in discussions with the boys. Just don't ask me to do it at every SMC.

I'm really not gonna take this too seriously. As ASMs in a troop that is quadrupling via merger, the outgoing SM and I are gonna support the incoming SM in however he wants to deal with this. My goal is to keep nebby noses away from the SMCs, and let the SM formulate his style. Frankly, the meat of these discussions never comes up in the SMC. More likely it will come when we are fishing by the lakeshore in twilight. When I'm actually stuck, I'll let you know.

Nobody's gonna grudge a Sea Scout who wants to earn the Summit award the chance to do so. Where practical, s/he should multiple with a crew ... it's more fun that way. Where it's not practical, I'm hoping his/her scouters will make it work for such an odd duck.

Official transcript: https://news.utexas.edu/2014/05/16/admiral-mcraven-commencement-speech

At p<.05 ... until you start launching projectiles that achieve orbital velocity.

Having never known any Sea Scouts to want to persue venturing awards, (only venturers who wanted to be part of a Ship ... and in the process earn Quartermaster), I'm not sure what the implications of this really are. Any participants who would like to collaborate across divisions will do so. The organizational chart won't make a difference. (In a sense this boils down to one (?) less meeting that someone has to send a representative to.)

Fred, not personally trying to bust your chops on this one. I'm pretty sure if this turned up in your unit you'd be pretty hot about it to the adults and kind and courteous to the boy as you try to sort it all out ... with that in mind, think about what you're implying: If the kid doesn't fulfill the requirements and knows it, he/she doesn't deserve the award. If the kid doesn't fulfill the requirements and doesn't know it, he/she deserves the award? So is ignorance an alternative requirement in any organization that you know of? Moz' was correct in running this up the chain to National.

That would be awesome! Except, even if banks would allow it, BSA policy wonks would shout "Hazing!"

Even if the scout was ignorant of the adult shenanigans, letting the rank stand would have been wrong. "Adult error" would be something like recording the wrong date, an unregistered MBC, lost paperwork, or maybe an SPL assigning a service project that the previous SM always approved but the current SM would never. Boys catch on real quick when a kid sneaks one by, and it will demoralize a troop faster than you can sing the "I'm a" of the little teapot song.

Yeah, sure, caveat emptor. But unlike YPT or other safety statistics, there's no reference in this site to embezellment rates so that scouters understand the implications of different financial management strategies. So, we have a talking (typing?) head trying to herd a 100K treasurers in a particular direction. I'm just not sure what the purpos is. Is there currently a certain level of reported significant loss (say more than $400) in so many units, and they want to reduce the number of vulnerable unites by x%? I know that every line of stats results in dozens of posts haggling over the calculation of the figures. But, it at least gives you some idea of what the author thinks to be the magnitude of the problem.

One of our most enthusiastic GS moms had gone to such a Jamboree as a youth. (Good thing, as she had 3 daughters!) By the description of it it sounds a little more like what Venturers in our region call an Area summit. I hope they enjoy their time ... even though they'll be deprived of the extended hiking opportunities!

