Is today's scouting too prissy?

[Jeffrey H]

The troop I was in as a Youth in the 70's did nothing but "primitive camping" meaning no running water was available, no bathrooms to walk to, no electricity to hook up to anything. We had to build fires if we wanted to cook even in rainy weather (yes, you can get a fire started from wet wood). We did not cancel campouts due to inclement weather. Yes, we did leave camp one time for shelter due to a very severe thunderstorm but we never canceled an outing. We had better outdoor skills and training because it was forced upon us. We sometimes backpacked into our campsites. Building self-reliance and being prepared was the theme of our Troop. Was it fun? Oh yeah, great fun!

 

My most recent experience was with a Troop that only camped at Parks with running water, flush toilets, and electricity. The boys cooked on propane stoves always. In reality, they did not effectively learn outdoor skills because the modern conveniences of home were always with them. Very few boys owned backpacks because they were not required/needed. I witnessed Star and Life scouts struggling to get a fire started with good wood.

 

Is it too prissy today? Read the above again.

[Stosh]

Related to this thread: Things "back in the day" always seem better than they are in the present.

http://xkcd.com/1227/

Correct me if I'm wrong... Because the telegraph made the Pony Express obsolete, none of us should be riding horses anymore? Or is it more in line with the boys ought to be spending more time emailing their friends from camp on their SmartPhone instead of sending a camp postcard to Mom?

[TSS_Chris]

Look, in this day and age, you can't be the mythical "Man's Man" anymore who shoots from the hip, and wrestles bears for fun. Let's just think about the post trip briefing:

 

SM Wayne: "Well pardners, we're back. We completed another trip with acceptable losses."

Concerned Mother: "Jimmy? Jimmy? Where's my Jimmy?"

SM Wayne: "Sorry ma'am." Removes Stetson and holds over heart, "Jimmy was one of the acceptable losses."

 

I'm an Engineer and programmer by day, and a confessed proceduralist. I shoot for JTE gold annually. If ISO-9001 or six-sigma certification was available for Scout units, I'd have that too. There is a reason successful businesses, the military, pilots, and doctors all use standard procedures: Acceptable losses these days are 0. By making the mundane automatic, you can focus on the exceptional situations.

 

(I do take offense to comparing my type to The Donald. He's a bigger cowboy than John Wayne ever was. Let's call us the Edison type.)

 

I see my checklists, spreadsheets and briefing documents justified by those two simple words: "Be Prepared." I don't see that as prissy at all.

 

As for the prissy part, there does seem to be a problem with prissiness in Scout units these days. I'm a CM right now, and I have that problem with my CO's Troop. Our pack camps more often than they do, and has more autonomous boy leadership than they do. I know that I can spend my time on a trip distracting the helicopter parents while they boys be boys. I have the confidence to bring up the rear on hikes, because the boys in the lead know to bring the whole group to a stop when there is a question about which fork in the trail to take -- and my like-minded DLs (two engineers and an accountant) aren't far behind them to jog their memories if needed.

 

As a youth, I had a John Wayne-type SM. He was memorable, but a control freak. When he retired, it took a few years to rebuild a truly autonomous PLC and committee again. It would have been really easy for the unit to turn prissy in the vacuum after his personality left. I'm glad it didn't.

 

BasementDweller is right. It's the adults who make the program prissy. You want an un-prissy program: Give the PLC a JTE scorecard and a blank calendar and tell them to earn the Troop a gold ranking. Tell them the leaders are there to help them, but this is their Troop and their job. You and the rest of the leadership have to be willing to let them make mistakes that get them into trouble, while secretly having that 24-hour store of firewood in your back pocket for when they need to steal the bear's kill (or maybe a backpack full of Power Bars and a water filter instead).

 

In the end, they may not remember you as much as they would if you were John Wayne, but they'll learn more, be less prissy and better prepared.

@jblake: You're assuming too much. The "Leadership team" is the boys in my view. The adults are the advisers.

 

I only see one disagreement, and that's what happens when a Scout gets hurt.

