TAHAWK

I guess looks can be deceiving. Not to say that BSA is excellent at communication. Far from it. But if you were a trainer you would regularly receive training updates. This strangely-worded update was issued in October, 2010. "If you feel you [sic] have all the skills required in Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills it may not be necessary to take the course. Anyone who feels they can demonstrate all of the skills for Tenderfoot, Second Class and First Class should contact their District Training Chair and schedule a one-on-one session with a member of the training team. “ http://www.scouting.org/Training/TrainingUpdates/Archives/201010.aspx This language appeared as recently as 2015 "Introduction to Outdoor Leadership Skills If you feel you have all the skills required in Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills it may not be necessary to take the course. Anyone who feels they can demonstrate all of the skills for Tenderfoot, Second Class and First Class should contact their District Training Chair and schedule a one­on­one [sic] session with a member of the training team. This statement also applies to Venturing Youth (over 18 years of age) who are able to demonstrate outdoor leader skills to an IOLS Certified Course Instructor."

"They do absolutely need to create some kind of test out procedure for IOL's and Scoutmaster Fundamentals. While I had fun taking both of those courses, I didn't exactly learn anything from them. That was my 1st year as an Adult volunteer, but my 11th year as a member in the BSA. I ended up helping the IOLS instructor teach some of the Scouting skills to the other course participants. " Google Boy Scout IOLS test out to see the form for testing out. I expect "participants" will add to the learning a,d have literally never been disappointed. Collective wisdom and experience is pretty impressive.

I have staffed IOLS 17 times. I never discussed the course with a single staffer who thought the course actually accomplished teaching First-Class outdoor skills. We all just do the best we can. But a box gets checked on someone's list and someone(s) play(s) Let's Pretend, WB was originally something of a graduation course for veteran SM's and by invitation only. Now the goal is for all volunteers to take it ASAP after completing basic. In fact, completing basic is "required." But when I last staffed a couple of years ago, 4 of 6 Beavers had zero training. They were coming in at the middle of the conversation. One topic not needed way back when was motivation. 15-year SM's did not need to be convinced to work in Scouting. Too bad BSA employees rewrote the professionally-developed syllabus. Even more bad that they did not understand some of the material they were rewriting. BSA saved the royalties and scrambled some of the message. Fortunately, good staffs fix the errors and internal contradictions. That's why WB is only as good as the staff teaching it. Beads as a symbol of superiority? Don't blame WB. If anyone thinks that they are superior becasue they got their beads, they were probably problems long before that point.

I repeat for emphasis, the first version of Wood Badge (We're on 3.3 now) was First-Class level skills. So the advanced course, which I would love to see, would need to be called something else. "Outdoor Wood Badge"?

"You applied the EDGE method flawlessly. Which means you left the boys with inferior skills that will not enable them to reproduce the desired result." Why does the person teaching in the so-called EDGE method have to leave the boys with inferior skills? How does explaining why a skill is worth knowing, teaching that skill, allowing an application phase, and then stepping away when the Scouts have sufficient mastery = "leave the boys with inferior skills"? And just who defines "the desired result"? If you are volunteering, please give us a sample definition. For Bill, it was First Class-level Skills, and he built Wood Badge to that standard. I have the syllabus. I think adults ought to be trained -- or at least offered training - to a higher level so they can indulge Scouts who want to go beyond First Class skills. What do you think?

Some people seem to need to leave in an explosion.

Training on woods tools in the Handbook is minimal and includes errors. Afraid? In the real world, a small minority of troops - Boy Scout Troops -- use the Patrol method, inclusive of boy leadership. So the typical Scouter has no reluctance to play PL/SPL.-- to do everything.

I think it's a matter of what's reasonable, not necessary essential. The current Handbook has a pathetic choice of one fire lay, but there are other books. "Fire lay" gets 53,000 hits on Google. But it might make sense to teach a few Scouts now so the program can go on and to have them promise to teach what they have learned to the others. Bill, for all the emphasis on Boys figuring things out themselves, taught tons of Scoutcraft as National Director of Scoutcraft , and not just to adults. As Green Bar Bill he taught them every month trough Boy's Life.

