Membership Decline Reasons

[Eagle92]

LL,

Nope you are not an idiot, just an experienced scouter coming back to the fold and not seeing some of the changes. One problem is that the CSE is on the record stating that camping is not as important as it use to be. I'll use 2 GBB quotes, since he is the man who saved Scouting in the later 1970s to show otherwise

 

1. " Outing is three-fourths of Scouting." and #2 ' Outing is Scouting

 

When the top person no longer sees the importance of one of the foundations of the movement, to paraphrase one Eagle Scout, "Dallas, we have a problem."

 

Another problem is that the Patrol Method, the other foundation in Scouting is under attack. Part of that is training, youth and adults both are not getting enough of it. And if we add the parent factor as the CSE wants to add on campouts, per the record mentioned above, I see parents butting in and completely destroying the PM. Heck I know of parents who want their sons in sn adult led troops to avoid the "anachy" of a youth led program. What they don't realize, or want to realize, is that that's part of the leanrign process.

[silasm]

Eagle92, I don't doubt your accuracy, but do you have a cite for the CSE's statements? I would like to read them in context. Thanks.

[jhankins]

The Patrol Method isn't gone, and it never will be as long as dedicated leaders keep it alive and well. As a District Training Chair, it's within my prerogative (according to national) to shape trainings according to the needs of the learners. Great! During the Patrol Method presentation, we turned it into a real live troop election situation and had each patrol appoint each troop position by vote. It was a great period of storming with a new group of people, but the team development that occurred carried over into the rest of the three days of training and the teams came together really well!

 

It's exciting what happens when you blend the old with the new.

[LIBob]

Okay I'm not an idiot (I hve no idea why I wrote that).

 

My point is that

admittedly I am just now returning to scouting, but I don't see any direct line beween anything national has done (policy on gays, woodbadge, lack of emphasis on camping) that could possibly be leading to a decline in enrollment.

 

Given that the decline is almost exclusively among cubs scouts

and that smoewhat similar declines have occurred in both Canada and the UK I doubt I really really doubt it has anything to do with any policy from Irvington TX.

 

So far the biggest changes i see

- Scouting now has a "two deep" leadership requirement

- "Leave it better than you found it" has been repalced by "Leave No Trace."

- Skill Awards no longer exist.

- Scout uniforms etc. are sold in "Scout stores" not in JC Penny.

- There is now a computing MB and a disability awareness MB

- The hats have changed and scouts wear "troop T-shirts"

- Something called "tiger cubs" now exists

 

I could go on but the point is I am skeptical that the declince in CS enrollment is caused by anything in Irvington TX and I suspect it has to do with family life in the age of Gameboy.

 

 

[packsaddle]

"I could go on but the point is I am skeptical that the declince in CS enrollment is caused by anything in Irvington TX and I suspect it has to do with family life in the age of Gameboy."

From a Telosian viewpoint, they have their illusions and you have yours. You want theirs to be as pleasant.

[LIBob]

Telosian?

As in Aristotle or as in Dr. Who?

 

Anyway, I caoch little league baseball. the other coaches (and the parents) think of me as "old school" because I have the team stretch jog, and do calisthenics. On my tema and teh others if a kid breaks a sweat a bout one-third of the time Mom calls him over and fans him off, (no kidding.)

 

Kids are fatter today than before.

Air conditioning is ubiquitous.

Backyard swimming pools are common place.

You can do stuff on a Nintendo DSi you couldn't do on a desktop computer 15 years ago.

Church attendance is down.

Visits to national parks are down.

America has been at war ever since most of todays' Tenderfoots were in diapers.

The policies out of Irvington do not affect Canada or the UK.

 

Given the above I tend to think the decline in CS enrollment is a generational thing not an Irvington thing.

[LIBob]

Eagledad wrote:

I'm not sure how you say apples and oranges. IF the BSA suddenly looses half its membership to lets say the Campfire Kids, we would howling and discussing why. If the Canadian Scouts is loosing a large number of members to a new youth camping organization, that is pretty telling. Very telling. The Canadian Scouts only a few years ago was considered one of the best Youth Scouting Organizations in the World. Now in just a few short years it is struggling to survive.