 

If the boys call EMS, or even think about calling EMS, they damn well better call me next. Period. Doing that doesn't make them "prissy parlor scouts," that proves they are responsible leaders who are bringing every resource at their disposal to bear. If they've got the situation under control, great. If not, the injured boy's health is a lot more important than boy leadership.

 

To twist your words a little: Would a production manager be happy to learn you didn't call him to let him know about a looming shut down because you were devoting all your resources to mitigate the issue that caused it? Would your colleagues accuse you of being prissy because you called him? Seriously?

[TSS_Chris]

Related to this thread: Things "back in the day" always seem better than they are in the present.

http://xkcd.com/1227/

The post card is the problem! If we didn't have those darn post cards, boys would spend the time to sit down and write their mothers a real letter like boys did when I was a Scout.

[King Ding Dong]

Well, if anything, this discussion has motivated me to take my Webelos on an off-road bike ride rather than on a field trip to the newspaper office.

I really had a good chuckle with Near Miss Report. That is what scouting is supposed to be. An endless series of near misses, with a few direct hits along the way. Am I really supposed to carry two reams of forms with me ? Good grief is right.

 

Richard, if you want to know what is going on in the program get outdoors and visit the program. If it makes you feel better, the next time we require professional medical attention I will fill out a form. I love the bottom of that page: "a Scout is trustworthy: be sure to report." How about a Scout is courteous and doesn't waste people's time with forms that no one is ever going read.

 

You are going take a good ribbing here. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are just doing your job and the Near Miss nonsense was cooked up by the insurance company and lawyers.

 

Next time we encounter a thunderstorm we will settle under a fly with a stack of Near Miss Reports and a count how close each lightning strike was. "Oo ohh, that one was even closer!, scribble , scribble". What is your mail stop at national ?

 

You know, until you opened your mouth "Prissy" was a topic of debate. Now the case is closed.

[Stosh]

Look, in this day and age, you can't be the mythical "Man's Man" anymore who shoots from the hip, and wrestles bears for fun. Let's just think about the post trip briefing:

 

SM Wayne: "Well pardners, we're back. We completed another trip with acceptable losses."

Concerned Mother: "Jimmy? Jimmy? Where's my Jimmy?"

SM Wayne: "Sorry ma'am." Removes Stetson and holds over heart, "Jimmy was one of the acceptable losses."

 

I'm an Engineer and programmer by day, and a confessed proceduralist. I shoot for JTE gold annually. If ISO-9001 or six-sigma certification was available for Scout units, I'd have that too. There is a reason successful businesses, the military, pilots, and doctors all use standard procedures: Acceptable losses these days are 0. By making the mundane automatic, you can focus on the exceptional situations.

 

(I do take offense to comparing my type to The Donald. He's a bigger cowboy than John Wayne ever was. Let's call us the Edison type.)

 

I see my checklists, spreadsheets and briefing documents justified by those two simple words: "Be Prepared." I don't see that as prissy at all.

 

As for the prissy part, there does seem to be a problem with prissiness in Scout units these days. I'm a CM right now, and I have that problem with my CO's Troop. Our pack camps more often than they do, and has more autonomous boy leadership than they do. I know that I can spend my time on a trip distracting the helicopter parents while they boys be boys. I have the confidence to bring up the rear on hikes, because the boys in the lead know to bring the whole group to a stop when there is a question about which fork in the trail to take -- and my like-minded DLs (two engineers and an accountant) aren't far behind them to jog their memories if needed.

 

As a youth, I had a John Wayne-type SM. He was memorable, but a control freak. When he retired, it took a few years to rebuild a truly autonomous PLC and committee again. It would have been really easy for the unit to turn prissy in the vacuum after his personality left. I'm glad it didn't.

 

BasementDweller is right. It's the adults who make the program prissy. You want an un-prissy program: Give the PLC a JTE scorecard and a blank calendar and tell them to earn the Troop a gold ranking. Tell them the leaders are there to help them, but this is their Troop and their job. You and the rest of the leadership have to be willing to let them make mistakes that get them into trouble, while secretly having that 24-hour store of firewood in your back pocket for when they need to steal the bear's kill (or maybe a backpack full of Power Bars and a water filter instead).

