qwazse

@5thGenTexan, it sounds like you’re in an ebb cycle. It happens. I’m afraid uniforming won’t help. The age pyramid in your troop has collapsed. That’s not bad, but it will try all y’all’s patience. You’re in a “lead the horse to water” situation with your SM. You can share your vision with him, but I suspect you’ve done that. If there’s no other adult more to your liking who is willing to step forward, you must proceed with who you have. I’m gathering that syrupy sweet doesn’t come easy for you, but your best bet is to find one thing that this SM does right and heap on the praise. The SPL is your key, but the lock seems pretty stiff. There might be a way to loosen it. In that 15 minutes of chaos before the SM arrives, have a special treat for the him and the PLs and assistants. It could be a snack, it could be a round of cards, darts, swap some patches, whatever. Something just for youth leadership to engage youth leadership. I sat in on “mini-PLCs” on the SM’s behalf for a year until he was ready to grab those reigns. Again, your goal here is to get to know these youth. Inform them of the next NYLT or other training. And figure out what it would take to get them there.

I sincerely believe that historically, the causality has been the opposite of depicted. As some troops in the ‘80s and ‘90s took uniforming less seriously, more adults were encouraged to wear a field uniform “as an example” to scouts. This was an attempt to get adults to communicate “I’m willing to wear this proudly, you should be willing too!” Like every social experiment, there are successes and failures. I’m not sure how much one vs. the other occurred. There’s no real poll of the amount of uniforming one way or the other … only anecdotes from scouters when they don’t like how their people are using (or not using) the method.

The assumption is flawed that scouts’ uniforming is dependent on adults uniforming. Growing up, we always looked sharp for our BoR’s, and none of the committee wore a field uniform. Half of our SMs did not wear a uniform, and we still dressed in our field uniform. That’s because we regularly had uniform inspection. Currently, none of our committee wear uniforms, and our SM and ASMs do most of the time. Most of our scouts show up with the uniform shirt on every week. If your problem is scouts not looking sharp, then that’s your problem with the scouts, don’t bring the adults into it. Do your best to wear your uniform regularly. Apologize to the scouts any time you are not in uniform for a meeting or troop activity. And teach the scouts what you and the world expects of them. If your problem is that you’d prefer adults to appear looking sharp in field uniforms, tell them that is your personal preference. Thank them when they show up looking sharp. Leave the kids out of it. Remind everyone about the most important part of their uniform … Their Smile.

So far, I haven’t met scouts who settled for aging our at Life because of his badge. The boys who I’ve polled seem to have enjoyed the badge. Especially compared to the other citizenship MBs.

I didn’t see any of that. I encouraged the scouts to make the evening enjoyable around our troop campfire, which is situated conveniently lakeside. They seem to have managed to do that without much grief. (I wasn’t present because there was a bunch of close-out stuff for me to do.)

Well, if by future you mean two days later at home, there’s room for pessimism. From what I witnessed of the scout-mom interaction, the parents have a tough row to hoe. All we had left was the nuclear option of confining the whole troop to the campsite. I pushed that button for the sake of second- and third-year scouts. It’s a healthy lesson to know your actions impact others.

I love that “primordial goodness” bit, until I butt up against the head of a scout who picks and chooses the points he wants to obey. The day after a critical incident, the kid literally rattled off the law, skipping “courteous, kind, obedient.” I corrected him on his omissions and said, “You made vows. They define what a scout is. If someone is the opposite of 1/4 of those things, they are not a scout. This is a scout camp.” He tried, poorly, and still had to be sent home. After that, I dealt with self righteous older scouts who should know better but disregarded the same points of the Scout Law — justifying doing so on the shaky grounds that it was their last day of camp. I’m becoming more generally comfortable with the notion of total depravity, and our need for something to stand as a metric showing how we don’t measure up. That said, I still try to dig deep and take a play from Aquinas to find the underlying good motivating a soul’s bad actions.

The net purpose, as with anything in these forums, is to give us a pulse on our nation’s and our world’s youth who enter and leave BSA. I manage to only provide a handful of scoutmaster conferences on youth in my troop, and have other meaningful conversations with youth and scouters (some of them minorities) outside of my troop. That’s not a representative sample. And, when one of these people ask probing questions about why things are the way they are (be it membership policies or taught line hitches) I find the frank observations and reactions on this forum to be invaluable. As to the OP of this thread, two troop alumni were able to come retrieve a youth from camp, but regardless of any training they may take, they won’t be able to serve as one of my second adult leaders on a camping trip for another two years. Most scouters around the world find this to be perverse on multiple levels.

The German scout association is an example of a highly federated system. It’s a very interesting model to observe. We see hints of it here in the very different uniforms of the various youth.

Please let the devotion be titled “What To Pray When You See Your Rope Fray!”

If it’s any consolation, I was talking to a mom whose kids are in sports and their fees are climbing as well. A sinking tide grounds all boats.