"The Boy Scout uniform" (formerly the "Field Uniform") consisting of a selection of one of several BSA-branded shirts (or a coat), one of several BSA-branded trousers or shorts, one of several styles of BSA-branded socks, and one of several BSA-branded belts. Headgear, footwear, and neckerchiefs optional. That's a clear definition, just not consistent with the U.S. military's definition of a given set of clothing, including footwear, selected by a commander at a defined level. So to BSA, a 1910 uniform is "the Boy Scout Uniform," but osolete clothing is not acceptable not to the U.S. Army except in very special and limited circumstances at the Army's discretion, not the soldier's discretion.

We teach all Scouters who take Position-Specific training that if a safety issue arises, they are to immediately address it to the extent that the risk is controlled. Only then, is there a unit policy issue to run through the SM. If there is no urgency, it might be a good idea to consult the SM. We had a dad tell Scouts that sheath knives and axes were absolutely prohibited in Scouting as he went around camp gathering up all such tools. Maybe he thought it was urgent. Another dad, somehow a "trained" SA, was showing them how to use Coleman fuel to start a fire. Many more examples on request. (Of course, there was also the SM of a neighboring troop who caught our attention at a camporee by throwing cups of Coleman Fuel on his troop's campfire. WHOOSH !! One can only hope.)

That would be new. You would find no authority, present or historic, to support such a policy. I can find no support for patrol neckerchiefs, and patrol neckers seem logical to me. The "Class A' etc stuff came in after WWII when so many adults in Scouting had been in the military. It then became "traditional." Do Scouts even know that it's military terminology? I'll suspect more did when there was "universal" military service/

In 1991, our troop did its own high adventure by a trip to Canada that included canoeing the toughest week of the old Voyager route from Fish Lake to the Ottawa River. (Monster portages!) On the next to last day of the canoeing part of out trip, the SM had a brain fart and decided he and his canoe mate, an athletic adult, would run one of the many rapids rather than portage. He could not be talked out of this behavior. The canoe rolled, and everything came out. The one item we could not find after hours of diving and probing was his day pack -- with all the trip funds, a knife his SM had given him, his camera, and other less-significant items. (I had a credit card, so the trip went on for four more days, including a tour of Toronto sights.) Three weeks later, the SM received a telephone call from Canada. A 15-year-old Canadian Scout had been fishing the river and had found the pack, well down the river, and wanted the SM to know he was shipping the dried-out contents to our SM, including about $650.00 US in currency. The Scout was a guest of the Troop for two weeks later that Summer -- and quite an example to all of us.

Whatever else may be good and true, "Adult Association" has a specific meaning as a Scouting "method": adults demonstrating Scouting's values.

I can only join the above posters. Completing training only proves that one completed training. I would add that since trying to insure safety is a non-delegable duty of adults, you were absolutely supposed to at least be there for that purpose alone. Having said that: The ideal is to have Scouts learn on their own and teach each other. We do not live in an ideal world. Sometimes it just makes sense to ask if some guidance will be accepted. The purpose of the program is decidedly not to insure success. The program expressly contemplates that the Scouts will do some learning through failure. "t can be very tempting for adults to jump in and sort things out, because that is what adults do. But we have to remember that that is the process of Scouting. That is how they learn—even from disorganization and failure.†Adults [sHOULD] understand that their role is to create a safe place where boys can learn and grow and explore and play and take on responsibilities—and fail, and get up and try again.†BSA 2015 Adults in Scouting facilitate the journey from failure to success by having non-judgmental discussions with the leaders about what happened and how a better result might be gained. Bill even advised that such discussions only happen on the leader's or leaders' initiative: "Train 'em, trust 'em, let 'em lead. And remember that last is of tremendous importance. Let them lead in practically everything. Let them work out their own problems, interfere as little as possible—but be ever ready to give wise guidance—not when you think they need it, but when they seek it. Keep in mind that unwarranted, ill-advised interference discourages leadership and that those boy leaders of yours are 'learning by doing.' Mistakes, some of them serious, are bound to be made; therefore, be ever ready with a kindly and friendly spirit to urge them to try again. Help them occasionally with constructive criticism. But do your coaching on the sidelines always, never in front of the Patrols. And then, when the Patrol Leader succeeds in his job, praise him for it. Commendation which is justified and not overdone is an absolute necessity. Such statements of approval should be made occasionally before the interested group. They like it, and so does the leader, as long as it is short, free from "soft soap," and genuine." Handbook for Scoutmasters, BSA, William “Green Bar Bill†Hillcourt, 1936, at pg 225 Finally a Smithism, from my first Scoutmaster, directed at a new SA (me): "No one ever died from a burned pancake."