 

In the end, they may not remember you as much as they would if you were John Wayne, but they'll learn more, be less prissy and better prepared.

We build huge units on our production line $.5M - $1.5M. All our managers are fully aware that if the line goes down, the best people to fix things are the workers themselves. They know the most about what is happening. If they can't fix it, the team leads are right there to provide added resources, then if more resources are needed the shop supervisors get involved, and eventually the managers might get involved. But in actuality, they may get notified well after the fact once the situation has been evaluated and the managers then deploy resources to make sure the problem doesn't happen again. We are all aware in our setting the production line worker is the one actually making the product for the customer, the rest of us only assist them in doing so. Everyone is extensively trained in their standard work AND the standard work in the work cell on the line in each direction. They are also 100% trained in basic problem solving skills. They are given the authority and encouraged to make changes to their standard work if it will improve the workflow.

 

Putting it into scouting terms, the boys are the front-line production workers. They are extensively trained in all aspects of Scoutcraft. They know what is needed for the situation. For first aid, they call EMS, the PL is there to assist and provide added resources, send someone to meet EMS and direct them back to the spot needed. All hands on deck doesn't mean 2 boys run off to find the SM. They might be needed to assist in transporting a boy on a stretcher who has twisted his ankle. After all, what is the SM going to do once he/she gets there? If the boys were trained properly, probably nothing. Maybe he can help with a corner of the stretcher.

 

Am I assuming too much that the boys are actually prepared and can handle emergency situations? Not if one has done more than just pencil whip T-FC. I used to work with the old Exploring program and I know that the scouts in the Medical Post that were called to man the first aid tents at large crowd gathering knew what they needed to know. If someone went down, call in on the radio and all hands on deck to help the person. The unit advisor might come, but usually the EMS ranked him and so he couldn't do much more than what the scouts were already doing.

[King Ding Dong]

I see Richard stepped on this skunk in January. That was funny. The correct question is: "Is Texas Prissy?" http://www.scouter.com/forum/open-discussion-program/361479-new-incident-reporting-kits-and-gtss-updates

[RichardB]

You folks really crack me up. I'm not sure knowing what happens quailfies as Prissy. I've know Prissy as my FIL's dog.

 

Lots of assumptions expressed. Hoping that there are few here who have the ability to think a little outside your sandbox and imagine the possibilities. Look at the reason that knowing about incidents and yes, near misses might be important to an organization who is truely committed to the health and safety of youth. It has nothing to do with lawyers or insurance. It is the right thing to do. Read this http://www.scouting.org/sitecore/content/Home/HealthandSafety/SafetyThoughts/130205.aspx try and understand. Repeat as necessary.

 

On a serious note I hope the king will never have to make a call about the one did not miss or the person not coming home. Google may enlighten you to the probability you will make a call.

 

And once again, please don't assume.

[Scouter99]

ThomasJefferson ... You've got too much agenda. Don't hijack this into some atheist rank. Scouting's always had a strong faith element, right from the start. Plus every man's man that I've know has had a strong faith. They might not shove it down your throat, but it's there.

 

You don't need to deny God to be a man's man. And you don't need to hijack this thread with some atheist junk.

BSA "lost" its left wing because the ACLU went on the offensive and removed scouting units from schools, military bases, housing projects, and any other public institution. Whine to them about the pigeonholed BSA.

 

When you were a kid, BSA's national campaign was "Onward . . . For God and Country!" And, just as is true today, the depth to which that effected your personal experience depended upon how much attention your troop paid to that. You don't remember any of the adult politics because you were a kid.

[ThomasJefferson]

ThomasJefferson ... You've got too much agenda. Don't hijack this into some atheist rank. Scouting's always had a strong faith element, right from the start. Plus every man's man that I've know has had a strong faith. They might not shove it down your throat, but it's there.

 

You don't need to deny God to be a man's man. And you don't need to hijack this thread with some atheist junk.

