TAHAWK

The "logic" often expressed is that Merit Badges being given out requires doing so without complying with the Guide to Advancement. The alternative view is, "Stop handing out unearned Merit Badges." I also point out that the Guide to Advancement strongly discourages group Merit Badges. "Advancement is not the primary objective of the program. Recognizing that an important part of the merit badge program is that the Scout meets with a qualified counselor, due care is taken to ensure that all merit badge requirements are met. Some merit badges may not be appropriate for offering at summer camp. Advancement offered and camp personnel instructing advancement programs are approved, as appropriate, by the council advancement committee." STATUS: ROUTINELY IGNORED BY SCOUT EXECUTIVES. "7.0.1.1 Qualifications of Counselors People serving as merit badge counselors must maintain registration with the Boy Scouts of America as merit badge counselors and be approved by their local council advancement committee for each of their badges. This includes those working at summer camp or in any other group instruction setting...." STATUS: ROUTINELY IGNORED BY SCOUT EXECUTIVES. "7.0.1.4 Counselor Approvals and Limitations The council advancement committee is responsible for approval of all merit badge counselors before they provide services, although it is acceptable to delegate authority for this function to districts...." STATUS: ROUTINELY IGNORED BY SCOUT EXECUTIVES. "The sort of hands-on interactive experience described here, with personal coaching and guidance, is hardly ever achieved in any setting except when one counselor works directly with one Scout and his buddy, or with a very small group. Thus, this small-scale approach is the recommended best practice for merit badge instruction and requirement fulfillment. Units, districts, and councils should focus on providing the most direct merit badge experiences possible. Large group and web-based instruction, while perhaps efficient, do not measure up in terms of the desired outcomes with regard to learning and positive adult association." STATUS: ROUTINELY IGNORED BY SCOUT EXECUTIVES. "It is sometimes reported that Scouts who have received merit badges through group instructional settings have not fulfilled all the requirements. To offer a quality merit badge program, council and district advancement committees should ensure the following are in place for all group instructional events. • A culture is established for merit badge group instructional events that partial completions are acceptable expected results. • A guide or information sheet is distributed in advance of events that promotes the acceptability of partials, explains how merit badges can be finished after events, lists merit badge prerequisites, and provides other helpful information that will establish realistic expectations for the number of merit badges that can be earned at an event. • Merit badge counselors are known to be registered and approved. • Any guest experts or guest speakers, or others assisting who are not registered and approved as merit badge counselors, do not accept the responsibilities of, or behave as, merit badge counselors, either at a group instructional event or at any other time. Their service is temporary, not ongoing. • Counselors agree to sign off only requirements that Scouts have actually and personally completed. • Counselors agree not to assume that stated prerequisites for an event have been completed without some level of evidence that the work has been done. Pictures and letters from other merit badge counselors or unit leaders are the best form of prerequisite documentation when the actual work done cannot be brought to the camp or site of the merit badge event. • There is a mechanism for unit leaders or others to report concerns to a council advancement committee on summer camp merit badge programs, group instructional events, and any other merit badge counseling issues— especially in instances where it is believed BSA procedures are not followed. See 'Reporting Merit Badge Counseling Concerns,' 11.1.0.0." STATUS: ROUTINELY IGNORED BY SCOUT EXECUTIVES IN WHOLE OR IN PART.

BSA knows cheating is going on - expressly directed by the "professional" staff and desired by many volunteer unit leaders, but BSA elects to allow it to continue. National Camping Standards require "All advancement must be consistent with BSA advancement policies.... Recognizing that an important part of the merit badge program is that the Scout meets with a qualified counselor, due care is taken to ensure that all merit badge requirements are met." "BSA advancement policies," of course, require that only a registered Merit badge Counselor can act in that role and that all requirements must be individually passed and certified as individually passed by a registered Merit Badge Counselor (i.e., and adult registered as a Merit badge Counselor with a Local Council). However, camps are routinely certified by "visitation" teams with no evidence whatsoever that this mandatory minimum standard can or will be followed. I saw a fourteen-year-old "Merit Badge Counselor" last Summer at camp Week 1 (and Weeks 2,3 and 6). And he didn't know much. Absent a public scandal, there will be no reform. Advancement chairs who try to fix things are plowed under as volunteers have little actual power in BSA Scouting. We are left with encouraging unit leaders to not allow this scandal to include their unit.

Benchmarks?! Benchmarks?!! We don' need no stinking benchmarks.

