yknot

Whatever we do, we have to make sure it makes the program more accessible and value added for Millennial and Gen Z scouts and their families, because they are our future. We can grump here all we want about what sacred cows we don't want to give up, but the reality is that if we are to maintain membership, we have to become more user friendly and of interest to the emerging target market. Some things I've read that seem good: - Place a premium on retaining and better managing local council camp grounds. The closer camping and outdoor opportunities are, the closer we stay to our mission and the better chance we have of retaining kids with a fun outdoor program. - De-emphasize the merchandising. Close council stores rather than camps. This can easily be morphed online, or as someone said, try to return to the counter in a local retail establishment. Scouting won't fail if scouts can't festoon themselves with a million badges, but it will fail if we can't easily get them out of doors. I'm dismayed by seeming cavalier comments about closing down yet more local camps. - De-emphasize popcorn fundraising, awards, internally focused banquets, etc. - Focus on supporting local units and streamlining tasks for unit volunteers. I would pay $30 a year if a Council could cut my admin/paperwork duties in half. We also know that Millennial and Gen Z folks don't volunteer as much -- or volunteer differently -- as their parents. We won't survive with our current, volunteer heavy model. We have to streamline. - Scouting needs to be more portable and fluid the way other youth organizations are. It's silly to talk about a troop in Michigan joining a council in Nevada. However, it's not crazy to maybe try and develop a digital Scouting passport that allows scouts to move more easily among Troops and Councils in search of specific experiences.

I think the CO relationship is something that needs to be significantly revamped if not dispensed with in any true restructuring. It is marginally functional for many based on the comments on this forum. I'm aware there are regional differences but in my area, many of the COs are smaller churches and community organizations with aging and declining memberships. They are barely able to keep their own organizations going so it is unrealistic to think they would have much effort to devote to living up to an agreement most of them were never party to in the first place. A lot of these COs have legacy units that have been there for decades. In my experiences, district and council wants little to nothing to do with COs other than to make sure there is a signature and maybe try and meet with them once a year. These COs want nothing to do with complicated issues like financial review, background checks, etc. They see their roles as giving us space, a smile and a signature. And this is the inherent conflict of interest, because by rights the council should be closing down these units but they won't because it would affect membership. Not that I want my unit closed down, but this sense of outrage towards COs is misplaced. We need a different model.

I think overmuch is made of religion in scouting. It certainly wasn't as big a deal in the original scouting books and was more along the lines of do your duty to God as you reflect on nature, do a good deed daily, etc. I am of the opinion that atheists who aspire to be of good moral character, evidenced by joining organizations like scouting, without any real belief in the final judgments of a higher being, are probably actually purer of heart than the rest of us lol.

When I was a kid, thanks to how I grew up, I felt pretty confident in my ability to handle a lot of stuff. I was also around a lot of adults who engaged in what today would be termed risky behavior. However, their overall competence level was such that I never felt much at risk. Today, I look at a lot of the adults around and very few seem to have common sense of the variety that was developed based on either street smarts, outdoor living, rural living, whatever. The exception is people who come here from other places, or maybe live in some of the few places where life is still a little bit more consequential. BSA is trying to train life skills into people of all stripes over a few weekends. Much as we might like, I don't think we can set the clock back, and that's why we have inconvenient things like GTSS. You in particular might be completely competent to oversee throwback Thursdays but many are not.

Cubs are totally capable of having input into menu planning and cooking and in fact increasingly so as they near AOL. Having some experience under adult supervision of knowing how to safely handle and properly cook food can prevent some of those miserable weekends when they get dumped into a patrol. It also makes it more fun for them and they are more likely to eat what is there. Food issues are becoming more problematic and BSA has issued little useful guidance. It doesn't help that so much of the program revolves around food or requires group cooking. One way of handling it as noted is to require the parent to attend and for the scout to bring their own food. However, this also kind of isolates the scout and prevents the rest of the pack/troop from really comprehending the issues. There are also a lot of adults who are more interested in practically doing a game day tailgate party in the woods vs. doing things light and lean. I get that it's their jam, but it shouldn't get too much in the way of making sure the kids get a meal they can make and eat and not have to spend a lot of time on. Unless, of course, that's what the scouts want to do.

You could also let the cubs plan their own menu to avoid starvation. If the adults want something more interesting, they can always cook their own pot.

That song, sung at the wrong time, can negatively affect recruitment.

