Rick_in_CA

I kind of agree with you on this. I remember when I was a cub, I didn't like some of the more silly stuff that was done. As for training, at BALOO and OWLS, some of the advice actually made me angry. Take run-ons (this is where a scout or scouter is encourage to jump up and interrupt a skit, song or speaker with a quick one-liner), they are simply rude and unscout like. If one of my cubs did that, I would reprimand them and make them apologize for interrupting and being disrespectful. The rounds of applause, and stuff like that I find annoying. It can make a quick 20 second announcement into a 2 minute performance. One that was common in my pack for a short time: "The Announcement Song", which the cubs would sing whenever the word "announcement" was spoken. I disliked it because it was an interruption, and slowed the administration stuff down so it took longer (which took time away from the fun stuff).

Thank you for sharing your story @seaoat. I share MattR's sentiments, that is what scouting is all about. God speed on your final journey.

This is what boy scout summer camp used to be (and should be again). When I was a scout, if we wanted to swim, we went swimming. If we wanted to shoot archery or 22s, off we went and did it (occasionally there was a brief line). Wanted to go canoeing? Off we went (unless they were being used by the canoeing merit badge class). Wanted to go hiking? Off we went. The camp was almost all free form.

There is an additional aspect to the ban. My understanding that the original ban dates back to the early 70s. It was a reaction to the protests against the Vietnam War, and the growing anti-military attitude of the country. The BSA was trying too make a big deal out of the fact that it wasn't the military, especially trying to eliminate anything that could look like specific training for war. At the time, most of the scout leaders were veterans, and many of them ran their troops like military units. I remember learning how to march and dress ranks when I was a boy scout. When our troop marched in parades, we (tried at least) to look military (we marched in formation to a called cadence). To a layman, the scouts looked military (we wore green uniforms, saluted, had ranks, marched, organized in patrols, learned to shoot guns, the military offered lots of support to the scouts, etc.). One of the reasons for the switch to the Oscar de la Renta uniform was to make scouts less military looking.

Weird duplicate post.

You can also find all the old Boy's Life magazines in Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=HEFsdunJeZMC&dq=boys+life+magazine&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Does having adults around on a patrol hike change things? Yes, no mater how quiet they are, and how much in the background they stay. It hurts the scouts. Multiple studies have shown the benefits of unsupervised time for child development. The kids need time without any adults around to grow. Youth Protection is important, but not at the expense of the kids.

Correct. But the author is correct that Leave No Trace does recommend against geotagged in social media: http://lnt.org/blog/new-social-media-guidance

Which was Mike Rowe's point in his recent rant. I agree with both of you and Mike Rowe. But I'm afraid Eagledad is correct, the BSA is too afraid.

I think you bring up an excellent point about scout maturity and merit badges. I sometimes wish some of the badges had age restrictions or prerequisites. Something to help postpone some of the badges until the scouts are mature enough to get the most out of them. But I am leery of age restrictions, as I am afraid we would get the merit badge equivalent of "must be 14 to use a wagon". I wonder if the UK scouts have it right to split the boy scouts into two age groups. What works for a 12 year old is going to be different than what works for a 16 year old.

I agree about camp fires. To me, sitting around the camp fire in the evening is one of the best parts of camping. The fire bans make me sad. Though here in California, after years of drought, things are so dry in some places a fire ban makes complete sense.

It's hard to pick just one, but here are a few that stand out. My boy scout troop was camping at the Pinnacles and visited the Bear Gulch Cave. This cave is a large talus cave (made by large boulders) that climbs up following a water course. The cave was partly flooded in that it had water running in it, and the only way through was to go wading (in about thigh high water at it's deepest). But it was a hot day (the Pinnacles can get really hot), so we didn't care that we were getting wet. The upper two thirds of the cave is completely dark (I mean pitch black, no light at all), so we were all carrying flashlights. We had a couple of hours to explore the cave, and we quickly split up into groups (patrols mostly if I remember correctly). We climbed through the cave up the top, stopping along the way to stick our head into every crevice we could find. And then went back down to the bottom. I then had the idea to do it without flashlights. It was a whole other experience in the pitch black. The sound and feel of the rushing water, the texture of the rocks, our voices and the dark. We relied on our memories of the path and the water current as a guide. It was a great feeling of accomplishment when we got to the top and sunlight again. We had done the whole thing without turning on the flashlights once! There were other groups from our troop already at the top. We told them what we had done, and turned around to go down in the dark again. This time leading two other patrols. We did a total of five passes through the cave without lights before it was time to move on. In 1976, I was a webelos. My local council was holding a special week-long event in celebration of the Bicentennial called something like the Bicenteree. It was in a dry valley somewhere in the Diablo Range. The valley wasn't a normal campground as it had no facilities and just a dirt road running into it. The National Guard trucked in all the water and there were big banks of porta-potties. My older brother, along with my Dad (he was an ASM) stayed there all week with the troop. Us webelos were only going to be there the final weekend (we were hosted by the troop). It was to be my first time camping with real boy scouts, so I was excited. The den leader drove all of us in his huge station wagon (remember those?) and parked the car in a huge field of vehicles, grabbed our gear and hiked in (it wasn't far as the "parking lot" was next to the camping area). We could see on the hill above the camp a large black and pink scar on the hillside. It turned out that the day before, there had been a grass fire. The whole camp was mustered to be ready to fight the fire. All the scouts were ordered too return too their troop area and prepare to do fire duty. The fire was actually put out by a plane dropping fire retardant on the fire (hence the pink) with some actual firemen and national guardsmen. The scouts just stood and watched. My Dad managed to get a great photograph of the plane doing the drop. It was my first scouting camp out (though we had done family camping many times before), and it made a big impression on me. It was a big event, with well over a hundred boy scout troops attending. I remember wandering around and seeing giant pioneering projects (signal towers, bridges, fences), a few foreign troops, a troop playing bag pipes, buglers, games, competitions, archery, activity everywhere. To a webelos, it was an amazing introduction to the world of boy scouts! I couldn't wait!

