TAHAWK

The purposes of Scouting are to create good people, who are god citizens, fit in mind and body, I know that you know, but it still gets lost in these discussions. What programs leads to those outcomes? Scouting has always thought that citizenship training was a natural part of its program. Does Scouting, after 109 years in the U.S., leave it to today's schools to teach boys to be good citizens? Citizenship training is also a major reason for the Patrol Method. Will the teachers let the "students" plan and lead the "program?" Do schools teach what is to be learned in Personal Management? Not when I or my son went to public school, but things change. Sports of all kinds, including team sports/Scout leagues, were once a major aspect of Scouting, with the aims of teaching teamwork and fair play and promoting physical fitness. I would prefer wilderness hiking, but walking is still good even if on a golf course. A sport like tennis or golf is more likely to be followed into adulthood than the team sports. Chess? Mental fitness. One of pour goals. Textiles? BP's push for occupational training. A good citizen is a productive citizen. .

At least we finally have an accurate illustration of the tripod lashing the in Handbook - after fifty-eight years. (But lost the index in favor of another list of word-search results.)

Membership growth flatten out. Studies were undertaken. The Improved Scouting Program (which I thankfully missed) was based on the notion that Scouting needed to be more urbancentric ("Rat bite, not snakebite"), ignorant of the reality that most of the membership had always been drawn from urban areas. And, imagine, they never asked the "customers." Woops! Membership crashed. Nothing new about "Digging Deep for Scouting" (someone has to pay the membership fees for nonexistent members). Cleveland lost its SE in 1926 over phantom membership, and another SE more recently left for promotion only to be fired when his successor ( a good man who just retired) had the poor taste to take a 30% membership hit, year over year, eliminating phantom members. Before that last, systematic wave of phoniness, when I tried to recognize my districts five oldest troops in 1989, they all turned out to exist only on paperwork forged by the DE. BP said to use what attracted kids. The methods are not the objectives. But can we have more faith in the latest revelation than was due the prior revelations? I have no idea. I try not to confuse what I think is best for the final solution just because I like camping and it worked before. Can it work with only "Introduction to" outdoors skills training of adults and no outdoor skills training for youth - outside what an average ninth-months-tenure SM can provide on his own? And it's not "how to teach" training on its face. In fact, I believe, training generally is weak and not greatly valued - at least here. The materials are not fantastic when they need to be just that. The time allocated keeps shrinking even as the supposedly required information increases. Training is still seen as a revenue source and still priced accordingly (AKA "the pad"). District-level youth leadership training - which ought to be important to our "most important method" -- has been MIA for over fifteen years. Volunteers can do better - or just complain.

Spare the rod . . . .

Have you stopped beating your Scouts?

Stosh, you are a Scouter, not the BSA. Whatever the shortcomings of BSA, Scouters are not barred from teaching and using the Patrol Method (It just takes unreasonable effort to find) or conducting a vigorous outdoor program. So I agree. It's us. BSA could help, but it's us. I just found a troop that tent camps every month and meets twice a month. Its patrols meet four times a months. A good starting place.

Scouting says one is to respect the religious beliefs of others. Others agree, including the Holy Father. I predict that Only you are insulted by my citation of that point of the Law, but I've been wrong before and will be wrong again. In a troop that makes it clear that it consists of many beliefs, joining and then quitting or complaining because there are Scouts of many beliefs other than yours is not respecting the beliefs of others. That, and not your imaginings, was the context of my statement. If witnessing other beliefs in action is so abhorrent to you, I don't think you would have come near either troop. Why, the SM of the second troop was Jew, and a Cantor at that! So you would have been free to be "over there" not having to witness the "others" doing their thing(s).

Waiting for: "The Year of the Patrol" or "The Year of Camping." BSA says the Patrol Method is its most important method, but has not said in decades what it is in any list, chapter, article, or training. Inconsistently, the Outdoor Method is said to best meet the objectives of Scouting, but the Outdoor Method has been deemphasized to the point where an indoor "lock-in" to play games is a "weekend campout" for the Journey to "Excellence" [sic]. If the product was better, sales might improve. Shortcomings at the National level do not prevent local initiatives or excuse the lack of them.

I was a Scout in a Methodist unit, and we had Christians of of many denominations, Muslims, Jews, Baha'i, and Hindus. We had two LDS patrols for a year until they had enough boys to have their own troop. We had Scouts of every color. We learned a lot about others beliefs and acted respectfully towards them all; that was the troop culture. The families that joined knew all this coming in. Our biggest critics were from the John Birch Society - or the Birch John Society as we called them (with apologies to all the "Johns" out there). The idea that the Scouts who kept kosher or halal would have quit over someone else eating pork - or meat for vegetarians -- sounds silly to me based on 13 years with that troop. Jump forward, and I spent 25 years with another polyglot troop. Same culture. Same results. Perhaps those horrified by different beliefs never joined. But that's OK as they would not have been willing to follow the Law. "He respects the beliefs of others."

Boys join Scouts primarily because it's a value-centered educational organization?

We are not a court. We are given facts second hand and asked for advice based upon those facts. If the claimed facts are, on their face, improbable, that would likely impact the advice or the willingness to give advice. Reject the facts given out of prejudice and that impacts the advice, but in no useful fashion.

Depends on what you mean by "now." We have accepted some atheists since 1926 and others, but not all, since. In view of which, BSA policy statements on religion, reverent, and Duty to God, are as clear as . . . . . BSA policy statements.