Interesting. I was involved in a lawsuit in another organization where the organization's policies were not clear. I think you have some modicum of protection, regardless of national policies or lack of clarity, if you clearly make it a well publicized policy of your own local chapter(unit) to require any adult involved with youth to complete YPT before participating in any local unit event or they will be asked to leave.

I don't think the ongoing problems result from non YPT random adults. I think it's due to artifacts of our dysfunctional organizational structure. There is another discussion taking place right now about scouts not knowing how to speak up against adults. It's not just kids, it's a lot of adults too. Our top down, hierarchical structure inherently protects or at least allows room to operate to those who want to do the wrong thing.

The communications dysfunction is a symptom of the overall organizational dysfunction. Most organizations today take communications seriously and can very proactively and quickly disseminate information throughout the ranks. I'm sure part of the problem with us is due to the volunteer nature of so many roles but in reality this is something that leadership in a functional organization would account for and figure out a way to manage. I don't know that Mosby is going to have the most innovative solutions to problems like these but at least he seems to have some background in change management. My fear is that he is going to be focused pretty exclusively on high level issues that really won't result in much improvement for people working at the unit level, or at least not for some time, and that things could get even bumpier for awhile. It is concerning that despite his being weeks on the job, we have yet to have any kind of universal direct message from him other than his announcement. It feels like units aren't even on the radar.

It was a good read. Thanks for the recommendation. I'm now reading Baden Powell: Founder of the Boy Scouts, by Jeal. I'm only about a third in, and while I'm not totally surprised because I've read some excerpts, the book is disconcerting. The Butler book made me think about what kind of connection the author was trying to make between scouts, damaged military men, and broken people.

In our area, the reason scouts "Eagle and Out" is largely because they are busy on the college prep treadmill and move on to other things. I don't know how you counter that. I've been involved in scouts for 15 years and every year it seems like parents are pushing their kids to earn Eagle at younger and younger ages so that they can be "done" and have more time to focus on high school course work and other college relevant extra curricular activities. Also, by Eagle, some kids are just burned out on it, especially those kids who have been pushed by parents.

One interesting thing is that I don't know of any other non-military youth related organization where the volunteers or adult leaders ever earn and wear regalia that reflects on their own achievements, or if they do, it is a very small or subtle emblem. This is one of those things that seems very unique to scouting. I know a lot of people really like the bling but I've never been totally comfortable with it. When scouts and leaders are in a room, I want to be impressed by the scout uniforms, not the adults.

The operative statement in the BSA hiring announcement is that Mosby increased the number of employees in Kinder Morgan from 175 to 11,000. It's likely no accident that is particularly mentioned, and I would say it is a clue that National is looking to him to market BSA and grow membership in order to improve revenue. Which probably means he will not be necessarily focused on many of the unit level issues that have been raised here in this forum. However, hope springs eternal that a new leader, especially one with some outside corporate experience, will bring new ways that are good for scouting.

Off the top of my head, some of the most famous would likely revolve around Bonnie Prince Charlie and Culloden. He was a spectacular failure and a traitor but still revered by some. Napoleon Bonaparte. Chief Tecumseh, who was a traitor to the US but not his people. Anywhere where there have been regional conflicts and civil war, like many parts of Europe, there are monuments to local heroes who were in fact considered traitors at one point or another. Interestingly, one of the most famous statues to survive a hostile regime is the statue of Nicholas I in St. Petersberg. We all know how much the Soviets hated the tsars but thankfully they saved that one. It's one of the most famous equestrian statues in the world because of an innovation in its design, which is how I got into this whole fit over statues being torn down. My interest in old Stonewall and Lee is driven by interest not so much in them but in the horses they rode. Lee's horse, Traveller, is generally considered to be one of the greatest war horses of all time, up there with Napoleon's Marengo. Napoleon is another general whose statues and memorials were also torn down after Waterloo and his banishment, although a few survive. I am really sorry, though, if my personal interests got this board off on an tangent. I realize this has nothing much to do with scouting and the original post and I'm going to stop now on this topic.

These works are beautiful representations of public art that are a snap shot of a historical moment and help tell the history of the time they represent. It is shameful and ignorant that anyone should suggest their destruction, removal or denigration. This doesn't happen in many other countries, just the idiotic United States and Iran apparently. Historical monuments of different viewpoints and eras in history are deserving of preservation and protection.

That's fair. However, without flawed people like Washington, who led atrocities in the French and Indian War, or Jefferson, who owned slaves, or Lincoln, who was not the color blind leader we all like to paint him as, our country would not exist. If we did not exist, what would we be?

