CalicoPenn

I had to think about this for a bit and have decided my take is that it's a non-starter - and not because drinking is bad, or alcohol is evil, or some other prudish reason for rejecting it. I am a big believer in "life long learning". If we offer every possible experience as a merit badge to Boy Scouts, what's left for adulthood? Since the drinking age is 21 anyway, why not leave things like brewing, wine making, and spirit making as continuing ed type classes for those over 21, when they can legally enjoy the fruits of their labors. After 16+ years of school, most young folk are "done with learning" but what 27 year old hipster wouldn't jump at the chance to learn how to brew their own beer? Maybe one who learned how to do it as a 14 year old Scout.

I wonder if it seems odd because most of us really don't know what the YWCA is, what they do, or what their history really is. Like a lot of groups, most of us think we know about them because of the things we've heard, or read in a newspaper article, or seen in the popular media (movies, TV, etc) but we don't really know enough about them to truly know what they are or what they do. I would extend that to most groups - unless your in it, you just don't really know. Those of us in Boy Scouting know what its about and we get frustrated when we read things about Scouting that don't match what we know is true. I would suggest the same holds for the YWCA, or the YMCA (how many of us still think of the YMCA as a place for men to get a room with a shared shower at the end of the hall?), or the Lions Club, or Kiwanis, or the Moose or Elks? We know a little bit about these groups, so when we we see a banner on a YWCA building that says "We Fight Racism" which is something we don't associate with them, we find it odd. The YWCA's mission statement is: "YWCA is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and diginity for all". Knowing the mission statement, that banner starts to seem less odd. Reading through their history, seeing them creating the first boarding house for African American women in the 1880's and seeing that they've been involved with civil rights for blacks and other minorities almost from the beginning, that banner seems even less odd. The YWCA has always been a resource for unwed mothers - and they still are (though of course, now we call them single-parent househoulds and single mothers) and I'm not sure we need to have "sanctuaries" for single moms these days but many chapters do have sanctuaries for battered women. The YWCA has also always been pro-choice, and pro-choice in the true sense of the term. If a woman wants to keep her child, they'll help figure out a way to make that happen. If a woman wants to terminate her pregnancy, the YWCA will support them in that in a non-judgemental way. They just don't judge a woman's choice - and somehow that's made out to be a bad thing by certain groups that love to make a lot of noise and wave banners announcing that the YWCA and the Girl Scouts support Planned Parenthood because those groups think Planned Parenthood is at the apex of a mountain of evil. I know when I've "been told" that some group doesn't accept people because of their views, I like to research it a bit before believing it so I did a bit of research and the only thing I could find was an employee of the Greater Cincinnati YWCA who was fired 2 days after a program given by an anti-abortion speaker, which she had put together. I'll certainly admit that the timing sure does seem strange, yet at the same time, if that was something endemic throughout the organization, you would think you would see more of it, and of course since it's an employment issue, the YWCA's hands are tied when it comes to being able to comment on the termination and since the woman who was terminated apparently never made a legal issue out of it where what really happened would have become a matter of public record, she can repeat her story that she was let go because she was anti-abortion and the YWCA is stuck saying "it is an internal matter and privacy laws prevent us from commenting". Might it have had something to do with the speaker? Maybe - but there may have been other issues that we'll never know about that could have been the issue. I guess I just need to see much more evidence of it than this one incident which is being exploited by groups with their own agendas.

The PLC sets troop meeting, COH and activity scheduling. Since we elect PL's and the SPL 2 times per year, the PLC puts together a 6 month plan for meeting and activities, except for Summer Camp, which is selected in the fall, so that each PLC has an opportunity to put their own stamp on the Troop's program. We do overlap so that the first month of the new PLC's troop meetings were planned by the prior PLC and the first two months of activities were planned by the prior PLC to make sure reservations and driving arrangements are covered without any last minute scrambles. When the PLC has completed their planning, the SPL presents the plan to the committee, not for approval, but to give the Committee time to do their part in the work (making sure that there are drivers, making reservations (in most cases, reservations for campsites, etc. can only be made by adults - that's even true for our council's camps), etc.). The Scribe maintains the calendar, and the Troop contact list - the Scibe e-mails reminders of Troop activities to the Scouts and their parents - for those folks without e-mail, the Scribe will either call or will mail a postcard or letter. We include the parents in these e-mails so that no one can accuse us of being secretive - it's cut down the complaints about Scouts not sharing with their parents to almost zero. If the SPL wants to send out an all-troop e-mail, he e-mails it to the Scribe to send out on his behalf. Patrol Leaders are responsible for any patrol related communications to his patrol - same rule, must be sent to the boys and their parents with a copy to the SPL and SM, just so they know what's going on in their patrols. We've asked that texting not be used for announcements and patrol wide reminders but suggest that it be used for minor communications like a text to a Scout to remember to bring their book to the meeting, or to check with the grubmaster before the camping trip if he remembered to buy butter. This seems to work out for us.