"I do know from first hand experience, new Cub parents feel comfortable with someone "experience" in a leadership role, even if the experience is based upon working with Boy Scouts." Larger Service Stars?

Lots of changes. Buddhists in the mid 1920s Allowing Scouts "of color" in "White" units 1920s (As was the case with my boyhood troop in California. They had photographs to document it.) BSA Inter-Racial Service formed 1927 Cub Scouts 1930 (So uniformed female Scouters.) Advocating elected PLs in the 1930s Mandatory shift to Exploring at age 14 ends in 1946 Banning racial discrimination in membership in 1974 (a settlement after being sued by the NAACP) Preferring chemical stoves to open fires in the 1980s No underwear skits in the 2000s

So I won a youth award over sixty years ago? What should that mean to a Scout whose grandparents may not have been alive then? He has no idea what was required for Eagle then - what my journey was. Pin the Lifesaving MB on the ribbon? I hope he judges me by my behavior - period. You can wear the medal on the Official Uniform at "formal occasions." I have done that once as an adult due to a specific request for a BPI that all Eagles wear their medals. (Exploring Silver Award recipients were not asked to wear that medal.)

We are short of adult hours and BSA just will not directly recruit adults. I got a letter of reprimand for contacting adults from the Eagle list. "The adults come with the Scouts." When I look around at the council and district volunteers, I see too much grey hair. We are fighting a mega-trend(resistance to joining groups) with a strategy that only worked so-so fifty years ago. Ed: Of course, it's OK to contact adults to donate to B.S.A.

Exploring has been co-ed since 1969.

The Canadians too were willing to take a chance.

Truly, the DEAD have arisen.

"BP would be spinning in his grave to see how far away from 'traditional scouting' we've come and include so many merit badges that have nothing to do with his founding principles and ideals." Most of BP's merit badges were vocational. "If going co-ed can do for us what it did for Scouts UK, I think it's well worth it to secure the long-term future of scouting in the US. " Or it may do what it did for Canada. Not sure how one predicts the future, although politicians claim to be able to do it. "Opportunity - Girls should have the same opportunities to experience scouting and benefit from it, and let's face it, GSUSA doesn't provide a comparable program." And BSA has to - or should - provide that "opportunity" out of its private funding? "100 years ago, there were also men's clubs and women were only allowed to hold a handful of jobs. I'd like to think we have advanced as a society a little bit since then." Me too, but not relevant, I think. It's not employment. BSA is not "society." It is one private youth program, and not nearly the largest in the U.S. Were it the sole opportunity to gain some critical life skill, you might have an argument, but it's hardly that. And, as noted, Scouting has been open to girls in some of its programs - as it happens, since 1969 (Exploring). Must every citizen pay up to give every other citizen every possible opportunity? If girls are "all in," must BSA provide other program that is desired by some? "Everyone knows this, . . . ." The list of what "everybody" knows is fairly narrow or perhaps nonexistent. At one time, 85% of Egyptian citizens polled were sure the U.S. crashed the planes into the Twin Towers to slander Islam. Vaccination? "Our obligation to the heritage of scouting isn't to abide by his teachings exactly as they were, but to take them and adapt them to modern society and adjust them over time as we learn how to do things better. We don't stick to early 1900s first aid methods because we know better now. We don't judge people on the shape of their face (BP said we could judge a man's character that way). We do a lot of things differently today because we've got 100+ years of life lessons and experiences to add to BP's teachings. I view it as honoring our heritage to alter the program as needed over time." If wise, you change what you must to save the best of what need not be changed. If very wise, you usually know the difference between the two. Although change is not coextensive with improvement, change is inevitable, for better or worse. We changed by providing that the leasers are to be elected, not appointed by the adults. Change is almost always debated because change is stressful and upsetting. Example: resistance by U.S. military leaders to repeating firearms, so we went into war with Spain with mainly obsolete single-shot, black powder rifles to oppose the smokeless powder, magazine-fed Mauser rifles of Spain. Thank God Spain was a fourth-rate power. The demise of the Patrol Method is somewhat of a mystery since BSA does not explain much. I am told by a high-ranking professional that it started with people at National who had no idea what is was. They were (and are) so bogged down with secondary issues - results of causes instead of causes, that they "misplaced" the Patrol Method. They seems to have also misplaced outdoors (only introductory training for program leaders) and values (As to the last, how else to explain the scandal of summer camp merit badge mills run by "professional" Scouters.) To some "freedom of choice" is to freedom to select the choices they prefer. Sort of like "Power to the People [who think like me]." (Well, your ideas are just wrong - even evil since I am a supporter of good.) To some "compromise" is steady "progress" to what they want and away from what others want. The issue then, is what do you give up and what do I get, never the other way. So for example, "reducing government spending" is reducing the rate of increase (for now). Boys are competing in girls' HS sports (shattering girls' records) and visa-versa. We should also eliminate age and weight categories. It may not be true that an 18-year-old is unfairly advantaged over an 11-year-old or a 200-pounder over a 140 pounder. I wish this was a simple issue for me.

Bacon ice cream?

BP on role of PL in camp: "In supreme charge, responsible for assigning duties and seeing that they are carried out."

Hardly a surprise, he was a Lt. General. Since when do squads elect their squad leader? Bill was not a military man and came from a less-stratified society. He argued eloquently for election in The Patrol Method, a pamphlet issued under West's name but clearly written by Bill.

In BP's language the "officer" who was to appoint the PLs is what we call a Scoutmaster and they now call the Group Leader. Scouting for Boys, Part I at pp.20 and 35.

And he wanted the adults to appoint the boy leaders.