In a troop in the 1950's there was only one adult usually. That's why no adult politics. Patrols camped without adults. They hiked without adults. They built clubhouses and held meetings without adults. The troop met together every couple of weeks. The patrols met as buddies on a regular basis.

 

The ACLU didn't go on an offensive. That's political doubletalk. BSA got involved in that Dale mess and never should have. They should have let the local unit decide his fate, and they should have let it go. Instead of making a case about their rights, they tried to argue the right to exclude sections of society based on labels. That attracted the ACLU like bees to flowers. It was a stupid move. Really stupid.

[ThomasJefferson]

Personally I don't think its about outdoors or adventure, my scouts do and did a lot more high adventure stuff than I did as a scout. But I definitely think that scouting is more prissy. I think it's there is less freedom for boys to express themselves as boys. Adults are A LOT more guarded today about what boys can say, do or even meet. We put limits on knives and other woods tools. It was no big deal for my patrol to go on a five mile with a map and compass, but adults today would struggle to let a patrol hike through the safe parts of our town without some kind of oversite. How many boys can ride their bike accross town without getting permission? Our culture has closed in on our youths freedom of expression and freedom to move about. The culture is more prissy, and we don't have very many adults who remember how it used to be. Barry

Wrong, jblack47. That is exactly not what a theory is.

 

A scientific theory is a proven out body of scientific knowledge that, while not the final word on the topic because more information is always becoming available, is fact.

 

Gravity, for example, is a theory. Do you disbelieve in it?

 

You are confusing hypothesis, which is a speculation based on observation, with a theory, which is what we get when we test a hypothesis and find out the truth.

 

Find me a valid scientific study on personality that shows women are feelers and men aren't. I will refer you to the work Amy Cuddy, the foremost expert on the field of Social Psychology who studied personality types vs. chemical balance in the brain, and identified four types, not two, and found them balanced within the sexes, not differentiated.

 

 

OMG science is not taught in schools in this country worth a crap. No wonder we are somewhere at the bottom of first world nations.

[ThomasJefferson]

Here's the real problem: Culture. The US no longer has the culture that supported and called for a Scouting program. It was founded in the early 20th Century by the progressive movement as a reaction to the industrial revolution and its pollution and child abuse. Today's kids don't need saving from the industrial revolution. They are no longer in need of rescue. They are not unhappy with their conditions. A kid in 1910 went camping and conditions improved for him. A kid in 2010 went camping and he was without anything he wanted around him basically suffering.

 

Scouting membership was buffed up dramatically by the two world wars as the US government included scouting in propaganda laced throughout media. They stopped doing that in 1948, and twelve years later, kids born and raised without that propaganda became old enough to become boy scouts - and didn't want to. And the downhill decline continues.

 

Here's what we don't want to face:

 

* Our kids don't want to go scouting. They want to be in the air conditioning and play video games

* Our kids don't want to learn patriotism. They are on the Internet talking with people from around the globe. They are citizens of the world, not this nation.

* Our kids no longer have any freedom at home. Their parents are afraid for them to walk to the bus stop alone without adults guarding them. Scouting used to be patrols with no adults going camping and hiking. Today, there is an adult for every kid.

 

The Boy Scouts have run out of water to sail their ship on. We can protest about values and citizenship and resumes with eagle badges all we want. The ugly, ugly truth that even I, your leftist atheist does not want to face is this: Game over.

 

There is no soil in which to grow scouting. It is a dying activity. Our kids are being raised in a world where very soon robots will do the work and talking, self-aware computers will teach them. You may see that as necessitating scouting for the good of the kids. But you cannot force kids to do something. They don't like it. They don't want it.

 

It isn't a prissy problem. It's not an advertising problem. It's really just a simple problem of we are not those people any more, and our kids don't even like those kinds of people.

 

Were you looking at the survey on gays? We said no, the kids - 90% of them - said yes. They don't want to be like us. They don't want to do this. I'm happy to provide what I do for the kids that do, but I'm not going to believe for a second that us talking or anything BSA does is going to fix it.