This same sentiment has been expressed throughout US History and yet the US still perserveres. When the first president was elected that could not be said to be a founding father, the Golden Age of America passed. When Lincoln was elected president, the Golden Age of America passed. When the great depression of the late 1800's happened, the Golden Age of America passed. When the Great Depression of the 1930's started, the Golden Age of America passed. When JFK was elected president, the Golden Age of America passed. How many "Golden Ages" can we have? In 30-40 years, the Millenials will be looking on at what is happening in the post millenial generation and be declaring that the Golden Age of America has passed. That's the thing about golden ages - there will never be universal agreement of when the US has had its golden age - those in the older generations are likely to believe that the golden age of the USA was the period when they were in their late teens to mid 40's while the generation that is living through their teens, 20's and 30's now are thinking that now is the golden age - and I suspect that, in some future time, when the geopolitics of the world has completely changed, that historians will look at the entire time period of the United States and declare that all 500...800...1500 (whatever that number might be) years of it's existence was a golden age in its entirety.

Send it to I&P. Natural Law has nothing, nada, zip, bupkis to do with "moral sexual behavior" and to insinuate that a 9 year old girl trapped in a boy's body is somehow engaged in sexual behavior of any kind simply because she recognizes that she is a girl and not a boy is as immoral as one can get.

I can respect that opinion.

Ok, Pack. You asked for it. In Euclidean geometry, we take it as truth that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180. Under Einstein's Theory of Relativity, the interior angle of a triangle composed of three rays of light do not, in general, add up to 180 due to gravity. And no, I can't actually explain the physics behind that. I flunked high school chemistry because every time the teacher tried to explain mols to me, I couldn't stop thinking about moles since I'm far more interested in the biological sciences than in chemistry and physics. Oh, and yes, the moon is moving but the point is that no matter how much it moves, the distance between the moon and the earth will still be the same measurement no matter where in the universe you are.

Was with my Troop on a backpacking trip around Isle Royale in Michigan. The weather was pretty mild as one would expect on an island in Lake Superior but the weather turned hot on day 4 with night time temps remaining well into the 80s. I have never done heat very well, not even when I was a fit and trim teen so I laid on my bedroll sweating the night away. About 5 am, I started dreaming that my dog was licking my face - at least I thought it was my dog until my Scoutmaster hissed at me not to move - I opened my eyes to find a red fox standing on my chest licking the salt off my forehead. Good times.

At one time, we considered the principles in Euclidean geometry to be absolute truths because Euclidean geometry was pretty much the only system of geometry we knew. The general public mostly still believes them to be absolute truths because in general, we aren't very good at updating curriculum and most people zip right past newspaper and magazine articles about developments in science and math unless its a heavily hyped article with a headline like "Oatmeal Causes Cancer" or the inevitable follow up "Oatmeal Cures Cancer". Most mathmaticians no longer consider them absolute truths because we have new systems of geometry that are challenging what we know about the math. Einstein's e-mc squared changed the world, and geometry was one of those things it changed. While we may still accept those principles as true, we do so to the best of our knowledge (though that has changed), not because it's universally true. I don't believe all truth's are relative. Those truths that we believe are true to the best of our knowledge are certainly relative - something may come along, maybe long after we have passed on, that will blow those truths apart. There are some truths that are absolute - my example of the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, for example - nothing will come to change that, except perhaps the destruction of one or the other, but if that happens, then it really doesn't matter what is and isn't true. Morals, however, are relative. I tend to chuckle when someone tries to argue that moral relativism is somehow bad. Moral Relativism in not inherently bad because all morals are relative. They're relative to our collective understanding, they're relative to out time, they're relative to differing cultures. For the most part, we all tend to share most of the same morals - ask anyone if murder is ok, and they'll say no. Ask anyone if stealing is ok, and most of us will say no - though if you ask anyone if it's ok for the police department or fire department to break into a grocery store to gather food and water for people after a massive natural (or other) disaster, most would probably say that's ok, even though it's still technically stealing (moral relativism in action). Where we get conflict is where our collective ideas of what is moral and what is not moral starts to change to a significant degree - and those changes tend to take a long time. The founding fathers argued about whether slavery should be allowed even as it was being codified in the Constitution - there were already arguments over the morality of slavery back in the late 1700's - it took a few decades to reach a critical mass for a mjor conflict to break out over slavery. It took decades for the folks who believed alcohol was immoral to get prohibition passed. It took decades to pass an amendment giving the right of women to vote, something many had a moral objection to. It took decades for civil rights laws to be passed. Think Gay Marriage and Gay Civil Rights are something new? These things have been fought over since the 1950's. We can hope that something like murder will always be considered immoral. A look at popular culture - from movies like Soylent Green to Death Race to the 2013 movie The Purge set in a future US where one night a year all crime, including Murder, is sanctioned as a way to control population growth and stengthen the economy should remind us that even while we think something like murder if immoral is an absolute truth, we can imagine a society where it is not.

