AwakeEnergyScouter

I will absolutely not be participating in this phenomenon. Facts exist and they matter, period. You ignore them at your own peril. Pretending that things are one way (pravda) when they are plainly another (istina) is the root of the rot that always ruins whatever our (Swedish perspective) only remaining enemy to the east does. Just look at Karelia, and inversely the Baltic countries now compared to USSR times. If you want things to work in your country, citizens need to know what is actually happening in it and how things work on a nuts and bolts causal level, not what some high-level politician wants to be true or wants you to pretend to be the case so they can defraud your state. I can't control other people, but I will absolutely not pretend that the sky is green because it's inconvenient to someone else that it's blue. I don't care how out of touch or elitist that might seem to other people, for me that is a basic act of patriotism and cultural identity. I am of a people that doesn't operate on parallel political and factual truths. One of our defining cultural traits is that we operate on factual truth only. This might sound a little harsh, and in a sense it is but it's not directed towards you. I just grew up knowing that I would be the target of political propaganda and that a country that did not wish us well was trying to convince citizens that they should give up resistance so that they could take over our country and suck all the resources out of it too, like they already have the territory they control. I've thought about the importance of seeking and confirming truth for a very long time, in several political time periods and in different countries with and without political censorship and repression. In addition, I have a religious obligation to never give up trying to see reality as it is in order to help other people. If you give up truth and respect for the equal intrinsic value and dignity of each human being, it doesn't matter how slick your talk is, it's all going to go sideways in the end. Convincing other of something is all fine and good, but what's the point if you don't make sure to be right first?

Mine is cub-age as well, and I didn't think anyone would bring up current events/politics during this adventure until I realized with some shock that my child's probably entire class discusses US politics and their opinions of parties and individual politicians on the regular, including speculating or sharing who their parents voted for in the 2024 election. (Before the election, it was "was going to vote for".) Evidently we had done a good job of not voicing our political opinions in front of them (thinking as you did, that the time was later and that we ought to start somewhere nuanced and thoughtful), because they came from from a sleepover last year and asked us to vote for a particular candidate because they didn't know who we were going to vote for. The kids at the sleepover had made a pact to get their parents to vote for that candidate! The young age at which they did this really took me aback. But then again, at the Webelos-AOL overnight camp our pack attended last summer a Webelos yelled out "To elect Trump!" as an answer to the question "what do we have an election for this fall?" during that same adventure. The answer the staffer was looking for, was, of course, "president". I don't know if this is typical or unusual, but wanted to pass on the experience in case it's more in the common side. I know we definitely weren't discussing politics when I was their age. But since they seem to be, I wanted to prevent political shout-outs like the one we saw at camp. When it comes to reliable media, everyone has offered good observations already, but I wanted to add a general strategy for cross-checking and/or finding higher-quality reporting: public service media. It's never behind a paywall, and since the funding doesn't depend on advertising and the mission is explicitly to educate and inform their citizenry the quality is much higher than many private media these days. In Swedish public media, I regularly see reporting that forces politicians and civil servants to take action to fix problems, such as that 2/3 of the train delays in a certain region was due to the same five malfunctioning switches that had been due for exchange for years. Poof, those switches got exchanged real quick once that reporting was published because who wants to seem incompetent? If you only speak English, your options are more limited, but the BBC is excellent. France 24 also publishes news in English, as does Deutsche Welle. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also publish public service news in English. https://www.bbc.com/news https://www.france24.com/en/ https://www.dw.com/en/top-stories/s-9097 https://www.cbc.ca/news https://www.abc.net.au/news https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world

I just scheduled the "talk with an elected official about whether they were elected using majority or plurality voting and why" requirement of My Community, and decided to add this to the invite. "Note about scouting and politics: The scouting movement is nonpolitical in that in our roles as scouts and scouters in uniform, we do not express support for any particular political candidate in any particular place. We are a civic movement that recognizes the inviolable human dignity of each human being, freedom of thought, religion, assembly, and expression; democracy, equal rights under the law for everyone, rule of law, and human rights. We encourage our members to take an active role in creating a harmonious society that is consistent with our value foundation, but also encourage each member to reach their own conclusion regarding which political candidates have the best suggestions for how to do that in the country in which they live, consistent with freedom of thought. Given that we have over 50 million members worldwide, our fellow scouts and scouters are almost guaranteed to be mixed political company, but actively voicing support for the importance of human dignity, civic freedoms, democracy, equal rights, rule of law, and human rights is not considered political as far as the scouting movement goes, even if they are contested in a country with a scouting organization." I also agree that advising youth on not getting their news from social media is a good idea. "I read it on the Internet so it must be true" is the new "I saw it on TV so it must be true". Being able to evaluate the source of information and knowing how to cross-check it is a key skill in an information society.

