Which came first Patrol or Troop?

[TAHAWK]

On 10/11/2017 at 2:13 PM, fred johnson said:

I just hope it's not a "different" program.  The troop structure works and it's advancement works.  Let girls join troops.  Let charter orgs decide if they want girl only troops and boy only troops ... or co-ed troops.  We're just not structured to run yet another program structure.  Sort of like Venturing in that too few BSA volunteers really understand how to make venturing work.

A troop is composed of patrols.  Boy scouts of America, Boy Scout Handbook, 13th ed., at p. 25 (2015)

 

A Boy Scout is to primarily experience Scouting in a patrol context.

 

A troop-based program would be quite different from what is supposed to be the case with Boy Scouts.  There is no "troop method" in Boy Scouting.

Edited December 2, 2017 by RememberSchiff

[TAHAWK]

3 hours ago, fred johnson said:

 

Well, thanks for picking a fight over nothing and making yourself look right.  Yep, patrols are the key unit.  It's how it's supposed to work.  But your comments have no relationship to any meaningful purpose of my comments.  It's just noise and re-hashing valid, but worn out and totally unrelated discussion.  

 

I didn't realize I was "picking a fight."  I simply believe that the more we hear "troop," "troop," "troop" and no "patrol," "patrol", "patrol," the less chance we have to get back to Boy Scouting.  If people like you, veterans who know the program, talk about troop structure and  youth joining troops, the less experienced (like most of our leadership at National) may conclude that Boy Scouting is all about troops.  After all, BSA currently says: 

 

"Patrols are one component of what we call youth-run, or youth-led, troop."

Boy Scouts of America, Orientation for New Scout Parents,  (current on line training materials)

https://www.scouting.org/training/adult/supplemental/orientationfornewboyscoutparents.aspx

 

You know that is inconsistent with many other things BSA says and has said.  You have context.  Others who come here, perhaps for the first time, may lack your experience.

 

I think the basic concept that Boy scouts join a patrol and patrols make up a troop is not merely "noise" and cannot be restated and explained too often given how you know most troops are being run today and given the inconsistent statements from National since the disastrous Improved Scouting Program.  And here National is about to invent an entirely new program for female Scouts.  "The Improved Scouting Program for Girls"?  No chance of foul-up there.   Will the girls' Scouting program have the small group, team dynamic - the school for democracy - that National is allowing to wither in the boy's program, or will patrols exist for the administrative convenience of the troop, with no life of their own?

 

  

[David CO]

26 minutes ago, TAHAWK said:

 Boy scouts join a patrol and patrols make up a troop 

 

 

I disagree with you. Boys join a troop, which is subdivided into patrols.

[Stosh]

1 minute ago, David CO said:

 

I disagree with you. Boys join a troop, which is subdivided into patrols.

And it is the adults that subdivide the boys into patrols so they can control them better.

[TAHAWK]

1 minute ago, David CO said:

 

I disagree with you. Boys join a troop, which is subdivided into patrols.

 

A good many Scoutmasters would agree with you, David.

 

From 1930 on, the official B.S.A. position on the Patrol Method and what it means has emphasized that A Scout is to primarily experience Boy Scouting in the context of his patrol.

 

I draw this conclusion from the following words of B.S.A. today and of Bill Hillcourt at the dawn of the Patrol Method.

 

"Your Boy Scout troop is made up of patrols, with each patrol's members sharing responsibility  for the patrol's success.  You will learn together, and turn your ideas into action.  Together, your patrol will achieve much more than each of you would on your own."  Boy Scouts of America, Boy Scout Handbook 13th Ed (2015)[emphasis added]

 

Patrols are  “. . . small groups of Scouts who camp together, cook together, play together, and learn together.” B.S.A., Scouting.org (2017)

 

“[The patrol members] interact in a small group outside the larger troop context, working together as a team and sharing the responsibility of making their patrol a success.” B.S.A., Scouting.org (2017)[emphasis added]

 

“Scouting happens in the context of a patrol.” B.S.A., Scoutmaster Position Specific Training (current syllabus)

 

“[The patrol is] the place where boys learn skills together, take on leadership responsibilities, perhaps for the first time . . . . ”    B.S.A. Scouting.org., (2014)(currently posted)

 

“Patrols are where Scouts learn citizenship at the most basic level. . . . ”  B.S.A., Scouting.org.  (2017)

 

“Patrols will sometimes join with other patrols to learn skills and complete advancement requirements.”  B.S.A., Scouting.org  (2017)[emphasis added]

 

“At other times they will compete against those same patrols in Scout skills and athletic competitions.”  B.S.A., Scouting.org, (2017)[emphasis added]

 

“A patrol takes pride in its identity, and the members strive to make their patrol the best it can be.”  B.S.A., Scouting.org (2017)
 

"Scouting offers what boys want: outdoor adventures, being with their friends….”