 

First lesson for the BSA is to Learn from Canada and not duplicate their mistakes.

 

Barry

 

Obviously the steep decline in Canadian scouting is bothersome, but I get the impression (I have no numbers to provie it) that B-P Scouting is on the rise there.

 

Anyway I say it's apples-to-oranges because I cannot verify how many kids have quit scouting (ind Canada) vs. how many have simply switched to B-P scouting.

 

My feeling is this:

1, There used to be 1 million US boy scouts and today there are 900,000. That's kind of a shame.

 

It would be a much bigger shame if BSA "modernized" thus depriving those 900,000 of a "true" scouting experience.

[CPAMom]

My very limited observations based on 2 pack experiences. So, comments related to Cub Scouts.

 

(1) Lack of support by the father - If the dad does not see scouts as important, the kid is much less likely to continue on. As for sports, more dads are enthusiastic about the kid playing in sports. Shows up at every game, whoopin' and hollerin.' These dads are not showing up at every den meeting with this level of enthusiasm.

 

(2) Lack of good leadership at the den level - I've noticed that the dens in our current pack have pretty good retention if the den leader is halfway good. We've had quite the turnover of leaders at a couple levels, so those dens pretty much wash out.

[LIBob]

I can't disagree with you CPAMom, but I am not sure the things you mention have changed all that much in the past 12 years or so. (CS enrollment has been declining for roughly 12 years.

 

So while I am confident enthusaistic dads and good den leaders would probably cure the problem I am less certain enrollment declined because dads havely lost enthusiasm or because den leaders have stopped being good.

 

Eh, maybe Dad spends too much time on the internet.

[packsaddle]

LIBob, as in the greatest Star Trek episode ever (The Menagerie).

[Eagle92]

Silas,

Not a problem. Here are some quotes below. The link is

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#29491940

and it may not be working, as I tried it at work and it didn't. Ciould be filters though.

 

 

"Camping is not necessarily a big thing with them, as a matter of fact in some cases it is not big at all. So we need to kind of think about, is it more important that we reach that child with the kind of things we have for children and we have for families in character development and leadership skill growth and all of those things? Or is it more important that we get them in a tent next week? And so I think the answer to that is fairly obvious to us.

 

"...when we say 'we want to take your twelve-year-old son but you can't come' we're making a mistake there. We have to engage an entire family... For example one of our pilot programs over the last recent years has been Scouting and soccer..." (Chief Scout Executive Robert Mazzuca).

 

When I first heard about this, and saw the interview, I was shocked. While it is focused on the Hispanic community specifically, ti will have recpercussions throughout scouting. Scouting is a worldwide movement, with member associations throught the Hispanic world. Outing is Scouting no matter where you go.

 

[shortridge]

- Beavah wrote: "Da national office, to be honest, can be kind of depressing. Not the most healthy corporate culture. And the structure of the thing discourages a service-oriented philosophy. ... Thing of it is, there are some good folks in the pro and senior volunteer ranks, and quite a few fine folks. Da institutional structure just handicaps 'em badly."

 

What specifically is it about the institutional structure at National that makes things so bad? What is preventing a good SE or deputy assistant thingamajig for Boy Scout programming from launching a new, positive, good idea?

 

- Eagle 92 recapped the CSE's quotes. In reading them again, I was just struck by something that hadn't occurred to me before.

 

"... it more important that we reach that child ...

"... with the kind of things we have for children and we have for families ..."

"Or is it more important that we get them in a tent next week?"

"... when we say 'we want to take your twelve-year-old son but you can't come' ... "

 

I'm struck by the repetition there. The mindset being expressed there is that of someone running an outreach program, an outsider approaching a group, a person offering services or programs. Scouting, at its core, is not a community-center outreach program. It's supposed to be locally based, bubbling up from chartered organizations that want to make a difference in the lives of the youth of a community, and drawing on existing connections and networks - those things that are local, grassroots, organic, all those buzzwords.