There are no moral facts therefore there are no moral truths, there are only opinions about morality and current acceptance of those opinions, which is changeable. Is killing moral? (I'm staying away from murder is a legal concept which makes it a subset of killing - and frankly, if one thinks murder is immoral, then how can one argue that killing might not be?). Most of us would say no - but most of us would have exceptions. It's not moral to kill someone else, but many support the death penalty so therefore it must be moral to kill someone else some of the time. There are too many contradictions to say that killing someone is immoral is a fact. Opinions are not fact - they can be based on fact - but they aren't, in and of themselves, fact. It's just as likely that an opinion is not fact. For instance, say you have a 2,000 lb lead bar at your feet. You can make a factual statement that it is a 2,000 pound lead bar. You can also say it is your opinion that it is a 2,000 lb lead bar and that opinion will seem like fact. But, you could say that it is your opinion that it is a 2,000 lb copper bar. We know it's a lead bar, so the statement of opinion can't be fact. Truth and Fact are not the same either. Everything that is true in also a fact. But not everything that is a fact is also true. Let's look at that lead bar again. We accept that it is a fact that a 2,000 pound lead bar weighs 2,000 pounds. But is it true that the 2,000 lead bar is a 2,000 lead bar? The answer is no. Why is it not true? Because truth is universal. For something to be true and to remain true, it needs to be true everywhere. Move that 2,000 pound bar to Sweden, it's still a fact that the bar weighs 2,000 pounds. Move the bar to the moon though, and it now weighs 16.6% of what it weighed on earth, or 332 pounds. On earth, it's a fact that the bar weighs 2,000 pounds and on the moon, it's a fact that the bar weighs 332 pounds. Since we're talking about the same object in two different places with two different facts, it is not also true that the bar weighs 2,000 pounds. It can't be true because it weighs something completely different on the moon - it's not a universal fact. So what would be true? A universal fact is true. Example - the average distance between the moon and the Earth is 238,857 miles. No matter where you go, Australia, the moon, Venus, Pluto, the edge of the Milky Way, the edge of the Universe, the average distance between the moon and the earth doesn't change - it's still 238,857 miles. That is a universal fact, and that therefore makes it a truth. Can the distance between the moon and earth change? Sure - but if it changes for the Earth, it changes for everywhere else as well. Is it true that murder is immoral? No, because we don't know if that would be a universal fact. We hold it to be true to the best of our knowledge, but since our knowledge of the rest of the universe is limited, we just don't know if there is a civilization out there that might believe murder is acceptable and moral. For right now, the best we can do is to say that mankind currently holds that certain things are moral and certain things are immoral knowing and accepting that throughout history mankind's opinion on just what those things are have changed (we don't have to look back much beyond 150 years to see this - at one time, many people in the US held that slavery was moral - we no longer do) and accept and understand that change continues to happen and we can't stop it, no matter how much we might want to.

Vatican City, which is also considered an independent country, does not have a Scouting movement either so they should be added to the list. There are also 19 other soverign countries that have scouting programs that are not part of WOSM; Afghanistan - Afghanistan Scout Association Albania - Scouting and Guiding in Albania. In 2014, the membership of Beslidhja Skaut Albania was terminated by WOSM with hopes to establish a new National Scouting Organization.[5] Central African Republic - Fédération du scoutisme centrafricain Republic of the Congo - Association des Scouts et Guides du Congo Djibouti - Association des Scouts de Djibouti East Timor - União Nacional dos Escuteiros de Timor Leste Equatorial Guinea - Scouting in Equatorial Guinea Eritrea - National Scout Association of Eritrea Guinea-Bissau - Corpo Nacional de Escutas da Guiné-Bissau Iran - Iran Scout Organization Iraq - Iraq Boy Scouts and Girl Guides Council Kyrgyzstan - Scouting in Kyrgyzstan Mali - Scouting in Mali Samoa - Scouting in Samoa São Tomé and Príncipe - Associação dos Escuteiros de São Tomé e Príncipe Somalia - Scouting in Somalia Turkmenistan - Scouting in Turkmenistan Uzbekistan - Scouting in Uzbekistan Vietnam - Vietnamese Scout Association