It’s like I have an evil twin.

If you want to have something up your sleeve for the next time Bobby spouts off, PM me, and I’ll share footage of Ukrainian defense forces using every scout skill in the book to rescue one of their mates.

Kudos to Bobby and Billy. Stop talking about advancement and start talking skills. Specifically for Bobby, tell him that strangers on the internet want him to recite the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and all four verses of the Star Spangled Banner from memory before he says one more word about politics. This week, we want him to memorize the headstones of the graves he decorates. Then, before he says his second word about politics, we want him to arrange a town hike with his patrol to the local court house to meet your mayor, he sheriff, or some other elected officer. Then we want him to coordinate your troops next flag retirement ceremony. Then if you are near a naturalization center, we want him to prepare welcome packets for new immigrants and perform the opening ceremony in their honor. Tell him that Eagle Scout strangers don’t give a fig about the patch over his left pocket. But, in two years, when it’s time to register to vote, he’d better darn well be prepared to run my country.

First mistake: a troop design that incorporates the name of the CO. Second mistake: slapping a troop design on every piece of property. Your identity is now with this CO. They were kind enough to take you in, you want to award them recognition on your new flag or whatever else you have. I would suggest you no longer bother with putting the CO’s name on every piece of cloth. Select a standard issue neckerchief, and use only your troop number on most of your gear. Let the CO know your concerns, but be prepared to flex to them.

Implicit in expanding market share, one of the purposes of professional staff is promote the program to the people who are not yet sponsoring scouts. That balance between catering to existing volunteers and seeking out new ones (be they scouters, board members, donors, or CO’s) is precarious.

Point: I have a scout with ADHD who is struggling to master knots. He’s doing it, but it’s a challenge. How is it fair to him if your scouts can advance without knowing how to tie all of the knots that they should? Counter-point: is the SM testing on land navigation? Safe swim defense? Fire building? Cooking? Bill of rights? Pull-ups? If not, why is the conference only covering a fraction of he skills a scout should have?

It’s not true. All of the standard operating procedures didn’t come out of thin air. Someone somewhere got hurt. There’s a thread somewhere in this forum about a suicide at camp. It may be that the quote is out of context. On a range following protocols to the letter, it’s hard to imagine how a fatality could occur. I hope to high heaven that 4-H has never experienced anything like this. How this happens? The modern interpretation of second amendment rights lends itself to gun enthusiasts who are not (possibly never were) part of a well-trained local militia.

It's nice that some years back, leaders of the pack and troop thought that some money should flow in the direction the troop treasurer observed flowing. They had their reasons. But ... If your units did not have by-laws approved by the units and the CORs (and therefore the CO), then that is not an ensconced policy. So the reply to the troop treasurer should be, "Great, show me the by-laws specifying what should be transferred so the treasurer can note it the memo."

Don’t blame the organization or its members. Blame the people who took advantage of it and the subculture that encouraged them to act that way. Personally, I don’t care if a scouter from other parts would show up with or without children of his/her own. I’m letting him/her in slowly. My advice: show up at round table in your district. Look for training opportunities. Have fun. Meanwhile, participate in local clubs that do activities related to the merit badges that you counsel. Those adults might have other connections that you might enjoy making.

The council or the one it merged with could still have a record of that award. The local library should have community newspapers for that period.

No. National and regional polls of youth who are not in scouting and their families would begin to answer that. But, knowing the numbers might help BSA ask better questions. Moreover, similar reports from BSA and other Title 36 organizations would give policy makers a sense of how their constituents could be served.

If your biggest brag over the last decade has been about opening more program to girls, yes enumerating by sex would be your national duty. This is a global concern and intrinsic to WOSM’s census( https://members.scout.org/membership-report-methodology) If your elected representatives are claiming to address the needs of minorities and seeking programs that do that, you should report the information that you’ve collected on the matter. There are reasonable constitutional concerns about reporting religion to elected officials. On the other hand, the changing landscape of support from faith-based nonprofits due to recent lifting of statues of limitations would be of immediate concern to legislators. Financials should matter to elected officials, but congress does not seem to be all that bothered about dept.

So, roughly 10% of youth members are female. Now, why couldn’t Mosby up and say that in the annual report?

I didn’t want to imply that liability for youth heterosexual assault (or even unwanted consensual relations) was the sole mover. There is also a sincere belief among Americans that youth do better in a unisex environment. Exactly how they do better is an open question. The developmental psychology of it all really doesn’t matter. Parents do vote with their feet. The fastest growing scouting organizations in the world are generally unisex. The fastest shrinking division in BSA, Venturing, was predominantly co-ed. Our execs see England and Sweden as either 1) an anomaly or 2) a long term strategy that won’t recoup the boys lost for decades. Lacking a popular elected leader to insist that things change, in the eyes of BSA sees turning fully coed as catering to the few at the expense of the many.