Ki ki so so!

I actually found it pretty easy, but I also have a professional background as a project manager as well as with running operations and quality control and went into the course clear on why I am a Scouting America leader and how that connects to my personal values and spiritual path. Defining the vision and writing some SMART goals to support it was just codifying my long-term to do list. Helpful to get the prompt, especially since we could sit down and coordinate - I could cut several things off my list because my CC is doing them instead. As always, I am fulfilling my vows, in the case of Scouting America the Mahayana stage vows being the most relevant. (Bodhisattva and Enlightened Society vows, so to liberate all sentient beings and to always stay in touch with the primordial nature of all sentient beings and build a society based on the view that all beings have indestructible dignity and intrinsic value) Meeting the dralas - in the case of scouting activities, the land spirits especially - is a key part of discovering sacredness and one's own primordial nature. Your face before your parents were born, as the Zen folks say. There's solid reasons for why BP used the outdoors as a feedback mechanism for development. So in order to connect youth with sacredness, themselves, and the land, our outdoor program needs to be well-executed and easy to operate for a rotation of leaders coming and going. Based on previous observations of what's worked well and what hasn't, combined with the need to continually welcome parents in as new leaders, I intend to lay the groundwork for a long-term sustainable outdoor program for our pack by: * Creating a veg-friendly pack cookbook with all the the "hooks" for the new cub scout program requirements that pertain to cooking - met someone at IOLS a few weeks ago who had the exact problem beyond my own that I wanted to solve, namely omni leader with vegan scout whose parents weren't that helpful or experienced with camp cooking so that was a win * Creating a field manual for running our hiking club, including the necessary modifications to meet all the new required hiking adventure requirements as well as provisions for at least occasionally completing the related ones like Math on the Trail and Tech on the Trail (currently I am running the whole thing, but will have to transition it to someone else during next scouting year or it will die when my cub crosses over) * Create a field manual for running our campouts that likewise delivers opportunities to earn all the Let's Camp adventures plus Outdoor Adventurer every campout, and is easily adaptable to complete other outdoor adventures (hiking, fishing, Into the Woods, Into the Wild, eating requirement for the personal fitness adventures, etc) that solidifies what parents and cubs appreciate the most about how we do campouts right now while also spreading the organizing burden as widely and fairly as possible * 5S our camping supplies to make it easy for an adult to make sure we have everything we need for every campout in a way that doesn't require tribal knowledge * Go recruit in five completely new places where we've never recruited before to get us out of our recruiting rut and reach people who may not have thought they'd be welcome in Scouting America and/or don't really know what we do We pack leaders spend so much of our mental energy on campouts on managing the physical that we don't always have the calm to model that connection to the sacred. We need to collectively just get a grip and sort it out so that we can have more transcendental moments with the grass, the touch of the wind, the kisses of the sun, the call of the water, all that. Ultimately, we need to maintain some degree of samadhi ourselves and raise windhorse fearlessly in order to offer our cubs what they need to develop, and we aren't doing that if we're running around like chickens with our heads cut off. May this be fruitful, may this be of benefit, may this be auspicious, my it be so 🙏🏼

The requirement isn't done, so the youth isn't due anything until it is. Therefore, there is no delay in receiving what is due because it isn't due yet. Downvote for explaining something factually and calmly? Noted. You're right, the Internet can be a hard mean place. That's why we scouts do better, right? May you also find happiness and contentment. I'm following swilliam's cue and sticking to my RL scouter friends for a while.

Take care of yourself. May you be well and happy, and may your scouts blossom into happy, healthy young adults as well.

As you can see, they were not. She was asking for help on manually marking off a partially completed requirement, that was the whole question.

Exactly! Adding to my satisfaction is that two of my fellow leaders went at the same time, so now we're working on improving how our unit runs at the same time. By the time our tickets are finished, we will have significantly improved operational efficiency and have incorporated all the new adventure requirements into the operations in a scalable, repeatable way. And now when we need something, we have contacts at council as well as other units. Much better situation to be volunteering from.

