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The real key is to accept the fact that First Class First Year is a lie. Assure a scout that if he doesn't want to complete that requirement now, you'll give him an opportunity next year, and the year after that, until he's ready to give it a try. Obviously that means he'll miss out on some activities and rank advancement will be delayed, but that's okay. He can focus on other activities including loading up on MBs that interest him and maybe figuring out something fun for his patrol or the whole troop to do.

I agree with the above that the space should be reserved after the district sign-off. With 10 Life scouts and a thorough district advancement chair, one or two of them will get sent back for further work. Those one or two reserving a hall for a fundraiser could block a date that might suit others who are clear to start their project. Also. Talk to your COR. The CO might not be comfortable with indoor fundraising events this year. Ten of them means ten chances that someone with the virus passes through, and you all will need to help contact trace. Our CO has so many at-risk congregants that they have asked us to not use the building ... even for meetings. Also, ten additional fundraisers might be unrealistic. One big fundraiser to load the pot for projects might work better. But, that also means that boys will have to share leadership at that point. Not a big deal, but a challenge. Some CO's will charge a fee for extra use. Be open to discuss that.

"Ambient temperature showers."

Talk to various local pool officials. There has to be a way to make it work. Kids who can't swim pose tremendous risk of death. I met my requirements in a pool, and it opened acres of lakes to me, including a Great one that my family swims and boats in regularly. Most state parks are open, and many have ideal lanes for swimming. But face facts, instruction is an intimate affair. Your scout may have to wait out the year.

Hey @Snowball, I forgot to say, "Welcome to the forums!" Maybe if you tell us a little about yourself (position in BSA, experience as a scout/leader, family, rural/urban, number of folks helping you), we can guide you better.

Do you get out much? Looks like you're gonna visit ... Coffee shops and ice cream parlors. Put up Scouts BSA posters. Donate copies of Boy's Life and Scouts BSA Handbooks. If they have TV's, ask if they'll let you play some clip. Parks. Posters. On a popular day, get permission to set up a tent and maybe a campfire or some other activity. Schools. Ask your adults if they want to contact each school in your area to see which superintendents would welcome a presentation (either an assembly or an information table). With this pandemic it's gonna be rough. But, now's the time to improvise. Do each of these, and if they don't work, come back and ask for suggestions.

The toughest challenge I've had to give to some SPLs: "Are you going to follow your friends? Or lead them?"

@thrifty, not disagreeing. You asked for numbers, I found some. There is no doubt that if we double the number of SWs, that we'll have more SW deaths on the job. The open question: if we reduce the number of LEOs, will that reduce the LEO deaths and, equally important, civilian deaths due to excessive force? It is reasonable that the reduction of no-knock warrants and de-programming of warrior training could reduce both. Many chiefs of police have intentionally decided to walk back these practices ... getting it to trickle down to the beat has been hard. Firefighters have it especially rough. Agitators consider them soft targets. It doesn't take much to be an agitator. Sure we have political extremists, but we also have a generation of people the majority of whom have not been trained in bravery. They become emotional and lash out at the softest target -- and emt/fire seem to be that target. The number of scouts in a crowd who can volunteer to maintain order are fewer. There's a reason why some other nations underwrite the cost of boy and girl scouting.

But when he went to The Summit and took an ambient temperature shower, his shriek had an accent!

The year before last, 23, if you include clergy and such (https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0326.htm). Maybe a littleness arrive training could help them lower that stat.

Okay, since you've discounted a member based on ageist reasons. Maybe you can ding an old conservative guy ... The billions have actually made a tremendous dent. The preponderance of children of welfare moms have gone on to start business and careers of their own. I loved meeting welfare children with dreams and aspirations. Lots of minorities made good on athletic scholarships. Their kids are now starting their business and colleges. The GI Bill opened doors. But, there are certain things that a lack of capital prevented. In particular, farm loans were notoriously biased. They were doled out according to generational wealth -- which often times led to default. Black farmers (if they had acquired their 40 acres) were more than willing to operate on the thinnest of margins to avoid default, but banks bet on established farms which later sold out to corporate and then to agriculture imports. No-knock warrants were regretted by members of the Nixon almost the minute they were invented. Suspects died, LEO's died, collateral died. But, winding back that leviathan was a political quagmire for state and local officials running on a tough-on-crime ticket. The warrior-police movement gained traction after terrorist attacks, but chief of police only recently realized the fallacy of that approach. So suddenly that gets rolled back. But officers who preferred to be warriors in many communities were allowed to carry on. Who can blame the officers? Most aren't that good at social work. There are more detailed lists. On balance, more was gained than wasted when we invested in minority welfare. More was lost when we invested in aggressive policing. But the thing is, all of these are things we can improve. Investment in minorities still tends to be a good long term strategy. Getting my scouts connected with minorities (when parents allow that sort of thing) has provided tremendous growth.