And sorry, I forgot to wrap up: It is also not scout like. We look a thing in the eye, and call it for what it is.

Baden Powell was also an avowed fascist. He admired Hitler's youth movement and called Mein Kampf a "wonderful book". Winston Churchill hated Hindus and Palestinians and wanted to use poison gas against rebellious native indigenous populations. His stalwart defense of Britain helped stem the tide of WWII, but it was based on his vision of the preservation of the British empire. FDR opposed anti lynching bills and put Japanese Americans in concentration camps. LBJ is credited with language so racist and disgusting that it's hard to read modern day despite the fact that's he's credited with some of the greatest Civil Rights advancements of our time. Although he's credited with changing his stripes, Harry Truman was remarkably racist. So, too, Woodrow Wilson, the founder of the League of Nations, the progenitor of the United Nations. McClellan, a Union general, fought for the Union but supported slavery and opposed abolition. Former president Jimmy Carter praised a lifelong segregationist, Lester Maddox. Charles de Gaulle. Ronald Reagan. Eisenhower. All guilty of racist comments based on modern day standards. I am not trying to argue fine points of history, my argument is that people are a product of their time, and we need to look at them through that lens. Scrubbing monuments and parks and streets and buildings of names that give some indication of that relevant history is just "feel good" PC activism and is totally anti-intellectual and anti history.

Navybone, it is completely about erasing history. Or, if you prefer, editing it. Lee made war upon "armed men" only. Sherman burned to the ground and made war on women and children -- his helpless countrymen who were victims of where they were born or what side their menfolk chose. Lee lost the war. Sherman won. Sherman did reprehensible things, but his cause was just. Lee was a gentleman, but fighting for a horrific cause. Under your litmus test, there are few American historical figures worthy of emulation or celebration because they were all products of their time and all did things today we would consider abhorrent. And I'll leave you with this. Baden Powell was an acknowledged racist. Should we strike his name from scout history?

You've got to be careful here, because there are a lot of folks who are unhappy with anything named for such well known slaveholders as Washington and Jefferson. All of our historical founding fathers were cultural elitists. All of them also relegated women to second class status. Depending on circumstance, Lincoln himself made many racist pronouncements in contrast to his more revered and well known comments on emancipation. These people were products of their time. At the time of the Revolution, our founding fathers were considered traitors to King and country. They defied an Imperial power which had outlawed slavery on British soil in 1772 and then in its colonies in the early 1800s. History is complex, grey, and is best understood with all of its glories and warts in place. There were no traitors after the Civil War in the eyes of the Union. All Confederate soldiers and leaders were paroled and none were jailed or executed for treason. The point of that was to unite the country and move it forward. Stonewall Jackson was probably one of the more colorful military figures in U.S. history and a well regarded military tactician. We study Greek generals, we study Roman generals, we don't scrub their names from history or from monuments. Our history here is so short and so sadly politicized, but in Europe or Asia where the formal histories of a region have much longer memories, there are plenty of place names and monuments to historical figures and events that would be their version of a Stonewall Jackson. And just to be clear, I find slavery reprehensible, I am not a Southern apologist or whatever the word would be, I just don't agree with this current fad of trying to erase history.

Very good information. Thank you. In my part of the world there are many abandoned lines that have been turned into hiking trails but the old rails still cross the roads. Lulls you into non observance.

I think this more geared to the idea that girls are often forced by relatives to be more affectionate than boys. However it is a good reminder that if a kid of either gender really doesn't want to hug someone, it shouldn't be forced. I can't fault the GS for doing this and it's in line with their mission of supporting girls, which is something positive linked to their organization. Imagine how great it would be if BSA sent out a press release around Memorial Day, Flag Day, or July 4 reminding people that scouts are one of the few organizations charged with the solemn task of properly retiring flags. Or heaven forbid, if we sold BSA branded US flags once a year instead of popcorn. At least GSUSA is attempting to garner some positive, national publicity for themselves. More than BSA is doing.

You are really dedicated to your kids and thanks for all that you are putting in.

We have probably all blasted over tracks that looked empty or dormant and may not have been. There are so many abandoned tracks around that unless there is obvious signage it's easy to see how an out of area driver might not have realized it was an active rail bed. Where I live, there are ungated crossings, but they are utilized by sporadic freight trains that don't go that fast. Another tragic reminder to stay focused on the road, especially with kids in the car.