AwakeEnergyScouter

And the short sleeved shirt needs a long-sleeved base layer in winter, as does the skort if you choose it for the bottom. Not to worry of course, they have official BSA leggings and base layer shirts. And bows if you don't want a hat. What scout wears a bow in the woods? There's a reason the first Swedish girl scouts only pretended to scout in skirts. It's the same reason I've seen zero scout bows in the wild.

I did not. I think someone got confused about the point of scouting.

Can't we sell toothpaste or something?

Well, not just boys, but more importantly - it's not the scout socks, belt, and pants that are so distinctive. It's the necker, the woggle, and the shirt with badges that's so recognizable. You can drop a good number of official BSA uniform items before anyone not in the BSA even notices, and popcorn selling has also taught me that not even former (and sometimes even current 🤦🏼‍♀️) scouts can always tell a BSA uniform from a GSUSA uniform. When I was a scout, our uniform consisted entirely of the shirt and the necker with woggle. No alternates, not pants or socks or hats or multiple "classes" or uniforms. (Still have no idea what that actually means.) BSA uniform requirements are off the chain - inspection sheets? Really? For 5, 6, 7, 8-year-olds?

Best of luck, @5thGenTexan! Sounds like it was time. Scouts is a wonderful movement, but everyone cycles in and out based on life circumstances and local conditions. You've given a lot to the movement, and it's ok to step away. Enjoy what comes next!

It can also be the other way around - if your patrol members attend different schools, then you expand your friendship circle and have more social support. Half of my troop attended my school, the other half attended another. My friendship group in my patrol mostly came from the other school, friends I wouldn't have made without scouts.

Our Webelos invited a councilperson to a pack meeting for this adventure last year. They did not complete YPT. We also invited city workers to give an outreach presentation about recycling. They also didn't do YPT. Our council invites police officers to summer camp every year. Don't think they've done YPT, either. All of these interactions are also incredibly public and one-off. The councilperson spoke from a stage, the workers also would have, and the police officers kind of did too. They couldn't find the scouts again even if they tried. The risk is incredibly low for these kinds of interactions with non-scouters. It makes sense to not need YPT for them.

Yes. But at the same time, there's no workable alternative. What would really have fixed everything requires time travel. So would holding the perpetrators and enablers all personally accountable. And so on and so on. That's part of the sadness. The size of the problem kept growing for many decades because victims didn't get justice while new ones were created. All that can be done in this very moment is to do everything that still can be, legally speaking, and then "eating bitter" about the cost to today's scouts. If we can bear this with equanimity, we cut off further lashes of undesirable consequences that we bring on ourselves with aggressive reactions to getting what we don't want. If we can just sit on our hands and soothe our hearts, we can let this karma move on through without creating more. That in turn creates the space to build anew. We just have to not get bitter ourselves, while eating it skillfully.