Okay, as much fun as MultiQuote is let me spare repeating everyone else and only repeat myself: Never assign PoR's based on need for rank advancment. Assign them because the boy has or may have a knack for the position. Don't care if the boy is still working on Tenderfoot. If he's the best guy for the job, put him in the position. Use the handbook for expectations. That ILST course might not roll around in a timely fashion for the boy to really master his PoR before he is up for his next BoR. You and SPL might not have time for a personal orientation. He might not have the patience for another lecture. Say these words "Read everything your handbook has to say about your position, next week tell me what it says, then tell me what you will do about it." By next week there might be two or three "to do's" in the kid's head if you're lucky. Tell him "Pick one. Please do it by/on our next meeting." No boy needs a PoR for advancement to Star or Life. I had to set committee members straight regarding this at our last meeting. There is no shame in being assigned a service project that benefits the troop. Leading up to summer camp there are a multitude of tasks that adults appoint for themselves, wouldn't it be great to have a scout who will hunt down those med forms? Maybe you've had a good many historians who've made dozens of posters and you've run out of space to hang them. How about making a scrapbook or two covering the last ten years while the current historian catches up the last six months. Son #2 is manic about baking cakes. If he didn't double down on PoRs for fits and giggles, why couldn't he serve up a few for Courts of Honor? Do you have a boy like that? Maybe you have a boy who wants to do nothing but chuck a pumpkin 300 yards. Assign him a catapult assembly goal for the county fair. Who's overwhelmed? Who needs one task taken off their hands? Maybe only for a month? Maybe there's a charity your troop wanted to support, but nobody seemed to have the time to call and line it up. Maybe if you weren't assigning positions that nobody in your troop particularly cares about, someone would! Obviously, for service projects, you'd want the kid to think of a proposal if you don't have one, then flesh out a plan, then implement it. Not that he'll ever need to do anything like that ever again. No boy needs to advance beyond first class unless he (not momma or pappa) decides he needs to. He always needs to be responsible. He always needs to lead. You just have to help him figure out how. Not every boy needs a first class patch to be a first class scout. Don't ask me why, but with some guys, you just have to sneak it in. "How about getting your CPR cert? Just in case I collapse on you boys? And hey, maybe your girlfriend would like to get it with you?" "Can you set up the knot board for the crossovers?" "The borough council is talking about selling off your ball park, maybe you should sit in on that meeting." There is so much pressure on SMs to become bean counters. Please help them to become scouters.

What I fail to understand is what National has to gain in all of this. So, what if some malicious scouter transfers a troop treasury into his coffers in one fell swipe? Sure that's traumatizing for the troop, and it may make the evening news, but there are many more scouters who are paying fees quickly and directly through the treasury via these cards. NOTE: My units are not. They are still check based, but single-signature.

Just because I wanted to try out MultiQuote ... No so much preposterous as discrediting to Canus domesticus and Felix domesticus and their careful breeding program involving selection of monkeys, generation after generation, until they had a stock with insanely accurate throwing arms (all the better to defend against their wild-type cousins). As with most gross oversimplifications, accuracy is lost. However, there are mutually cannonical scriptures that can be used to support that and other practices. (E.g., St. Paul recognized Corinthians who baptized for the dead.) And, within the "middle books" there are scriptures that refute that and other practices. Or, perhaps "finely evolved" ... Maybe, as such a creator evolves to overlook our foibles, your decendants will have blurrier vision, at least when it comes to noses! My general impression is that we moderns have wrongly treated imago dei metaphore as "reflection of god", which makes absolutely no sense because there is no discussion of reflections anywhere in the Pentateuch. What there is discussion of? Idols. And generally, when idols are mentioned, the word image is mentioned as well. It seems that most everyone at the time saw mankind (or at least this tribe of people) as helpless victims of circumstance (famines and war will do that to one's cultural identity). The writing is NOT in favor of discovering the one-true-God in mankind ... and the subsequent chapters attempt to make clear the opposite. Genesis opposes Man trying to discover itself in its depictions of the creation. The Genesis writer(s) are saying that "Whatever pathetic picture we make of Mankind, at least it beats the snot out of your neighbor's idol. So stop being slaves to whatever else other people are worshipping these days." The scariest part about the modern take on the Sacred Myth of Origin, is that it insists that that a supernatural event can be rationally explained. That it will be found scientifically that the current world snapped into being in seven rotations of our planet. In light of such a discovery, God would have to be believed. But, the human mind is a massive inference engine, and it will just as readily be able to explain how the flora and fauna could arise in a few short dates in the absence of a Creator.

Well NJ, your boys could sit on BoRs of their venturing crews.

For fits and giggles I upped one of Moz's and downed one of Stosh's in this thread. One of each a day is good enough for me. But it would be nice to know the upper limit. Do you get one of each kind? Or, a grand total of, say, three of either. Or is it a function of your so-called "reputation"?

Does it answer "Take off your shoes, for you stand on holy ground."