A lot of schools are eliminating group showers in the locker rooms and replacing them with individual stalls. Most of the local schools did that many years ago for the women, and are now doing it for the men. They aren't doing it because of concerns with transgender students (though I'm sure that is becoming one more reason), but because of a dramatic increase in body modesty in our society (lots people equate any nudity with sex - so group showers must be perverted). When I was in high school (and junior high) the guys took group showers after gym. But I was surprised to learn that most of the girls didn't. They used individual stalls (their locker room had a small number of individual stalls in addition to the group shower area - almost all the girls waited to use the stalls). A couple of years after I graduated high school, they apparently rebuilt the girls locker room and eliminated the group showers, it's all individual stalls now.

Wow, I apologize if my comment came across in an unfriendly way. It was not my intent. I was also attempting to address hyperbole in general, not you specifically. I guess I failed in that. Hedgehog, I've been enjoying your comments on this topic, and I hope you will continue to contribute too this forum.

Understand the "don't point water pistols at people" thing has been there a long time. And it's not about keeping people from getting wet, it's about not pointing any kind of gun (real or play) at people. It comes out of the "BSA is not military and does not train youth for war" thing from the 1960s. And yes, the you must be 14 to use a little red wagon rule is one of the dumbest in GTSS.

So it doesn't work? At all? So the 120+ coed scouting programs around the world are all failures? Really? Look, I think the reality of international scouting clearly shows that coed scouting can work, and work well (ask Cambridgeskip or ianwilkins). That doesn't invalidate the argument that single-sex scouting is better than coed (and some rather cogent arguments in favor of that position have been presented on this forum). But can we leave the hyperbole out of it? I understand that there is a lot of passion around this question. But some of the hyperbole I have seen around this topic is silly and discredits the arguments being made. Not to mention that it can come across as an unintended insult to our international scouter friends ("your coed program sucks").

The Civil Air Patrol is the official civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force. It includes a cadet program for youth ages 12 to 21. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Air_Patrol

As for using scout staves as weapons, one of the original uses for the scout staff was "self-defense" (in the 1911 hand book and others). Personally, I think it can be a good idea teaching older boy scouts some basic self-defense techniques, either with staves and without. Be prepared. But SSScout is right, weapon is pretty far down on the list of uses for a scout staff. To much of scout training now days is of the "go get help and let others deal with the problem" kind. But scouts should be taught what to do when "help" is too far away or otherwise unavailable. They should be taught first aid (obviously), how to fight a brush fire, how to defend themselves, what to do in a flood, earthquake, avalanche, downed power lines, water rescues, etc. It is what "Be Prepared" is partly about.

Interesting article, thanks for sharing it! I wonder, has anyone read the book the article is talking about: "The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys are Struggling and What We Can Do About It"? And what did you think of it?

This was my main concern about adding girls to the mix (something in the abstract that I support) - that given our fear driven society, the YPT and GTSS changes would be over the top and get in the way. I guess my fear is coming true. Sigh...

The problem I have with the no one-on-one contact outside of scouting rule is that for me, it would have been a problem. I often transport my pretend nephew (I'm not actually family, but I am a very close family friend) to soccer practice and other things one-on-one. He is no longer a scout (he lost interest), but if he was, I would have to decide to either ignore the rule, our not be a leader anymore.

I think that was the Dale case, but I'm not sure. It's been a while. I think you have expressed what I was trying to say, but with more clarity.

You might be correct, but didn't the BSA tell the Supreme Court that it was? That was part of the reason the BSA jettisoned their two largest groups of charter organizations: public schools and the US military (because government entities can't own and operate discriminatory religious groups).

That would make sense. Learn something new every day! As for Buddhist, you are correct that the BSA does say they are welcome, but that doesn't change the fact that I have met Buddhist that said that the DRP wasn't compatible with their faith (since Buddhists don't have a creator God, how can they recognize him as the leading power in the universe?). No matter what the BSA says, it's a problem for many.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Which language are you referring too? I know several scouters (some current, some past) that when looking at the DRP found themselves unable to support it because of their religious beliefs. One of which was a Protestant minister (it was the "grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings" part - and I still don't understand his objection even though he tried to explain it to me. I see nothing in the DRP that isn't compatible with Protestant theology. But I'm not a theologian. Anyone here have a clue?). Another was a Jainist that after reading the compete DRP, resigned as a den leader because the DRP was incompatible with his faith (I met him at a Scout-O-Rama several years ago. He was no longer a registered leader, but still volunteered with his pack as a parent.). I have met a few others that have said the DRP was a problem with their faith. I admit that I have a problem with the implication in the DRP that a non-believer can't really be a good citizen - my faith tells me otherwise. So much for "absolutely nonsectarian".