I know what you mean, but in fairness to the US Americans as individuals, there are multiple legal and political-philosophical system differences that give the lower litigiousness in Sweden. One obvious one for the case of falling out of a tree is that nobody needs to raise money for the medical bills. This obviates a major reason to sue in the US. Tort claims for injury are compensation for suffering, not costs incurred, and are often ordered by a judge in connection with a criminal case (see below for why that is). Another is that safety is a strong societal value in Sweden. We've been collectively buckling up in cars since before I was born and it blows my mind that anyone alive in the US today would ever have not worn their seatbelt on purpose, or even worse been in a truck bed while the truck was moving 😱. The value isn't a bubble, it's active risk mitigation. So when all adults are socially expected to effectively reduce risk and will be ostracized if they don't, you need a lot less "GTSS" rules. There's a social regulation mechanism that works pretty well already. (Similarly, the social situation around CSA is very different.) My scout cannot skate without a hockey helmet. They're always the only kid on the ice with a helmet, because the rink doesn't require them. My scout will also never be one of the people sitting on the ice holding their head in their hands going "oooowwww". (Swedish mom SMH moment every time, ice is hard and falls happen, both 100% predictable.) My car will not go anywhere unless everyone in it is wearing their seatbelts, and nobody goes boating with me without an approved life jacket preferably with a horse collar in case of unconsciousness. (Especially if there will be drinking.) I see that other parents think I'm hard-line on this stuff. (They also think I'm negligent when I let my scout out of my sight, but that's another cultural difference 😂)) I do it anyway because I feel that social support/pressure on those standard safety equipment things. I heard a million reminders from every direction as a kid and so I can't let my own kid use less safety gear than I did, can I? We also see the role of the government differently, and also have civil law instead of common law. We directly regulate or even criminalize a lot of safety and civil rights issues (because it's the government's job to ensure that every citizen's rights and freedoms are upheld) rather than wait for citizens to indirectly limit them via lawsuits. And since civil law depends a great deal less on precedent than common law, we limit what suing is meant to be for in a way that you can't do as easily in common law. Every system has advantages and disadvantages. Lawsuit mania is one of the disadvantages of the US system. No doubt some US Americans are just greedy, but many are given suing as the tool of choice of the system they live in. Can't fault them for using the tool they're pointed to. And you can't really stop the greedy ones without taking away a tool of justice.

Don't forget King! 😉 The monarchy is timeless 😉

I agree. Last week we ran into a formerly quite involved family who left our pack - not because they didn't like us and/or scouting, the now former scout just liked sports more and had to choose. They chose sports. My scout, OTOH, had the same choice and chose scouts. So we're here and they're not, but that particular reason isn't the only reason anyone ever leaves - some have had family issues that sucked time away, some moved, some did this, some did that... and without some data gathering, it's really hard to say if there is a clear top one, two, or three reasons why families leave that we collectively should focus on.

This is a big part of the reason I'm making time to be a leader. There aren't many adult women who scouted in a WOSM-aligned NSO here in the US, so I see an opportunity to help here. I'm also good with kids, so it seems like a bit of a lost opportunity if I don't lead.

That sounds pretty solid. No idea if we can afford that but that sounds like a great general check of, well, everyone. And not that intrusive or time-consuming.

While that's almost certainly true, the fact that it is normative in many areas leads credence to the idea that not requiring ID to be a leader is lagging common practice in schools for much lesser contact with children. In those areas in which ID is not required, it might seem like more than elsewhere, yes. But if we take the cautious view, that ID is already SOP for adults around kids in many areas suggests that BSA should require it too.

Every elementary school we toured required it.

You've got a point, although I have to admit that I was thinking "well, at least they're not trying to fingerprint me". My worry isn't so much what the BSA is going to do with it, it's more about whether criminals could steal the information from the BSA. And to be honest, I don't really know how well-founded it is. In the case of giving my SSN that concern is still there, but it's also obvious to me that SSN is required for any even theoretically effective background check. So, it's a bit take it or leave it. Perhaps the important question to ask is what combination of information and checks of scout-facing volunteers is needed to be very effective. Presumably what background checks turn up can be made more effective by cross-checking with other things, like ID and fingerprints, but I'm not sure where you've already gotten excellent detection of pedos (and anyone else who might hurt children in some other way) and more checking doesn't really improve things any more. Somebody out there knows, though.

Nope.

I recently went through all this to become a leader, and I have never showed ID to anyone in Scouts BSA. I filled out background check papers, but they ran that based on the names and SSN I gave. I imagine it's not just a matter of making up a new name to fool a background check, but the easy step of showing ID was omitted either way unlike with the background checks for employment where you also have to show ID and work authorization papers that march what comes up in the background check. I work at the same company as our CC, so there is a de facto check on that the name I gave is my real name and that I am who I say I am, but that's luck.

Oh, I see! TBH my guess for that is just that they don't have young kids at home themselves to have realized how normal this is now. I mean, outside the political issue of gun violence there really isn't a lot of reason to talk about it on social media or opine about it in op-eds. It's such a detail of the chaos that is life with young children at home.

