Youth Behavior at 2017 Jamboree

[SpEdScouter]

On theft,

I dont understand. At camp my son always had a locked storage container. Actually our SM requires them and the SM also keeps a set of the keys.

 

Bigger items, why were they not kept in a secured area like a tent? Plus we always had someone watching over our area.

 

Fact is these are kids and kids do stupid things.

[Col. Flagg]

Scouts that steal should be kicked out. Sorry but that's a deal breaker. Everyone knows it's wrong ESPEICALLY a Scout.

[Eagledad]

On theft,

I dont understand. At camp my son always had a locked storage container. Actually our SM requires them and the SM also keeps a set of the keys.

 

Bigger items, why were they not kept in a secured area like a tent? Plus we always had someone watching over our area.

 

Fact is these are kids and kids do stupid things.

At what point in the program do your adults feel the scouts are no longer kids who do stupid things?

 

Barry

[Ankylus]

BSA was created years ago because of a need to teach youth outdoor skills, citizenship and physical fitness.

 

Perhaps the Jamboree issues reveal the real timely need for this new generation.  Going fully co-ed would foce youth to learn respect and how to work together.  Isolating one gender does not help when those genders will encounter each other and need to work together.  

 

 

 

Well, I don't know about your scouts, but 98% of ours go to fully coeducational schools and fully coeducational churches and have siblings including sisters. They are not what I would call "isolated" from girls. And I would bet that is true for most of the boys at the National Jamboree. I think going coed would have no effect on these problems. 

 

I personally believe this kind of behavior is largely a product of the breakdown in social mores, poor parenting, and lax adult supervision.

[HelpfulTracks]

I agree it's not a cure all.  But it's unreasonable to not expect questionable behavior when most scouts are in an all male scouting experience and then attend a co-ed Jamoboree.  Civility is not what it was.  Perhaps it should be a new focal point. 

 

I respectfully disagree. If these young men belong to a program where they are held to the standards they recite a few times a month, they wouldn't act like that. If these young men were held to higher standards at school or in their home, they wouldn't act like that. If these young men had a stronger spiritual influence in their life, they wouldn't act like that.

 

Let's face it, these kids don't act like this because they were in a single-sex environment and suddenly were thrust in to a coed environment. I'd buy that if they lived on a single-sex planet, but they don't. They go to school with girls, they go to the mall or water parks and see girls all the time! 

 

This was little boys not being held to the standards they claim to aspire to. This was adults hiding behind the "boy led" mantra and not getting out and making sure their guys were acting like human beings. These guys know better, they just elected to be tools. Coed is all around them in their daily lives and it had no impact on their behavior. They simply thought they could get away with it.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^ This! I completely agree.

 

The argument that making scouting co-ed because the scouts need to be exposed to co-ed environements is always one I have a problem with. Because.....

1. Our youth (at least my son and most of the scouts I deal with) are in more co-ed activities than single gender.
2. The Scout Oath and Law, if it is being taught and lived by, would preclude this behavior at all times.

I hear the argument that scouting is the best (or only) place can get X or Y.  My question is always then why not change other organizations to be like scouting, rather than change scouting to be like all those other organizations they say are failing to achieve was scouting does for boys. I have yet to hear a convincing argument.

[HelpfulTracks]

I was an SM for a Jambo troop. I and my scouts had a great time. When asked, all 36 said they would do it again.

 

Where there issues? Yes.

 

Theft, yes. Any theft at a scouting event is disappointing, (yes, that is Pollyanna). So clearly there was too much. But I would say that 1/3 -1/2 of the "theft" turned out to be misplaced. I cannot tell you how often I heard, "Yes sir, I found it under my cot (and I suspect a large pile of dirty cloths).  The AT&T stations made for hassles, as scouts stole the charging cables. Occasionally some scout would put his phone on a charger and leave it there, come back later and it was gone. I encouraged our parents to get them charging blocks and solar chargers, which made out life much esier because we didnt have to deal with theft as much. The troop did lose a single phone. We did lose a couple of charging blocks that were left unattended at charging stations.