To me, the natural solution is for him to join the scout corps in Ecuador since that's where he lives now (https://scoutsecuador.org/) and then just come visit your troop whenever he's around as a social and networking visit. My troop had some foreign visitors like that, although mostly scouters. Some of my patrolmates had expatriated also, and joined in that case Scouts NZ while they were there. When they came back to Sweden, they brought scouting contacts with them. All part of the worldwide siblinghood of scouting. Your troop would be in an excellent position to earn the International Spirit Award! You would have an old scouting friend to visit, perhaps at an Ecuadorean camporee. You would have a much easier time planning cool high adventure in Ecuador with a local scouting friend to help. Lots of cool possibilities there!

I found my people! Now I can reach out to people in the area to talk about scouting instead of the Internet. I came here to connect with other scouters in the time that I have - the in between times and late nights. Now I can text people I know personally instead. I quite enjoyed WB, and would recommend. The brief format made it a great reminder of things I already knew, I learned a few new things, but above all I got plugged into engaged scouters nearby.

All, naturally, true, but I wanted to thank you @skeptic for causing me to read this particular section. Thinking of some recent conversations about acceptable cub squirreliness, I'm not crazy after all, and it's always good to know I'm not the only one who thinks simply meeting the sacred in nature develops spirituality 😃

Yes, yes, and yes, happening right now as we speak in the US and has been happening for literally over sixty years elsewhere. There is ample proof of concept here - this is a weak argument unless you have data showing that a large enough fraction of parents to cripple Scouting America as a whole refuse to send their children to youth activities that only have other children that are just like their child demographically. And even if you did, it's an argument pertaining to the goal of growing or maintaining Scouting America the organization as opposed to preparing youth to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law. And like DuctTape said, parents centering identity politics over a quality alternative learning program isn't really the fault of Scouting America. If the parents in your community can't stand doing things with people that aren't just like themselves in every way, then arguably they were never interested in scouting in the first place. We have always been a movement consisting of different "categories" of people - remember that Brownsea deliberately included scouts of different socioeconomic status. The current WOSM reference document The Essential Characteristics of Scouting starts with this BP quote that I'm sure you've heard before, in the context of Messengers of Peace if nothing else: The first paragraph reads Scouting isn't equally popular everywhere because our ideals aren't equally popular everywhere. But we don't compromise our values just because they're unpopular in some particular place. That's a key strength of our movement. The implied proposal you seem to be making is that while you agree that trans and cis kids are equally important and valuable, we should exclude the trans kids (and perhaps everyone else who isn't able-bodied, cishet, at least middle class, etc) anyway because the parents of the cis kids don't want their kids hanging out with trans kids. Is that correctly restated? Sorry to hear that your troop is having problems, but my unit has to my knowledge 100% straight cis kids and plenty of boys whose parents are happy to have them there, are happy to have them share a campsite with the girls, and wives of male leaders who don't have a problem with them going camping with us female leaders (and vice versa). (To be fair, I don't really care what their sexual orientation is and they're cubs so I could be wrong about that 100%, I'm not really seeking that information.) Heck, one of the probably straight cis boys who's having a hard time got a man to man emotional intelligence talk from one of the male leaders recently. We've had a good recruitment season and have now made up the losses we suffered after COVID. Are you sure that you're framing your unit's problems correctly in the first place?

The assumption is that boys and boy parents don't want to scout with girls. That's obviously not generally true (most scouting programs are fully coed, and I personally know boys and boy parents in Scouting America that want to scout with girls so it can't be the case that all the anti-girl scouts congregated in this NSO), so this claim needs quantification and justification to be taken seriously.

So, SO awkward though. And... doesn't feel true. The absolute vast majority of people are cis. Nobody - literally nobody - thinks that cis girls are boys, so how can they be boy scouts? The term is arguably unclear. I wasn't a boy scout as a youth. Any my male patrolmates weren't girl scouts. And we also weren't hermaphrodite scouts. We were all just scouts. What we were doing was way more important than what gender we were. Taking gender as the primary lens on life and then viewing scouting through it is a mistake. In a scouting context, make scouting the primary lens on life and leave gender to be one of many, many secondary characteristics of scouts. Gender is not the prism through which everything must be seen and understood.

I think we're all struggling with this. I have found myself saying and writing "cub scouts" more (for cub scouts, of course) whereas I used to just say "scouts" about them, and "the regular scouting program" about what is formally called Scouts BSA and trying to reserve "scouts" for those older youth. But I can see that my division of cub scouts being "extra" and Scouts BSA being the "regular" program isn't necessarily how others around me think about it so I don't know that I'd recommend that last bit. I suppose the way it used to be way back when cub scouts were wolf cubs and blue-winged butterflies makes it clear in that 'scout' isn't even in the name for those, but it would be a real bad idea to give up the US Cub Scouts brand when there's nothing particularly wrong with it. But, certainly, to me 'scouts' is the patrol-method-using thing above all else, so while it doesn't solve the problem directly I do think that adding that 'cub' for cub scouts can help with clarity.