HC (historically correct) not PC, which leads to grumpiness. We can't blame the scout camps or scouting for the historical inaccuracies - we need to look to the 1800's for that. While some of the blame can be laid at the feet of Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West shows bringing folks on the east coast their first real life encounters with plains indians, it's not all him either. Some of the blame might be laid at good ol' Abe Lincoln's feet, since his Transcontinental Railroad (pushed for and started under the Lincoln administration) helped open the west to tourism. Some of the blame has to go to the reporters of the time that traveled around sending dispatches to their home offices from the west, with their vivid descriptions of the Indians of the plains, and of the illustrators that did the same thing. That said, Scouting has not done a very good job of maintaining historical accuracy. Look at pictures of OA ceremonies - the vast majority show the Chiefs dressed in Plains Indian, and specifically Sioux-style, warbonnets. The legend suggests the Order is closely tied to the Lenape, who never wore these headdresses, yet, with the exception of a few Lodges, most wear Sioux warbonnets. Can we do better? Maybe - but it's going to be hard to reverse the images of teepees, totem poles and plains warbonnets that have been ingrained through media and tourism for over 150 years. Anyone who followed the fight over University of Illinois's Chief Illiniwek portrayal, in his Sioux-style warbonnet, looking like almost every Allowat Sakima out there, goose stepping around the field with his arms crossed in front of his chest, can tell you how hard it is to convince people that historically inaccurate portrayals are not doing a service to the Native Americans you are claiming you're honoring. The Illini (and the University teams are known as the Fighting Illini) controlled most of the territory we now know as Illinois - and they did not wear warbonnets. The fact is that the US is just bad at getting history right - talk to someone about the fur trade in the Northwest Territories and they'll more often than not be thinking of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and Washington and not Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota which is where people like Astor really made their wealth from furtrapping.

Wow - I wonder what you would post if I wasn't agreeing with you. Or was I wrong to suggest that you were saying to let the Scout Law be our guide on the approriateness of making Scouts sing for their possessions, or snatching hats off of people's heads, etc? If folks want to argue that making a Scout sing for their possessions is courteous, kind, helpful or friendly, I'm all ears.

Eagledad's on to something here - measure the actions by the Scout Law. Is making someone sing for a lost item Helpful? Friendly? Courteous? KIND??? Is snatching the hat off another person's head Trustworthy? Helpful? Friendly? Courteous? Kind? Is sending a Scout out for a rope stretcher or a left handed right footed smoke bender Kind? My vote? No. And if someone tries to do any of those things to one of my Scouts, they'll find out very quickly just what Loyal means.

It is published in the Lancet, one of the premier medical journals in the world. It's been peer reviewed - or it wouldn't have been published in the Lancet.

Not sure that it's kids growing faster than ever - it might be that we're growing older faster than ever and have forgotten our own growth spurts.

So what are you doing about this? Are you just throwing up your hands and saying "there is nothing I can do" and using it as an excuse to say if it's ok for the OA to do it, it's ok for us to do it? Or will you take the next step, having identified an example of what very well might qualify as hazing under the BSA policy, and send the Lodge Advisors (both staff and volunteer) and the Scout Executive a letter or e-mail expressing your concern about this practice and asking them to end it immediately? That ball is in your court.