 

We also had some rock throwing incidents from scouts sitting at charging stations, fortunately no one was seriously hurt. A few tents got damaged.

 

Food. Frankly it was much better than I expected. A good bit of that I will contribute to my 2nd ASM and QM. They did a great job of planning meals, getting up early everyday and getting down to the commissary. We always had plenty of food, a pretty good selection and fairly tasty. My biggest complain was everything was processed, so my salt intake shot up. But other than that nothing major to complain about food wise. We did have some issues with the process of getting the food, but as I understand it, each sub camp was a little different, so they could test different ways of doing things.

 

Patch trading. Yes, there were some obnoxious and UN-scoutlike traders. Being an old patch trader, I coached our guys on just moving on if you got that attitude or crazy demands. There were plenty of other people to trade with. I even took a few of them out to coach them in the "pits". I also "brokered" some deals for some scout with adults, since they were not allowed to trade with each other. IN all they learned a good bit about trading, had fun, came home with some cool patches and most importantly did not spend an inordinate amount of time trading.

 

Sexual aggression issues. I never saw that. We were in Delta and the closest troops to Foxtrot (were the crews and international scouts were based). We had a fair amount of interaction with Foxtrot and never had any issues of a sexual nature. Some of our younger scouts had siblings, some just wanted to meeting foreign scouts and some of the older ones knew there were girls up there, lol. Our 3rd ASM is still a Venturing Scout,s o he knew several people up at Foxtrot and took some scouts with him a few nights. I went up a couple of times. There were some aggressive patch traders, but that was about it.  But there were also some very generous scouts there as well. I ran into a crew from Liberia on the wait for rafting and we talked for a while. They gave me this beautiful neckerchief slide made from a native tree. I had nothing with me at the time to give them, but insisted I take it. They seemed very happy when I was able to track them down at Foxtrot and gave them one of our council patch sets. Those are great memories.

 

We had a great time at Jamboree, and while it is expensive, our proximity makes Jamboree a little less expensive than going to the High Adventure bases (unless they do the OA crews).

 

I would recommend Jambo, the upside beats the downside by a mile in my opinion.

 

Hopefully Helpful Tracks

[skeptic]

Being an optimist, pretty much, I would surmise that if given similar situations outside of the Boy Scout environment, the negative issues would be greater, probably far greater.  But, Scouts are still youth.  And they are still exposed to a wide arena of negative so called role models that fifty years ago, probably even twenty years ago, are questionable.  Our expectations of most of our scouts are met more often than not, or at least that has been my experience.  You hope for the best and try and use the slips as learning experiences.  You will never win them all, though some of the success may never be seen by you, but will pop up later in their more mature years.

[SR540Beaver]

Scouting is like church. There is a saying amongst some Christians that a follower isn't perfect, just forgiven. We like to think a Scout has reached a level of perfection and would never do anything wrong. People are people and they will at times disappoint you. I was an ASM for the 2005 and 2010 Jambos at AP Hill. We required the youth to keep their footlockers locked and always left two adults in camp during the day for security. There were youth there who would look for empty campsites and help themselves. Sad but true. In 2010, our sub camp had very nice big rig trailers that were set up with stainless steel showers. They had even contracted with a group who cleaned them thru the day. That was until some kids decided to take bowel movements in the shower stalls and the cleaning crew said they were done. The showers were locked. Fortunately, the boys in our contingent......who valued showers.....went to the sub camp leadership and asked for cleaning supplies and suggested having shower monitors present to get the showers reopened. It worked. That's the kind of behavior you wouldn't expect from a Scout, but when you have 40,000 parents plunk down the cash to send junior to the Jamboree, the odds are you will get some bad apples in the mix. There are plenty of lessons to be learned when these types of issues come up.

[qwazse]

I recently met an Alumni of Scout's Pakistan. He said going to World Jamboree was their "apex" event, and it was contingent on accumulating badges given out over the scout's career for attendance and skill challenges. That how their scouting organization made sure they put their best face forward. I suspect that also discouraged attendance by thieves and brigands.