 

I'm concerned that the "we ... them" mindset that the big boss is expressing is going to just lead to flash-in-the-pan initiatives that last as long as it takes the inner-city Scoutreach and Hispanic program coordinators to find better-paying jobs. That will surely lead to a dropoff in membership numbers down the road.

[Kudu]

jhankins writes:

 

And really? The exact same year Scoutcraft was removed from Wood Badge, there was a downturn in membership, and you can blame one year of training on this?

 

Wood Badge is the "Uniform Police" of Leadership Development. Leadership Development has been at war with Scoutcraft since 1965 when modern Wood Badge was invented. Scoutcraft is not just a "method" of Scouting, by law it is a fundamental aim of Scouting, as specified in our Congressional Charter:

 

Sec. 30902. Purposes

 

The purposes of the corporation are to promote, through organization, and cooperation with other agencies, the ability of boys to do things for themselves and others, to train them in scoutcraft, and to teach them patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred virtues, using the methods that were in common use by boy scouts on June 15, 1916.

 

Ironically, the Charter is the instrument that allows the BSA to block Baden-Powell Scouting associations from offering Americans the Scoutcraft program designed by Baden-Powell.

 

The BSA's rapid decline began in 1972 with the introduction of Leadership Development, along with Leadership Development's public ridicule of the source of Patrol ADVENTURE, Scoutcraft. The following dogma is typical:

 

In general, Patrol Leader training should concentrate on leadership skills rather than on Scoutcraft Skills. The Patrol will not rise and fall on the Patrol Leader's ability to cook, follow a map, or do first aid, but it very definitely depends on his leadership skill (Scoutmaster's Handbook [1972], page 155).

 

This hostility toward independent outdoor ADVENTURE was also reflected in the day-to-day program, in which ALL camping requirements were removed. In other words, any indoor boy could add Eagle to his business resume without ever attending a single campout.

 

Perhaps the business strategy was to replace camping ADVENTURE with easy Eagles. The current business strategy is to replace camping with soccer. And how are these soccer players going to get their Eagles if they hate camping?

 

jhankins writes:

 

I find no basis for that claim except a personal hatred of a training program.

 

A personal hatred of a training program, huh?

 

For those who have not taken Wood Badge, that statement is an ad hominem attack. "Oh, so you dare to explain how Wood Badge destroyed the Patrol Method as a source of ADVENTURE? Well, I do not have to use logic because I can pretend to understand your motivation."

 

If you want to learn this Wood Badge technique, simply Google "ad hominem." Here is the Wikipedia ULR:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

 

The use of ad hominem to defend the new Wood Badge was introduced in 1965 with the invention of leadership formulas. Note how Dr. John W. Larson (Director of Boy Scout Leader Training) uses a personal attack to defend his destruction of William Hillcourt's life-work, his hugely popular Scoutcraft Patrol Method:

 

Larson later reported, "He fought us all the way... He had a vested interest in what had been and resisted every change. I just told him to settle down, everything was going to be all right." Hillcourt presented an alternative to Larson's plan to incorporate leadership into Wood Badge. Chief Scout Brunton asked Larson to look at Hillcourt's plan, and Larson reported back that it was the same stuff, just reordered and rewritten. See:

 

http://www.whitestag.org/history/history.html

 

jhankins writes:

 

During the Patrol Method presentation, we turned it into a real live TROOP election situation and had each patrol appoint each TROOP position by vote. It was a great period of storming...[emphasis added].

 

Screw storming. Troop elections and Troop positions are the Troop Method, not the Patrol Method.

 

Among other things Leadership Development emasculated the Patrol Leaders by declaring that "The Patrol will not rise and fall on the Patrol Leader's ability to cook, follow a map, or do first aid," and then transferred responsibility for these ADVENTURE skills to a Troop Position that turns them into something that you check off a list for Advancement (same as ItOLS).

 

The Scoutcraft skills necessary to cook, follow a map, and do first aid are necessary for a Patrol Leader to lead a Patrol's independent ADVENTURE. But the Troop Method Troop Guides (along with Troop ASPLs) are appointed by the Troop SPL, with the power to vote against the Patrol Leaders in the Troop PLC.

