new Scout handbook info from PTC

[GernBlansten]

I poke fun at EDGE and WB because like most management seminars I've attended in my professional life, they use acronyms and lingo to re-package age old ideas and resell them as something revolutionary and exclusive to the program much to the awe of the attendees.

There's nothing wrong with EDGE, but to think its some new, innovative method to teach, well Duhhh! My daddy used to say, see one, do one, teach one. He didn't go to WB, take a management seminar or was even a boy scout. Just a humble butcher. But he knew EDGE. Just didn't have the fancy lingo.

[cardinal50]

It appears that many of the people who post here have a great amount of experience, training and education in a number of professional fields.It is great that they would share their vast knowledge of the proper way to present Scouting with those of us ordinary Joes who never went to college or had anyone to mentor us. I have a vision of what Scouting can do for our young men. I have employed the ideals of Scouting as my personal touchstone for conducting my life as an adult. I learned much from WB that I needed to know because I never had anyone to teach, mentor, or encourage me when I was young.

 

To those of you with MBA's and other assorted academic credentials and wise and gifted fathers, please remember that some of us were not so fortunate and that we might learn something useful from the Scout training you love to ridicule.

 

YIS

Dave

[evmori]

I'm with Gern. Coming up with a catchy acronym for a teaching method that has been around since the inception of Scouting and claiming it as the new way is bunk. That old time Scoutmaster has been using EDGE for a long time!

[Kudu]

John-in-KC writes:

 

I'm trying to figure out why your bitterness is so palpable, and you elect to share that bitterness in most every thread?

 

Anyone can get 2/3 of an auditorium of sixth grade boys (a tough audience by anyone's standards) to want to be a Boy Scout, if Scouting is presented as the rugged Patrol camping that existed before BSA millionaires invented Leadership Development. But to make us more "popular," Chief Scout Millionaire Robert Mazzuca has mounted a national campaign to replace camping with soccer.

 

Now why would anyone be bitter, John?

 

cardinal50 writes:

 

To those of you with MBA's ... we might learn something useful from the Scout training you love to ridicule.

 

To understand the value of an MBA, look at how much your retirement account was worth a year ago, and how much it is worth today. The difference between those two figures is what those who profit from your loss call "hype."

 

When we apply business hype to Scouting we take away the specialized training of Patrol Leaders (which was the life work of William Hillcourt), and in its place we teach them the same business manager theory hyped as "leadership" (the stuff like EDGE) that we give all the other PORs including great "leaders" like Buglers and Librarians. We dumb "leadership" down to the least common denominator. That is why teenage Boy Scouts are forced to camp close together like Cub Scouts.

 

Likewise the Patrol Method session in Scoutmaster-specific training never once mentions a Patrol Leader. Before Leadership Development was invented, the Patrol Leader was central to the Patrol Method. Neglecting the essentials and replacing them with theory is "hype."

 

You would have liked Wood Badge just as much if the subject matter had been the Patrol Method rather than business manager theory hyped as "leadership."

 

Kudu

 

[shortridge]

emb021 wrote: "Yes. Trainers EDGE is the new 'train the trainer' course for both youth and adult trainers. In fact, Trainers EDGE is a required course for the new National Youth Leadership Society for Venturers."

 

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I was wondering if it's part of the basic Scoutmaster/adult leader training curriculum, or just something taught in specialized courses - Trainers EDGE, Wood Badge, etc. - which not everyone takes.

 

If it's not integrated into the basic training program, I fail to see how it can be included as part of the basic Scouting rank requirements. Imagine a Scout turning to a Scoutmaster and inquiring: "What's this EDGE thing?" and the SM not having a clue.

 

John-in-KC -- My personal favorite presentation on that subject comes from one Col. Henry Blake. Come to think of it, there are a lot of similarities between MASH and several Scout troops I have known... ;-)

[Ohio_Scouter]

Hey, AIFansome, if you get a chance, could you check to see whether the new Philmont Field Manual is available at the Trading Post? When we were there in 2007, it was undergoing major revision and wasn't available. I'd like to order one when it does become available.

 

Thanks

[CNYScouter]

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I was wondering if it's part of the basic Scoutmaster/adult leader training curriculum, or just something taught in specialized courses - Trainers EDGE, Wood Badge, etc. - which not everyone takes.

 

If it's not integrated into the basic training program, I fail to see how it can be included as part of the basic Scouting rank requirements. Imagine a Scout turning to a Scoutmaster and inquiring: "What's this EDGE thing?" and the SM not having a clue.

 

In the latest SM/ASM Leader Specific training there is a section on how to use EDGE with a Troops youth leaders.