This seems to be generally true. Once the rules start requiring gender segregation, suddenly you have an operational problem if you don't have a critical mass of girls (to be clear, we also care about and value the presence of boys in Scouting America units, but because it used to be the case that all units were 100% boys there are already a lot of boys in the organization such that best I can tell nobody is struggling to serve them), and it's hard to get that critical mass in one go. We had a scout in my unit be the only one who couldn't tent with another scout at Webelo-AOL "transition" summer camp and had to tent with a parent. That happened because of the genders of who happened to sign up from our unit as well as the added complexity for the camp to track and match gender in each campsite and operational den. The scout was promised a tentmate by the camp, and the scout was excited to meet them until the point close to bedtime that it became clear that they weren't coming. The camp had moved the pack with the other lone girl to another campsite and patrol without noticing that it broke the gender pairing. TBH I can't blame them. It's too much.

I agree completely, and wish I had a strong answer for that last question.

All the other data ring true, so my guess is that the abuse question data are also good. I have never seen an ad like that, but I'm also a cord-cutter, so I was never going to if they were only on TV. Online, we all experience very different ads, and parents who weren't in Scouts as youth obviously wouldn't be targeted by the lawyers, so... Maybe the TV ads weren't making as big an impression on parents of current youth as it might have seemed? I just realized yesterday while selling popcorn that at last some of the people who think we're selling cookies literally do not know that Scouting America exists. I thought they had scouting so gendered in their minds that girls in any kind of scouting uniform=Girl Scouts=cookies, but apparently I'm not just telling people who didn't know that girls can be Scouting America members but also telling people that we exist. That took me aback a little, and I was wondering if that was just those two people, but after watching this video it would seem that really is a problem. They don't think about us at all. That also explains why the boys also get asked if they're selling cookies. They don't think about us at all. I'm glad to hear what's in that presentation and it sounds like they get it. Relaunch the brand is exactly what's needed. People need to know who we are and what we do - accurately. I have had to explain to more than one prospective or new parent that one does not have to be a Christian to join Scouting America. The truth is that out of the people who know we exist, a lot of people have an inaccurately narrow view of whom scouting is for. That also needs fixing if we want to grow, and I'm so glad that they seem to realize that.

It seems that way to me as well. When I was a scout myself, I didn't even register a lot of the leadership training as such, because it was just something to deal with in order to go on epic adventures. Like I think a good number of folks have said repeatedly before here, the kids aren't signing up for leadership and character, it's what they get in the process of the sausagemaking. The kids want ADVENTURE. A Chief Scout that radiates cool suitably dangerous adventure is a great messenger for that reputation. I haven't surveyed all NSOs and MOs of course, but I don't think it's a coincidence that both Scouts UK and Scouterna are growing, are culturally "around", and are selling primarily outdoor adventure. When Scouts are mentioned in Swedish entertainment and news media, we're portrayed as fit, competent, and organized at survival skills. One match fire, all that jazz. We are always portrayed outside. I saw my now cub scout perk up when they saw that in children's shows. They're almost certainly not alone. When I see Scouting America portrayed in US media, it's mostly around civic/patriotic themes. That isn't bad, but it isn't alluring to the children the way outdoor adventure is. The parents probably like to see that, but becoming known in our local communities as the premier arranger of outdoor adventures for youth is probably strategically important if we want to magnetize kids. Now, a cool Chief Scout isn't the only way to create that reputation, of course. We scouters can talk up the adventure we're arranging to people in our communities. Our pack had a strategy discussion last year about leaning into outdoor adventure and (age-appropriate) responsibility for making it happen last year, and we're all heartened to see that the program bar for outdoor adventure has gone up to about where we wanted to put it. We're geared up to offer all the fishing adventures on both campouts and separate fishing trips this year so that we're offering camping, fishing, and hiking on a monthly basis. We need to beat REI and all the various get outdoors groups in terms of reputation as a great on-ramp to outdoor skills. We should be people's #1 choice for that.