  B.S.A., Scouting.org, 2017

 

“[T]hey self-select [into patrols] and they are friends….”    B.S.A., Scouting blog, 2015

 

“Again, although the Scoutmaster may often advise with the Patrol leader and his Patrol

concerning new recruits, the admission of a new boy to the Patrol should be with the

approval of the Patrol members.”    Hillcourt, William, Scouting, September, 1930 at

 p.  244 [emphasis added]

 

“In a Troop in which the boys are shuffled together at frequent intervals and dealt out into new Patrols according to the whim of the Scoutmaster, there obviously can be little opportunity for the development of Patrol morale and Patrol traditions.”  Hillcourt, William, The Patrol Method, B.S.A.  (1930) at p. 10.

And who was "Bill"?  Reasonably important:

Bronze Wolf -  the highest award of the World Organization of the Scouting Movement.

Silver Buffalo - BSA’s highest award.  His citation calls him “The Voice of Scouting.”

Acclaimed “Scoutmaster to the World”  by the Journal of  Scouting History and the World Organization of the Scouting Movement.

Recognized in 1985 by BSA, through Scouting magazine, as “the foremost influence on development of the Boy Scouting program.”

Author of The Patrol Method (1930).

 

If we see that the patrol is the team that plays the "game of scouting" and the troop as the "league" in which some of the game is played, then we also see that the troop exists for the administrative convenience of the patrols that make up the troop, and not visa-versa..

 

[Eagledad]

2 hours ago, Stosh said:

And it is the adults that subdivide the boys into patrols so they can control them better.

Or give the Scouts more control.

 

Barry

[David CO]

2 hours ago, TAHAWK said:

 

If we see that the patrol is the team that plays the "game of scouting" and the troop as the "league" in which some of the game is played, then we also see that the troop exists for the administrative convenience of the patrols that make up the troop, and not visa-versa..

 

 

No, the troop does not exist for the administrative convenience of the patrols. The troop exists because a Chartered Organization generously chose to offer a scouting program to its boys. The CO owns the troop.

 

From the way you talk, one might suppose that a group of patrols get together and decided to charter a troop for their mutual administrative convenience. You completely ignore the Chartered Organization.

 

Those who seek to minimize the role of the troop are also out to diminish the important role of the Chartered Organization which owns the troop. I don't agree with that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TAHAWK]

Sure, says who?   Well, whoever wrote the words that I quoted.  Just them.

 

Any question that a CO can and may charter a troop without deciding who is in each patrol?   If a group wants to be a patrol, you could let them be a patrol.  They don't join to meet your organizational goals, or BSA's.  They want to have fun with friends. 

 

Many troops start with one patrol.  Patrols grow, shrink, merge, split, die - but it is supposed to be their choice in Boy Scouting, according to BSA and the guy who invented what we call the Patrol Method.  Any adult Scouter should be able to influence the result without the Scouts feeling they were treated disparately.

 

Yes, I know you believe the CO can decide the program is largely anything it wants and ignore virtually anything it does not like because it "owns" the troop, and you dismiss as functionally meaningless the written contract in which the CO promises that it will follow BSA program.  No need to quote them again, right?  That reasoning led CO's to allow the first gay Scouts and Scouters.  Then entire councils decided likewise and announced they were not following national on "morally straight."   

 

Making up your own version of Scouting is cool when it's what you want, but the other guy (or gal) may have different ideas.  We had a local troop, with the COR's approval, simply reporting MBs as earned "because the boys deserved them."   We have had numerous troops that just WILL NOT allow the Scouts to elect leaders ("They always pick the wrong ones.").  They get away with it.  We had a Distinguished Scoutmaster  make up his own TT-F advancement requirements for eleven years because he didn't agree with changes BSA made.  IAnd he had Scouts continue to do the RORs ater National went to TC BORs.  There were "open secrets."  (Our DE attended a couple of the Scout BORs.)  The COR absolutely approved, having total confidence in the SMHe retired after twenty-five years as SM. Then there was, "No Scout should be allowed to receive Eagle until he is sixteen.  This child was only fifteen."  That troop got reversed on appeal more than once (Lost every appeal on that issue.), but the troop went on for years  under the same Key Three, fiddling with advancement.  BSA, we are told by Council, keeps saying all commissioned Scouters must be trained or they can't register in the position for which they are untrained, but it never gets enforced.  Metrics.