I was a but a wee cub at the time ... and then a scout. To my knowledge the term never trickled down to the trenches. I haven't seen it in any of my literature or slogans on patches.

Here's a link to an open-access article on cubmasters and scoutmasters from an education theory perspective: Yulianti, Yulianti, Dian Widya Putri, and Stephani Raihana Hamdan. "The Comparison of Credibility and Authenticity of Scoutmasters of Indonesian Scouting." 2nd Social and Humaniora Research Symposium (SoRes 2019). Atlantis Press, 2020. The two constructs of interest are: Credibility, indicated by Expertise Experience Rationale Conviction Authenticity, indicated by Congruence Full disclosure Responsiveness Personhood Heads up: this has not been peer reviewed and there are typos and non-native English grammar (thus the heavily edited quote). Plus, in general, I've found education research to be a little loose with the stats. But, it is interesting as it reports on scouts' evaluation of their leaders. As we noted in the other thread, it's anybody's guess as to how palatable our "-master" title for direct-contact adults of troops and packs will be to a post-modern nomadic audience. We often think of that audience in terms of trend-setting Americans, but more than that, young American parents are multi-national. Indonesia is an excellent test-bed for sociological constructs in scouting because, being intrinsic to the nation's education system, their SMs have to attend to scouts who might not be participants were they in a US school. So unlike many American youth, every Indonesian has a personal understanding of "scoutmaster". If you have the patience for this sort of think, I'd encourage you to wade through the article. Regardless, here's the question: If your scouts were to evaluate you, where would you rate on credibility and authenticity?

As long as the the troop camping across from you is messier than your boys, the nice kitty won't visit your site.

But here's the rub, more kids American families are not scouts than are. And BSA has protected its brand so aggressively that mentions of anything with our organization's trademarks are extremely rare. The uniform is scrubbed from the bulk of political rallies. The culture being defined by this post-modern nomadic generation -- nearly two generations -- of Americans is not "weird" about scouting lingo, it is generally ignorant of it. They don't find it unnerving, they find it novel. I think there is a simple reason why ... There are precious few alternative words that will describe someone who will walk your child through a decade of development -- in increasingly regular periods of 24 contiguous hours or more -- comfortable with, as @TAHAWK just described, downing the occasional burnt pancake. Most teacher's wont. Coaches wont. Caseworkers wont. Clergy wont. Most youth leaders wont. Rafting/climbing guides wont. Bus drivers wont. There are simply precious few words for that one person in a hundred who does that because those people are, well, one in a hundred. So, if someone's ear finds "cubmaster" and "scoutmaster" a little odd when they first hear it, it might just be because the person with that on their patch is not the least bit common.

One of my crew VPs who reviewed my woodbadge project for an online venturing description tool strongly suggested that I drop a line that said where troop's have scoutmasters, crews have advisors. Her reasoning: "Nobody knows what a scoutmaster is. I never heard the word until I joined your crew." This from a woman who was making chain mail from recycled materials. Her generation is starting to provide potential cubs. They've watched Stranger Things, not Follow Me Boys. Any title to them is a blank slate. And they aren't going to care what title we give the adult who's taking a pie in the face from the kid who sold the most popcorn. If that's what they see, that's what the title means. No amount of etymology will persuade them otherwise.

@TAHAWK, it does smack of the Colorado bakers' case that went to SCOTUS, doesn't it?

I've always taken it the way, @The Latin Scot has. The SM has mastered skills. But, I think B-P was also drawing on both British education and military. The term "scout master general" was used in the 1600s. So, there was the more recent connotation from education: learned and skilled at teaching and training teachers, which probably derived from the military definition: learned and skilled at espianage and training spies. B-P was certainly aware of both when he applied the term to the primary adult in a boy scout troop.