Thanks for the reminder about stakes - I'll need the Texas summer tent the weekend before for a pack campout, so the gear and list check will be quite complete (I'll do the campout laundry and immediately re-pack it all, I figure), but we ended up leaving a lot of stakes behind last time we used it because I let the cub scouts use it as a hangout tent to get them some bonus practice with setting up and taking down a tent without adult help. They were less diligent in remembering the stakes it turned out! I need to replace them or I'll be sorry if there's any wind. Boots are broken in already. Camp chair is ready. Practicing scales and reminiscing over old scout songs now... See you on the trail!

Signed up for Woodbadge together with two other scouter friends from our pack. The course director is a commissioner who was formerly den leader and current pack parent, so I expect this to deepen existing friendships as well as build new ones. Can't wait to go. Just need to get that part C done and get a new tetanus shot...

I've got a field report on this potentially very good aspect of the new program. I'm sure more will roll in as we all execute it, but as Cubmaster of a pack with one particular den that's tiny and without a parent willing to step up to lead it I'm quite keen on seeing how I can lift some advancement into pack meetings as well as provide that tiny den with a quality program without overloading anyone. We tried doing the "vanilla" swimming adventures as a pack during our annual pool party, and it mostly worked well. In particular, the adventures are structured such that we basically dangle loops/pins as a reward for really engaging with Safe Swim Defense and executing the scout-tangible parts completely. We have never had such scout focus on swimming safety at that pool party! So, thumbs up on that part. However, the suggested activities that were worksheets were less engaging, shall we say. We got through it, but I can see that whoever wrote the Webelos swim defense worksheet didn't know some voodoo magic that I don't when it comes to making fun worksheets for kids. I think I will continue to try to come up with non-worksheet activities, but the success of the structure is perhaps more important. We also knocked out the cardio requirement of the personal fitness adventures at the first pack meeting. Super easy and fun for the scouts, all done at once. Thumbs up. In fact, if we do some more silent hiking in the hiking club, we can also move that requirement out of den meetings, leaving only 15 minutes of strength training for den meetings! (We made the health form reviews homework if families didn't do it when asked at the first pack meeting also.) We've knocked some of those out first thing before for multiple dens, and that was very hectic and crazy. This is much better.