 

BSA has hastened the end of scouting through stupidity, but really, they can't fix the problem, because the problem isn't a problem at all. It's just a fact of life I don't want to wear a three cornered hat and stockings, and they don't want to go outside and play.

 

[King Ding Dong]

You folks really crack me up. I'm not sure knowing what happens quailfies as Prissy. I've know Prissy as my FIL's dog.

 

Lots of assumptions expressed. Hoping that there are few here who have the ability to think a little outside your sandbox and imagine the possibilities. Look at the reason that knowing about incidents and yes, near misses might be important to an organization who is truely committed to the health and safety of youth. It has nothing to do with lawyers or insurance. It is the right thing to do. Read this http://www.scouting.org/sitecore/content/Home/HealthandSafety/SafetyThoughts/130205.aspx try and understand. Repeat as necessary.

 

On a serious note I hope the king will never have to make a call about the one did not miss or the person not coming home. Google may enlighten you to the probability you will make a call.

 

And once again, please don't assume.

While I have my head stuck filling out a two page form 50 times a day I know what I will not be doing.

[Basementdweller]

You folks really crack me up. I'm not sure knowing what happens quailfies as Prissy. I've know Prissy as my FIL's dog.

 

Lots of assumptions expressed. Hoping that there are few here who have the ability to think a little outside your sandbox and imagine the possibilities. Look at the reason that knowing about incidents and yes, near misses might be important to an organization who is truely committed to the health and safety of youth. It has nothing to do with lawyers or insurance. It is the right thing to do. Read this http://www.scouting.org/sitecore/content/Home/HealthandSafety/SafetyThoughts/130205.aspx try and understand. Repeat as necessary.

 

On a serious note I hope the king will never have to make a call about the one did not miss or the person not coming home. Google may enlighten you to the probability you will make a call.

 

And once again, please don't assume.

Ya it will get reported then activities and gear will get banned....and more steps moving us from the outdoors to the indoors....

[Horizon]

You folks really crack me up. I'm not sure knowing what happens quailfies as Prissy. I've know Prissy as my FIL's dog.

 

Lots of assumptions expressed. Hoping that there are few here who have the ability to think a little outside your sandbox and imagine the possibilities. Look at the reason that knowing about incidents and yes, near misses might be important to an organization who is truely committed to the health and safety of youth. It has nothing to do with lawyers or insurance. It is the right thing to do. Read this http://www.scouting.org/sitecore/content/Home/HealthandSafety/SafetyThoughts/130205.aspx try and understand. Repeat as necessary.

 

On a serious note I hope the king will never have to make a call about the one did not miss or the person not coming home. Google may enlighten you to the probability you will make a call.

 

And once again, please don't assume.

So national wants to know every time a kid needs a band aid? Because that is what that document implies.

 

I agree with a report for any incident requiring the help of a trained professional (i.e. a visit to an ER, a doc-in-the-box, etc.). It is the requirement that I track all "near misses" that is absolutely ludicrous. Worse, it forces one of two responses - a complete abandonment of adventure or an willful decision to ignore the requirement.

 

I am more concerned with the latter. If you put in too many stop signs, people stop coming to a complete stop. If you put too low of a speed limit, people speed both on that street, but also on others. Poorly thought out rules and regulations lead to people ignoring ALL rules and regulations - including the good ones. If you insist, I can can bury you in academic research on this.

 

A requirement to fill out a form for near misses leads to a distrust and a disregard for all of the forms. That is human nature, and you are dealing with volunteers here. Linking me to pedantic expressions of a desire for safety does nothing to convince - I write marketing claptrap for living. Link me to a page that talks about how there is a cost in bandaids that comes from going into the woods - that would be a great message send.

 

"Dear America - your kids are getting prissy. Send them out with us - we laugh at a little blood, blisters and bruises. Even better, we teach the boys how to manage it all, take care of their friends, and move on down the trail."

 

THAT is a message for adventure. A near miss form, however, tells me that you don't really want me to do the things that I am doing.