@Momleader, I agree in principle. But, that presumes that we are starting at zero for both groups. For some CO's that's true. But for many the boys' program is a juggernaut that may require a tweak or two, while the girls' program has no traction. We might have two leaders willing to give it a try, and maybe the boys' committee will lend a hand, but what seems to be zero interest from girls. If the girls seem largely contented with GS/USA, as they seem to be in my area thanks to some excellent moms, stop there. But, how do we promote so as to find out if there are a few girls who would do well in the troop? I think it's our bottom line. I for example, admire cheerleaders. (I think I shocked my kids when I wouldn't allow them to say derogatory things toward them.) But cheerleaders aren't, like a former venturer of mine, trained to pull over at the sight of an accident, safely cross a four lane highway, assess a victim, stabilize a neck, and in a pandemic-be-damned kind of way command by-standers to call emergency services. They certainly can be trained to do that, but it's not part of the curriculum. It is part of ours. Full disclosure: it's also part of GS/USA's curriculum. We just practice in the dead of winter with dogsleds (or whatever outdoor substitute the Sun-Belt folks jury rig).

... and we're happy ...

Forget BSA marketing, which in my mind totally misses the point. In very simple terms, scouts learn to forestall death:

So, you are saying that more youth would enlist in the program if it we used something like "responsible, participating, citizen and unit leader"? That's testable. For a "nominal" consulting fee, I can arrange a marketing survey (from a rhetorician whose kids were never in scouting) to ask a randomly selected sample of citizens. If they'd be more or less inclined to enroll their kids in a program with an RPCaUL as opposed to one with an SM. If, on the other hand, your first proposition (to rid the scouter-verse of tyrannical adults) is the more important motive, the best we have is anecdotal evidence that the title does not mold the leader. Any better would require a massive sociological analysis.

I was hoping that merely referencing this thread about upvotes and downvotes would avoid another thread being distracted by procedural matters, but after seeing the discussion there amass a page of off-topic replies, I figure it's time to give outright resurrection a try. I don't write forum rules, and asking another one to be written violates my rule #1. But, I do operate on rules of my own based on examples who came before me and helped me sort out a load of ideas. I spout a lot of ideas. And some of them are outright stupid. Or, they may have worked for my scouts, but totally crashed for anyone else's. So ... If something resonates with you, if it's something you'd do or have done, up-vote it. You don't owe me or anyone else an explanation as to why you did. If something grates on you, if it's something you'd never do or did and lived to regret it, down-vote it. You don't owe me or anyone else an explanation as to why you did. If something moves you, but you're not inclined to promote or demote it, use the other reactions (Thanks, Haha, Sad, Confused, Like). If something is patently offensive (it happens), report it. Some have. The moderators have called me on it. Not a problem. If you have time, and can put words to your reaction, that's gravy. That's how I operate. You may want me to expect more from you, but I value your time. You may have different expectations from me. But, if I spot a squirrel, you'll have a long wait before I come back to task. Don't worry, a member might have a dozen downvotes and still be able to write another post. (Read this topic from the top if you don't believe it.) This forum is not like many others. It certainly isn't FB. I'm not showing my family album for you to like (and cause me to worry if you disliked). It's not for having a bunch of sub-replies to every single reply. (They tried that once, it was really confusing.) It's for us to sort out our next couple of scouting moves. And, a set of "don't go this way" trail signs might come in handy for the next person who comes along.

There's nothing mean-spirited in down-voting a post. I've made quite clear elsewhere, There is no harm in learning that someone thinks we have a really bad idea. In this case ... concerning ourselves over every twist and turn that language may take, rather than looking at how a word is referenced over centuries. OK, sarcasm. I had a longer list (pastor for PL, bishop for SPL, cardinal for SM), but I didn't want to belabor the point that language is not the terrible oppressor that people make it out to be. Yes, I've read CG's article, and Commissioner Andy's when it was originally written. And the bottom line is: Note that Andy's solution was not "Call him a Scout Guide instead." Changing the language does not get rid of the problem. Getting rid of the tyrant gets rid of the problem. I wish @scoutldr's point would work: It's true that learning to advise a crew made me a better ASM, but only after solid training as an advisor. I think that's one of the blessings of a well run HA base, if an adult can afford to take a crew there ... they give adults a solid experience of giving the youth the reigns. I have seen real tyrants of advisors. If venturing were more popular and teens didn't have other options, we'd see even more of tyrannical advisors, and because demand outstrips supply, commissioners would be hard pressed to remove them. And honestly, at WSJ exactly what was written on an adults patch made no difference in how they managed their youth. Their various experiences did. My best suggestion: get your leadership trainees to crack open a reference (Bible or Oxford English Dictionary). Show how the term "master" has been used as titles for both landlords and rabbis. Ask them which one they think the folks in their care need.

Fine. Call me an Assisstant Elder Scouter Scoutchieftan Scouter Superior Scout Commandant Scoutherd Scout Handbook Thumper Don't anyone dare call me a Scout Guide/Explainer/Demonstrator/Enabler.