"They don’t. I never had any requirement signed off for any of those no Leadership less work positions. I wouldn’t allow the troop to do that. " IF I understand what you are trying to say, no single person has such authority - Scout or adult. The CO is agrees to supply Boy Scouting to youth as defined by BSA. BSA defines which positions are PORs. It is the SPL's job, coached by the SM, to insure that all positions are meaningful. IF the incumbent refuses to do meaningful work as assigned, he needs to be replaced. If the leadership fails to give him meaningful work, they need training.

He needs to find some other way to spend his time. He is not interested in Boy Scouting.

Dozens are on sale on eBay at any one time. Some are excellent values.

BSA now sells ten models of sheath knives - after a gap of thirty-four years. The last axes I saw in a Scout Shop were from China.

But governors under the First Empire were titled "Moff."

I searched for Regional Governors and found none. ???

But should mere motivation excuse guesswork when research is possible? I may want a piece of candy, but the jar may be empty. Should I check before ponying up the "price"? BSA guessed that centering Scouting on urban living would be a winner - without asking the customers or sales force. Look how well that worked. The losses then make the recent losses look good by comparison.

Research. Polls. Focus groups. By actual competent people.

Surveys typically are based on samples and are simply data. But failing to survey the customers was one fact of the rush to the New Scouting Program that nearly did us in decades ago. It is incompetent not to research important decisions.

A properly-run organization would research to discover if customers and prospective customers would react favorably to major changes in the product line. I have never seen evidence that the "professionals" at National Council have done this in the past forty-five years. The contrary seems to be true. I am, or course, interested in any documentation showing that such research has been or is being done. Not claims - documentation.

Why would a Scout communicate with an troop committee advancement chair? If the advancement chair keeps advancement records, and many do, or was a source on advancement requirements, which she may be, the Scout might be checking up on something> Or the Scout might be asking about scheduling a Board of Review. And it would be another exercise in contacting an adult. Why not? It is the CO, through the unit committee, that is charged with seeing that BSA program is being furnished,

Careful of that "thinking" business. It can lead to logical conclusions.

Obviously, legal requirements and the perceived need for corporate financial support are different issues.

Not sure about etiquette, but someone else should be "on the line" or copied on the emails per YPT to prevent one-on-one communication. In theory, if you ask if someone else is on the line and the answer is "no," you politely hand up. Not sure how you unread the one-on-one email. 0___0

The BSA is not a public accommodation or branch of any government. So, like many others, it can offer separate programs by sex - as BSA has done for many years.

Sorry. The pain does reverberate down through generations. We should celebrate random acts of kindness and friendship.

Given YPT, I prefer emails, copied to a third party, preferably a parent or (other) troop Scouter. As for my "privacy," I get 8-10 scam telephone calls a week, so that horse is out the barn door.

Yup. I didn't talk to them about it in 1942. Tosh. Jr and I weren't alive then. Only met the family in 1953. Nothing to argue about. Europeans often slaughtered indigenous peoples who got "in the way" (Google Jeffrey Amhurst blankets small pox), but disease spread by mere contact probably killed more. The Han peoples who immigrated to what we call Japan tried to kill off the Anu, and and the Russians mowed down those who resist when their empire moved south in past centuries and more recently. Then there was Dresden and Bomber Harris generally. Home sap has a lot to answer for. We seem hard-wired to fear the "other," and fear shortly leads to hate and violence. Civilization seems to be a thin layer over the beast.

I am sure they were afraid. And not without reason given wartime propaganda, governmental and private, about the "dirty Japs." But in the end, we did not do to them what Germany under Hitler did to Jews, Romani, Soviet POW's or the mentally handicapped. And I "really" believe that being alive was more important to them than the evil we did to them. So they told me. We had a half-dozen Nisei Scouts in our troop and another half-dozen Sensei. I ate at my buddy Toshi's house many times and talked to his dad, Toshi, Sr., about the camps and his family losing their farm and house. "Tosh" Sr. started a Scout troop in the camp and was an SA in our troop. (The family had a "truck farm" where the John Wayne Airport is located.) There is a street named for the family in Garden Grove.

Bearing in mind that my Scout tent-mate for two years was born in a concentration camp, I suspect the victims were/are more concerned with the BEHAVIOR than the MIND SET. Interestingly enough, support for internment was strongest in California, with a history of racism, and almost zero in Hawaii, where the military governor, newspapers, politicians, and business community opposed it. The extremely right-wing Santa Ana Register opposed internment as illegal and unconstitutional. The L.A. Times continued a long tradition of racism against those of Asian ancestry by vigorously supporting it, joined by the N.Y. Times and Washington Post.

1. Yes. Clearly. 2. Yes, although less so. There were some who favored extermination, but they lost that debate. 3. Exterminate vs. imprison. Exterminate vs. semi-autonomous states.