[emb021]

"Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I was wondering if it's part of the basic Scoutmaster/adult leader training curriculum, or just something taught in specialized courses - Trainers EDGE, Wood Badge, etc. - which not everyone takes.

 

"If it's not integrated into the basic training program, I fail to see how it can be included as part of the basic Scouting rank requirements. Imagine a Scout turning to a Scoutmaster and inquiring: "What's this EDGE thing?" and the SM not having a clue."

 

Someone already answered by adult basic training.

 

EDGE is also part of NYLT. Uncertain about TLT.

 

Trainers EDGE is intended for all people who staff training courses, both youth and adult, btw.

 

And just about everyone should be taking WB, including unit level scouters (SM & ASM), despite the comments of some...

 

 

[Hal_Crawford]

We just conducted a TLT and EDGE was definitely in there.

 

I don't have a problem with the concept, it isn't a bad teaching method but it seems a little too "flavor of the month" to enshrine in a Handbook that will probably be in print for 10+ years. When the folks at national get bored with that approach they will change the requirement but it will still be in the Handbook for another 5 or so years. IMHO they should have written the requirements to teach the skills but without referencing EDGE. The text could still present EDGE as a good training method but not necessarily the only method.

 

I think my bias in this regard comes from watching management methods with catchy acronyms come and go in my workplace. They never seem to have that long a lifespan.

[John-in-KC]

MBO-MBE-MBWA-OMM-MIC-KEY-MOUSE...

 

We now return you to Al's watching the PTC staff tonight do Home on the Range at closing program.

[skeptic]

I reviewed a link from a Scouts-L posting that gives an introduction to the new book. Like a dummy, I forgot to save the link, and I deleted it from my email. Maybe someone here saw it and was brighter. It was kind of interesting; included an index, and a few of the pages, as well as photos of the cover and so on.

 

Keeping my fingers crossed someone has it.

[Kudu]

You mean this?

 

http://www.pilandonline.com/BSHB_web/

[Eamonn]

cardinal50

Thank you.

Most of the SM's who serve in the District that is unlucky enough to have to put up with me don't have a college degree.

They still week in and week out turn up and do the best job they can for the kids they serve.

God Bless Them.

 

About 15 or 20 years back !! (Yipes!)There was a joke doing the rounds. If I remember correctly it went something like:

How many Scouter's does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: 13! One to change the bulb and 12 to hold a reflection about changing it!

Around that time it seemed that "Reflections" were very much the flavor of the month and Scout-leader Training's were full of anything and everything that had to do with reflections.

Those of us who were around then and those of us involved in training did make a big joke of it and poked fun at it all.

But aside from the jokes and the fun we found that these reflections weren't a bad thing and that they worked!

To this day I still use them and still think it's a good tool.

But like most tools, at the end of the day it becomes up to the person how much they are going to use it or how they are going to use it? I never seen my father use a wood chisel for anything other than opening paint cans, but he thought his paint can opener worked great!

EDGE does seem to be the new "Flavor of the month".

If we want we can sit around and pick holes in it. (I think that the Guided Discovery saved a lot of time as we didn't waste time teaching stuff that people already knew. EDGE doesn't seem to take that into account.)

My feelings are that we have been presented with something that really isn't that hard and given a chance will work.

 

Back when the 21st Century WB first came out, there was (maybe still in use? A VHS tape, on this tape the people who had developed the new course explained some of what they had done and why they had done it.

As I was preparing to present the course; which was not an easy task, being as it was new and my only real exposure to it had been one time staffing it, under a CD who really didn't get it with a Staff who wanted to pick holes in it! I tried to imagine which person from the tape had been responsible for what parts of the course. It was clear that different people had put together different parts of the course.

I know I was being a little unkind, but there was one Lady on the tape, who I took an instant dislike too!

On the tape she sat there with her laptop in hand, it seemed to me that she was reading her part from the computer screen.

Anything that I didn't like about the course I blamed her for!

I think that was all because of the laptop!

For me at that time laptops and scouting just didn't seem like where we should be at!

Don't tell anyone but within a year when the time came for the course, I brought two laptops with me!

Some of the course presentations and material were a little tough for some of the participants. I remember spending a very long time fighting with a slide that was supposed to show the Team Leadership . I couldn't make heads or tails of the graphics. I of course blamed the Lady with laptop in hand for that one!

Right now I'm smiling thinking about how uneasy John in KC, was the first time he had to deliver the "be healthy and wholesome Soldiers, don't patronize the local ladies of the night" lecture!

I bet that would have been fun to see!

Ea.

[John-in-KC]

It was far more fun being on the OP for a week, calling in fires, than it was giving that talk.

[skeptic]

Thanks Kudu; that is the link. Gives a bit of info anyway; will be interesting to see the whole thing.