 

The rest of the Scoutmaster-specific training course defines the Patrol Leader only in terms of the Troop Method (his role in the Troop PLC, for instance). If you do not want to follow the course outline, then you should use the "Patrol Method" presentation time to introduce individual Patrol ADVENTURE.

 

Simply separate the participants' Patrol campsites by Baden-Powell's minimum distance, and then use the Patrol Method presentation to explain how Patrols can function independently of the Troop.

 

Of course in both Baden-Powell's Patrol System and William Hillcourt's Patrol Method, the function of a Patrol was to seek ADVENTURE in individually-planned Patrol Hikes and extended hikes called Patrol Outings. Baden-Powell's minimum standard of 100 yards between Patrols on Troop campouts was merely practice for real Patrol Camping.

 

When I staff the Patrol Method presentation, I follow the course outline (which is about EDGE theory, not the Patrol Method), but I present unsupervised Patrol ADVENTURE as an example of an "Enabled" Patrol.

 

Silas,

 

The following link to the video is working today (in which the CSE announces a "major investment" in bilingual staff to attract --by the end of 2010-- 100,000 boys who do not like camping):

 

http://www.inquiry.net/leadership/sitting_side_by_side_with_adults.htm

 

Yours at 300 feet,

 

Kudu

 

 

[GKlose]

Some quick observations: I'm a "recently retired" district membership chair (due to a district "realignment") and I wish I could adequately describe how difficult that job was. Just as soon as fall roundups were over with, then came the "It's Not Too Late" campaign, boy scout recruiting, new units, Webelos to Scout transition, and then finally my DE said something along the lines of "what about Learning for Life?". What an overload of stuff, and it all adds up to either membership increase or (mostly) decline. With such an overload it is difficult to focus on a single area or two for improvement.

 

My DE didn't have the experience of attending 5 years worth of school committee meetings, and I didn't have any knowledge of what Learning for Life is all about. When he explained it to me, I'm thinking to myself that the BSA has no idea how to sell this program. It's like they are providing an after-school curriculum (at BSA rates!) and I don't know any school systems around here that have curricula money burning a hole in their pocket, that they couldn't better spend on refreshing the regular school curricula. In other words, my DE was asking for assistance in helping to sell a program that I don't think will sell.

 

He had a specific case where a school in a troubled district called him about an incorrigible, more or less, group of sixth graders. So he brought in LFL, and ran it him self for almost two years. No payment from the school, and when the school administrator was fired, the new administrator wanted nothing to do with the BSA. Kicked out the program. Two years for LFL, no payment, and an enrollment decline.

 

Personally, I don't think membership is going to stabilize until the BSA figures out what it really wants to do and focuses.

 

Guy

[BrentAllen]

I guess our area has chosen not to participate in the decline in Scouting membership. Our Pack is busting at the seams, at 135 boys. Our Troop continues to grow - we had a couple of 8th graders join us recently, bringing us up to 43 (we started with 6 boys in Sept. 2007). Other Troops in the area are growing as well, so we are not taking boys from them.

 

We had a great week in camp earlier this summer. 39 boys attended, earning 90 plus merit badges. 15 earned Swimming, 5 earned Lifesaving, 8 earned First Aid. 7 boys and 1 adult completed the Mile Swim program. We were the only Troop that cooked our meals in camp (brought our own food). The boys decide if they want to do this, and every year the sentiment gets stronger to do our own meals. Our SPL really grew into the position and did a great job running the Troop. We had some young PLs who struggled through the week, but they are getting there. I don't see how they would have made the same progress with their patrols if we had been eating in the dining hall.

 

I think we have the makings of a pretty good patrol method, boy-led Troop. Our oldest Scouts are still only 14, getting ready to start high school, so we still have some maturing to do. After reading Kudu's rant (for the millionth time), I guess we are really doomed - I have attended WB (2004) and I have staffed two courses (2007 & 2008), so according to Kudu, there is no hope for me. Alas, all is lost.