Are you saying there is no difference between deliberately embarrasing a Scout and a Scout becoming embarrassed inadvertently? I know you've used the swimming test example - in most of the units I've ever been involved with, the Scouts know who the non-swimmers are - and if any Scout teases a non-swimmer, the rest of the Scouts get on his case pretty quickly about it. If a Scout is a known non-swimmer, or is afraid of lake water and doesn't want to take the test, we automatically classify them as a non-swimmer - no one forces them to take the swim test - and no one singles them out for not taking it. If there are Scouts in your unit that are teasing the non-swimmer, then your job is to put a stop to it immediately. I'll tell you here and now, I will remove anyone from my unit who teases another Scout in my unit, or in any other unit - even the Eagle-candidate SPL working on his Project that has been "Mr. Scout" without another thought. If the Adult Leaders enforce a zero-tolerance policy towards hazing and teasing, the Scouts pick up on that pretty quickly and will quickly adopt it as their own. We can't eliminate all embarrassment, but we can certainly eliminate all deliberately embarrasing a Scout and can certainly minimize inadvertant embarrassment by being more sensitive to the Scout's needs and inculcating that attitude in our units. If we're to train up these lads to become the best kind of citizen, then part of that training should include not judging another Scout or person for a choice they're making that the other's aren't - to make, for instance, the sight of the overweight Scout wearing a t-shirt at the waterfront because he's embarrassed by his belly a non-issue. We need to remind the older Scouts that we don't encourage the younger Scouts to try harder by catcalling them but by cheering them on, just as they were (or should have been) cheered on when they tried throwing that line over a tree branch and it took them 6 tries before they could do it.

Summer Camp - 1978 - the camp tradition was to have Scouts "sing" for lost items at dinner - third week in - second day of camp - first time in the session a Scout has mislaid an item - the Staffer held up the item, the Scout identified it, and the Staffer, following tradition, told him he had to sing for it - the Scout refused - the Staffer said he wouldn't be getting it back - the Scout's ASM got up, in front of the whole camp, flashed his police badge, and announced he was arresting the Staffer for possession of stolen goods. The next day a memo flew in from the Base Director - from then on, there would be no singing for lost items in any camp. The only people that missed that tradition were the knuckleheads who liked to see Scout's suffer humiliation. There are always going to be "adult" "leaders" in the Boy Scouts that believe that making a Scout sing for a lost item, or sending a Scout out for a left-handed smoke bender or on a snipe hunt is nothing but good clean fun, just as there will always be Fraternity Members that believe forcing a pledge to guzzle a gallon of beer, or parade around campus in their tighty-whiteys, or endure a round of paddling is nothing but good clean fun. It's not - it's hazing - plain and simple - don't even think about trying to claim that singing for a lost item is lesser than forcing the guzzling of alchohol - there are no degrees in hazing - it's all hazing. "Tradition" does not make it ok. "I had to do it when I was a Scout" does not make it ok. "The Scout's like it" does not make it ok - and is awfully hard to prove - ask a Scout who has just been humiliated or allowed to be humiliated by their "Adult" "Leaders" if they like it and I doubt that many would say "Yes, Sir - that was fun, can we do it again". My Scoutmaster tried to get me to go out hunting Snipe on my first camping trip - what he didn't know about me was that I was a birdwatcher and my father hunted upland game birds, of which Snipe is one - I informed him we couldn't have a snipe hunt because the season was closed - then I showed him a picture of a snipe in the bird book I always had with me in my pack. That was my last camping trip with that unit because they also did the owatagoosiam bit with us and initiated us by pretending to cut our leg at ankle height with the back of a sheath knife - the idiots did it in the dark and quickly slapped a bandage over it without actually looking - they accidentally used the sharp side with me which I found out a little later when I discovered, while getting ready for bed, that my bandage was wet and red - Ooops. My new unit had real adults as leaders - adults who didn't believe that humiliation and hazing was part of a sound learning practice and did not allow it in the unit. The message from the BSA can't be clearer - IT IS HAZING AND IT MUST NOT HAPPEN. The BSA doesn't care if you think it's harmless and fun - if you make an 11 year old sing for a lost item at camp and he tells Mom and Mom gets hacked off and calls the Council Office - the Scout Executive won't accept your "but it's just harmless fun" explanation as he voids your membership, tells your CO that you are no longer part of Scouting and can have no contact at all with the youth in their unit or in any other unit and you're left standing there wondering where you went wrong. We can argue in here all we want about whether it's just good clean fun or not but it doesn't matter because it is firmly against BSA policy.

How do Councils and Districts get away with it? I know it's convenient to blame the parents because the parents insist on these kinds of opportunities for the boys, but I don't blame the parents. I blame the volunteers that agree to act as MBC's at these events (looking at you Torchwood ). If those volunteers would follow Nancy Reagan's advice from the 1980's and just say no, then these events wouldn't taking place at all. The problem is, of course, that many of these volunteers are also parents that want these kinds of events so that their sons can earn merit badges quickly and conveniently.

THIS!!!! I can't think of any better way to improve the Blue Card than this - have the PL (though I would also include the SPL) be the person that signs when the Blue Card is issued. The SM can sign when it's completed and have their chat (how was the experience, etc.)