 

But SHAZAMM! We had three female Boy Scouts active in a couple of troops in 1990.  Seemed OK to all the registered adults in those troops.  No one squealed.  Then a secretary at the Service Center wondered if Scout "Jean" on an Advancement Report was the CC's daughter, Jean.  Was.  Woops!  Consistent with the CO's program, it was argued.  Great Boy scouts, these girls, it was said.   Through clean out at that troop, every single registered adult went, all made easier because the CO head, it was officially decided, had been left out of the loop, so the CO was allowed to recharter.  But the clean out was coming will he, nil he.  An alternate CO was identified and agreed to sign up. 

BSA will swallow a lot to count that registered troop on its rolls., even when, for example, National knows of a troop that has added to the advancement requirements.   Funny peculiar what is tolerated and what trips the blade.  You know then you hear the "THUNK!"

 

 

[David CO]

That was quite a rant.

 

I don't mind the rant, but I really wish you wouldn't put words into my mouth.

[TAHAWK]

David, I apologize if I remember incorrectly, but are you not the guy who said his troop in Chicagoland chartered to a Catholic church prohibits service projects until the Scout has completed Confirmation, making Confirmation a precondition for all advancement with a service requirement?  And when a National employee replied to my inquiry (no unit number given) with the truism that no one other that National can add or subtract to advancement requirement and when, further, I quoted the charter form language committing the CO to following BSA program, was not your response that the CO owns the unit and, thus, could add to the requirements as you had described.  I honestly do not think it was another poster.

 

What words did I "put in your mouth"?  You are certainly free to extract them, with the assistance of anyone else here who feels inclined.

 

Perhaps you limited the "owner's" prerogative in some way I missed.  As a Merit Badge Counselor, among other things, and Council appeal committee member, we are so relentlessly pounded with "Add nothing; subtract nothing" that it seems relatively inviolate.  

 

 

And I have been informed that we had semi-coed Exploring within traditional Scouting  briefly starting in 1969 ("Explorer Participants") and full coed in 1971, until about half the members were female by 1990. In 1998, worksite-based career education program Exploring was moved outside BSA to learning for Life and the rest of what had been Exploring moved to Venturing.  So forty-eight years of female members - "semi."

[RememberSchiff]

3 hours ago, TAHAWK said:

What words did I "put in your mouth"?  You are certainly free to extract them, with the assistance of anyone else here who feels inclined.

 

With the new software is there still a 1 hour time limit on members for editing your posts?

 

If you need moderator assistance let us know. 

 

 

[qwazse]

I, for one, joined a troop, and was assigned a patrol.

It happened to be the same one of the scout who recruited me (best scout I ever met, aged out at 2nd class rank).

it was an excellent patrol IMHO.

But, its name was not on the youth application for membership.

 

It's flag was not posted beside the US flag at meetings. Nor was it carried in parades. PL's reported their attendance to the SPL, and SPL reported their attendance to the SM or CD with no mention of patrol names.

 

When I was up first staring at ashes, my SPL didn't tell me to wake my PL, he showed me how to light the fire from coals. Did it ever since (well, until the kids started mustering before I did).

 

To assert that either exists for the administrative convenience of the other is folly.

 

[David CO]

6 hours ago, TAHAWK said:

David, I apologize if I remember incorrectly, but are you not the guy who said his troop in Chicagoland chartered to a Catholic church prohibits service projects until the Scout has completed Confirmation, making Confirmation a precondition for all advancement with a service requirement?  

 

 

Yes, I remember that. You were misquoting me then, much like the way you are misquoting me now. You seem to make a habit of it.

 

[NJCubScouter]

Please stop arguing over who did what or who said what and just discuss the issues.

[TAHAWK]

If this be folly, make the most of it.

 

“The Patrol is the unit of Scouting always, whether for work or for play, for discipline or for duty.”

                Baden-Powell

“Make the Patrol the unit ALWAYS, in and out, through thick and thin, for better and worse in victory and defeat, in games and on hikes, and in camp.”

             Hillcourt, William, Handbook for Scoutmasters, B.S.A.(1936)

“ Scouting happens in the context of a patrol.”

            B.S.A., Scoutmaster Position Specific Training (current syllabus)

“The Troop is the sum of its Patrols.”

          Hillcourt, William, Handbook for Patrol Leaders,  B.S.A.  (1950)