And then after you show your ID at the office, they give you a sticker to wear with your name, a picture of you, and whom you're visiting and/or where you're going ("Library"). Even if they know you on sight. At my scout's school, you even have to show ID in addition to tickets to enter their sports games. Johnson is right in that it comes off a little weird to make a big fuss about asking for ID from adults given what else is going on in schools and sports. Parents are already being asked to do it left and right elsewhere, why not in scouting also?

Fantastic! It's refreshing to hear a focus on improving and on the future. Not that we shouldn't look backwards to learn from the past, but at some point it's also time to face the future. I'm going to throw out this vision for BSA's future and see how it lands: remember that the wild, free outdoor adventure lies outside the organized, developed, and staffed. Owning land and properties can be good, but can never provide the experience of hoisting your pack up onto your back together with your patrol to head into the wilderness... or push your canoe out from shore to paddle miles downriver with them... or click your cross country ski boots into the bindings with hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls your patrol baked yourselves in your pack. As a side effect, these kinds of expeditions ask more of the scouts and cost less for their parents. @InquisitiveScouter shared an absolutely wonderful trip he just did with his scouts along those lines, and I've read others share how they arranged wilder, grander summer camps for less money than the BSA centrally run camps. The wilderness adventure method of scouting is very, very powerful, and it seems BSA as an organization has drifted away from that. IMHO that's a strategy mistake. Pull on the BSA leaders who are doing this stuff now and encourage others to do it, too!

This is my impression, too, but since I also don't know anyone involved with it or who has been in the program I don't really know if I'm right. I only know it exists because I read about it in the council program booklet. Without knowing if our existing low SES area program is any good, it's hard to say if it makes sense to extend it, possibly with some changes, or whether a pack/troop subsidy type program would be better.

That works well in affluent areas. However, Eagle91-A1 mentioned living in an area where either the median or average income was close to the poverty limit. "Sell more popcorn" is going to result in packs (and presumably troops) in bourgeoisie areas like mine and BetterWithCheddar's flourishing and those in economically disadvantaged areas struggling and/or folding. (People with $25-$40 to spend on pre-popped flavored popcorn aren't struggling, and you need a lot of them around you to raise a lot of money. I see this even neighborhood to neighborhood in our city - we sold well door to door right in our subdivision, other parents report they only sold a few tins in several hours in theirs.) Packs in high SES areas will have an easier time to sell popcorn, even though they also are best able to afford to pay out of pocket. This seems like the default outcome, unless we find a mechanism for supporting scouting in economically disadvantaged areas. How successful is Scoutreach? Do they ever go camping? I'm guessing not. Perhaps one possibility is to beef up Scoutreach to be closer to regular scouting. Or perhaps well to-do packs and troops can directly or indirectly help subsidize those in low SES areas. I'm asking the question to see if we can, by putting our heads together, find a better solution than council.

It sounds like, based on what @Eagle94-A1 and @fred8033 are saying here combined with what @BetterWithCheddar said earlier (and what he said sounds pretty familiar), that scouting with BSA is once again becoming more for the bourgeoisie than the working class or farmers. The factors leading to the cost increases aren't quick to change, due to organization culture if nothing else. So the question becomes what else can be done to make it possible for those struggling to meet for the new cost level to scout.

Are you saying that BSA made cub scouting so expensive to destroy cub scouting because national doesn't want honesty, character, citizenship or wholesome programs and activities taught or given to our children, @Ojoman? Surely not. This has been discussed in other threads already, and this kind of a post is just going to detail this thread from the question of why cub scouting has gotten more expensive. You clearly feel this way and under attack, but since not everyone does just stating all this as fact is inevitably going to result in those who don't connect with this at all to ask for proof and then we're instantly off topic for a long time. If we ever get back, that is.