I can't seem to find anything in any BSA literature or BSA official websites that list the reasons a Scoutmaster can have for not signing a blue card. Not one mention anywhere that says the SM can prevent a Scout from working on any merit badge they want, or any amount of merit badges at one time that they want. I see nothing that says a SM can decide a Scout is too young, or has too many open blue cards, or who the Scout's MBC is going to be. I can find nothing in the literature that states a SM can refuse to sign a blue card. If a Scout comes to me with a blue card and has already started with a counselor, I'm going to ask how he found that person, and how that person is working for him. I may need to suggest that person to another Scout. I'm not going to petulantly decide I'm not going to sign the blue card because the Scout didn't come to me first. Seriously, if you're an SM and your ego is going to be that wounded because a Scout didn't think to bring you into the process at the start that you refuse to sign the blue card, then maybe you're just not cut out to be a Scoutmaster. We all know that the BSA is notorious for being inconsistent in their statements from one document to the next - heck, the BSA website on Merit Badges that was kindly linked to here contradicts itself on this very issue. The BSA is a game - the Scouts are the players - we are not the goalkeepers, the gatekeepers, the umpires or the referees. We're the coaches or the folks at the fork in the road encouraging the Scouts to take the correct fork, to give them the tools they need to play the game. It's really not our job to stop or pause the game unless there are serious issues of health and safety to be addressed.

Should we take this to mean that the parents are pressuring you to make sure the boys do these Eagle Scout-required badges at camp instead of hiking, backpacking, mountain biking and camping under the stars? Should we take this to mean that the parents are pressuring/coercing the unit leaders into doing merit badges as a unit instead of leaving it to the boys to handle it? I know what I would be doing - finding a unit that could use my skills and leadership to do it the right way. I would not be taking a week out of my life to go to summer camp to babysit a bunch of teenagers to make sure they earn those Eagle Scout merit badges. I would not be arranging for anyone to come in and do the merit badges as a Troop. I would not be doing anything with merit badges other than providing a Scout with a list of counselors and a blue card. It's the middle of April - if it were me, I would be having a meeting with the committee, advocating for the boys that would live to spend summer camp doing just what you told us they would love to do, insisting that the boys be allowed to do this or telling them to find someone else to accompany them to camp.

Let's look at the required merit badges for Eagle Scout: First Aid Citizenship in the Community Citizenship in the Nation Citizenship in the World Communication Cooking Personal Fitness Emergency Preparedness or Lifesaving Environmental Science or Sustainability Personal Management Swimming or Hiking or Cycling Camping Family Life Out of all of those merit badges, how many prepare Scouts with outdoor skills? My answer? One - Camping. Cooking does have some outdoor cooking involved but it also has indoor cooking involved as well. Hiking is really more about fitness than surviving in the outdoors. The sad state of affairs isn't that those Eagle Scouts that would die of starvation in the woods are Eagle Scouts - the sad state of affairs is that if those Eagle Scouts were so poorly served by their unit's delivery of the program, then so are/were all of that units First Class, Star and Life Scouts. The way Scouting is structured, the bulk of the outdoor skills learning is done by the time a Scout reaches First Class. If the Eagle Scout would have difficulty in the woods, it's either because he never learned his stuff before becoming First Class or his unit doesn't provide enough opportunities to continue to practice and learn. So, since I started this with a question of do we need required merit badges, and we're now 3 pages in, I'm going to change the question up so... If it's a given that Scouter's and perhaps the Public's perception of the Eagle Scout rank is that an Eagle Scout should be able to be dropped in the woods and essentially shrug it off as barely a challenge, within in the listing of required merit badges, what badges would you take out and what badges might you replace them with? I'd eliminate all of them except for Camping, Cooking, First Aid and Citizenship in the Community (since the consensus seems to be that we need at least one Citizenship - and since all politics is local and we should think globally act locally, and since at some point in most peoples schooling they'll be discussing in much more detail the things in Citizenship in the Nation, and will be fairly well exposed to Citizenship in the World concepts, we don't really need to repeat those). I'd add Wilderness Survival, Orienteering and Weather. The rest is just filler.

Can you be more specific this time on what, exactly, the CC is doing that is driving you to request advice here? You were pretty vague the first time around, and you're being pretty vague again. Not only vague, but speculative. Probably is not a word that suggests that you know for a fact that the CC is driving people away from the unit. Without any details, we might conclude that it's possible that the best solution would be for you to find a new unit more to your liking.