It's whatever the troop or camp says it is. For BSA there is "the Boy Scout uniform" (formerly the "Field Uniform") consisting of a selection of one of several shirts (or a coat), one of several trousers or shorts, one of several styles of socks, and one of several belts. Headgear and neckerchiefs optional.

Shows how attitudes change. The uniform for about fifty years - and it was an actual uniform - is now ugly and disgusting. As compared to denims?

You mentioned "too much leading." I was trying to understand what that would be, and you reply leaves the words undefined. Maybe it's so obvious that I should understand.

As the leaders (scouts) are do do all the direct leading of the patrols and the troop, what quantity would be "too much"? Were they trying to lead the Troop Committee?

Boy Scout uniforms were last military in the 1920's. Darth West ignored BP's advice and quickly dressed the boys up in U.S. Army khaki from Eisner, supplier to the U.S.A. Only the buttons and insignia were different. It took an act of Congress to make it legal. That khaki uniform of choke-collar coat and riding trousers went away sometime in 1923 in favor of a darker khaki shirt, neckerchief, and regular trousers. In WWII, BSA had a special dispensation to buy cloth, but only OD was available, so OD it was. Soon the very non-military red piping appeared on the pocket flaps. The 60's brought a lighter OD of cheap, thin poly-cotton, which BSA insisted on calling "khaki." Then came Oscar and the khaki shirt to go with the cotton-poly Maxi-Pill OD trousers, with variations on that for 25 years.

I thought that a fact "is" rather than "should" be. I certainly claim no expertise in the special language of morality, should it exist.

AZ, I am all in with your message except for calling them "facts." Moral universals, imperatives or absolutes? Sure. Torturing English is, I think, unnecessary to the message.

I guess it depends on what "old" means. .

My first SM's highest praise of a PL was, "He takes care of his kids." Another "Smithism": "Assistant PL needs to be a job, not a title." He would regularly ask PLs "What are you having your assistant do?".

Why did they join? Primarily they joined to have fun with friends.

In Boy Scouting, the key leader is the Patrol Leader given that a Scout is to primarily experience Scouting in the patrol context. We used to teach that expressly in training youth leaders: "Ready for the Toughest Job in Scouting?" I truly believe that a new or reorganizing troop should have only patrol meetings and activities for the first couple of months. When the patrols then come together, they strongly identity as Eagles, or Snakes, or Flaming Ice Cubes. Stosh it's not a choice between woods skills and ability to teach leadership. Clearly the second is more important becasue all the skills in the world are useless to a leadership performance by a leader who lacks the ability to lead. However, neither is being accomplished. Woods skills training for adults stops at 1st Class level. Leadership training is crippled by the failure of BSA training syllabii to clearly and concisely explain Scouting's most important method or to state openly and unequivocally in training -- at at every opportunity -- that using that method is required. Sure, the words are there somewhere if you work to find them but so is Scouting [magazine], the offical voice of BSA, endorsing in January, 2015 the notion that youth leadership is optional and should be delayed until the boys can produce a well-oiled machine. Shame! Boy Scouting now!