I don't see youth with behavioral issues as being connected to nondiscrimination at all. They're not the same topic. Maybe this is a cultural thing. I thought that the US shared a value foundation with Sweden (and wider Europe) and thus also with Scouting, but perhaps some parts of the US do not? A whole bunch of you here seem to be framing "inclusiveness" in a way I've never heard or seen it framed before in my life. I didn't live in the US in the 90s, so I can't speak to what was happening here "on the ground" but I remember the 90s as the decade when LGBTQIA+ discrimination awareness went mainstream. Pride parades, support hotlines, special youth support at government activity centers, lots of media coverage about the suffering that the anti-LGBTQIA+ bullying caused, the increased suicide rates, all that was in the news a lot, and it triggered both near universal social acceptance of being LGBTQIA+ as well as legal changes (first registered partnership and then marriage equality). It seemed like a societal "oh, whoops, so sorry" moment. Since then, opposing LGBTQIA+ discrimination is among the most milquetoast social stands one could take - up there with opposing bullying of differently abled people and donating to Save the Children. I looked up some numbers on this to see if my perception might reasonably be shared by Swedes in general, and that is indeed the case. 94% of Swedes agree that LGBTQIA+ people should be accepted in society.1 Among supporters of the far-right populist party literally founded by a returning old Nazi after WWII, that support is very low at only 80%, not surprisingly since their whole outlook is centered on discriminating against almost everyone.1 Their supporters have made news by stealing a Pride flag off a flagpole and burning it, for example. These would also be the party getting Russian dark money, that had to institute a uniform ban at meetings, and whose now former leaders were photographed sieg heiling in brown uniforms at a secret training camp. Their members often defect to a party even further right that openly advocates for destroying democracy in favor of national socialism. I say all this to thoroughly explain my next point, which is that to me this is a straightforward, uncontroversial in mainstream society Duty to Country point to support full LGBTQIA+ rights and social inclusion. It's hardly just progressives who support it, it's all of mainstream society! The voices raised against it are the ones on the margins of society kicking up a stink about something for political purposes. The six EU values2 include equal rights and respect for the human dignity of all, so that's not exactly my personal interpretation, it's the standard interpretation in my cultural universe. Support for equal civil rights and social acceptance of all groups of people is a governance/strong civil institutions matter, opposed not to kicking disruptive kids out but being jailed, fired, or treated poorly for some detectable and unchangeable thing like appearance, gender, sexual orientation, disability, neurodivergence, etc. As such, related to freedom of speech, democracy, and in this serious security situation in Europe defending our values and our institutions from attempts at weakening them by a foreign power. The exclusion we're trying to avoid with inclusion is modelled on the other side of the eastern Finnish border, complete with the general effects on society of not having strong civil rights for individuals. They don't call us Gayrope for nothing - our support for liberal democracy is inextricable from our support for equal civil rights for all. They know that and we know that. And the reason this is so is the Holocaust. We Europeans took Niemöller to heart. If LGBTQIA+ rights aren't secured, how do I know mine are? Etc, etc. I have to come to help the first group targeted if there's to be anyone left to help me later, because there's always some just-so story explaining why such and such group is evil. And if you look - which I highly suggest that you do - you will find that WWII also changed some of BP's outlook, not surprisingly, given how the discovery of the death camps made a kink in European history in general. We no longer say that scouts are to follow directions unquestioningly, because of the Nuremberg Trials. We realized collectively that we didn't actually literally mean that, there was an unspoken context asterisk on that that we needed to verbalize and say clearly, and not just in scouts but in society at large. Brush your teeth without whining every night, but say NO when someone asks you to kill thousands of civilians for belonging to some ethnic or political group. We were always thinking about brushing your teeth and packing your own stuff when we said that, not genocide or agreeing to keep secrets about CSA. So now we clarify. I saw in the Pew Research study (1 below) that the US is quite the outlier when it comes to attitudes to LGBTQIA+ people among what we used to call Western countries during the Cold War, and that both age and being Christian makes people less accepting. I don't know where any of you live, but based on what Eagledad wrote, perhaps he and some others here live in a particular cultural bubble where you think of equal civil rights for all citizens very differently. I say bubble, because this forum is the only place I hear these opinions. I've lived in the US for 20 years and the Americans I meet, including in Scouting America, seem to share my view of the importance of equal civil rights for all citizens. 72% of Americans say that LGBTQIA+ people should be accepted in society.1 Trying to exclude them from Scouting America is, as Krone said, limiting. If you're looking around and everyone around you is anti-LBGTQIA+, then know that your community is not representative of wider society. Bubble may also describe your experience of scouting if you think exclusion of certain groups is key to good and proper scouting. The values I was taught as a scout in the 90s were what I say above, and wouldn't you know it there is a fleur de lys on my old worn scout shirt. It's not a WOSM vs WAGGGS thing. There have already been literally millions and millions of coed WOSM (and WAGGGS, I also have a trefoil on my scout shirt) scouts, LGBTQIA+ scouts, scouts in every imaginable skin color, scouts with nontheistic religions and atheist scouts. It's a fait accompli, decades ago. The choice Scouting America has isn't whether or not to allow that in scouting, it is whether or not to follow the societal and/or scouting mainstream. WOSM explicitly says that tolerance is a key scouting value3 and has a whole position paper on it.4 We explicitly advocate for gender equality and LGBTQIA+ rights. This seems to be news to many of you. Of course we are, we have been for decades. It's Duty to Others (Duty to Country and doing a Good Turn) and living by the Scout Law. Going back to the start of this thread and what Navybone said about it, complaints about hypothetical events from which boys are banned, or declined to have an equivalent event for them, from the same individuals that think that exclusion/discrimination is a key part of scouting and who repeatedly say they want to reverse the membership policy changes ring very hollow. It comes off less as a principled stand and more as an attempt to build momentum to do just that - kick now registered scouts out of Scouting America. Not cool, guys, not cool. And that's completely unrelated to the need to manage disruptive kids in scouts. Now that's an issue I would be interested in discussing. Where should one draw the line between normal, age-appropriate squirreliness (which admittedly can make it hard for them to get things done at the younger ages) and real disruption for which one gets asked to leave? Not sure I have a handy-dandy suggestion, but in our unit we stay in close touch with parents about any neurodivergence as well as to ask them to help manage their child's behavior as needed and so far I that has worked, but it's probably a matter of how bad the kids are and obviously won't work at all in Scouts BSA. 1 https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/06/25/global-divide-on-homosexuality-persists/ 2 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20210325STO00802/eu-values-explained-in-one-minute 3 https://www.scout.org/what-we-do/young-people-and-communities/diversity-and-0 4 https://learn.scout.org/resource/diversity-and-inclusion-position-paper

What specifically about the program today would you not consider scouting?