The Patrol Method Does NOT Work Because....

[Venividi]

Great point on ad-hoc patrols. If you think of it it is usually because an adult doesn't want to haul another patrol box or something for a 2 or 3 guys. They almost never work or are fun. I suppose it might be different if the boys came up with the idea themselves.

 

Tampa, My experience hasn't been that ad-hoc patrols are the result of adults not wanting to haul another patrol box; that is a small bit of work, and may likely be in a troop trailer anyway (in troops that have trailers).

 

Rather, both scouts and adults see logic in combining patrols. Scouts see it as logical and combine patrols because as you say, its not as fun with 2 or 3 scouts, plus the camp chores are divided among fewer people.

 

Adults see it as logical because a) 6 - 8 is the number that has been learned in training, though perhaps without the understanding of the trade-offs when combining patrols, and/or b)all patrols camp adjacent to each other anyway, and/or c) they have made a priority call (consiously or unconsiously), on where to spend their scouting time; i.e., they may be fully consumed with advising SPL on other issues, conducting SM conferences, doing committee tasks if the committee isn't doing them, etc. Probably many other reasons as well.(This message has been edited by venividi)

[Eagle92]

Another reason I've seen merged patrols is b/c the camporee events require a certain number of scouts for events.

 

I admit I do have mixed emotions on this. While it is obvious on the benefit of merging, esp if a patrol would otherwise be disqualified from participating. But it doesn't help over all.

 

EXAMPLE, when I was a patrol leader, all of the scouts in the patrol came form the same school except for me and another Scout. When we had a competition we had to merge with another patrol in order to compete b/c that school had a mandatory Saturday function.

 

BUT on another campout, with the same problem, we had a two man patrol. Were there challenges, yep, but the two of us worked it out, and ragged on the others a wee bit in good natured fun. We both knew that the rest of the patrol would rather be camping than in school.

[Tampa Turtle]

Venividi,

 

Well we load em up from the HUT to the trailer. But I have seen some very successful campouts with just 2-3 guys in a patrol. There really isn't that much work with that many guys and they usually bond better. The ad-hoc seems to get muddled as to who was bringing what and sometimes there is some intra-patrol tension.

[Tampa Turtle]

-Because leaders have not been trained.

 

-Adult leaders were never scouts.

 

-Adult leaders, who either missed scouts or want to re-live their scout days, want to be man-scouts.

 

-(Some) Adult Leaders are tin-plated dictators with a god/messiah complex.

[Twocubdad]

Well...... if they would go to Wood Badge and listen to the sessions on team development, they would understand why ad hoc patrols are such a bad idea.

 

One reason our troop no longer participates in the district camporees was their refusal to adjust the camporee rules to accommodate out natural patrols. Interestingly, the folks who were preaching to me the need to combine and/or split patrols for their camporee either were or have since been WB course directors responsible for teaching the very principles their rules violated.

 

It would seem obvious to me, but one thing districts and councils should be doing is making sure their programs support the patrol method or AT LEAST don't actively work against it.

 

Back to your list, E92:

 

-- Too many boys are just lazy. They really don't want to put the work and effort into running patrol activities. They've know if they sit on their butts long enough some adult will step up and put on acceptably interesting programs with little or no effort on their parts.

 

-- If the adults don't put on really exciting, interesting programs the boys will drop out of Scouting (my committee chairman has told me this a number of times.)

 

-- The older Scouts may be working hard to lead the group and plan interesting programs and outings, but if they come up short, the younger boys are the ones who suffer through crummy programs.

[Jay K]

Actual quotes:

"We don't run our pack like you run your Troop KAOS" (sic.)

"How do you make boys lead themselves?"

>Wow! that one still gets me...

"How can you get anything done?"

>Sometimes, we DON'T!

"How dare you criticize my boy's leadership?"

>IT's my job as Scoutmaster!

"We aren't coming back until the meetings are less chaotic."

>'Bye!

[Stosh]

 

This discussion brings back a lot of discussions I have had over the past 15 years.

 

1) "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." This assumes that the current process is correct. This dovetails very nicely into, "Well, that's the way we have always done it." And that isn't a correct assumption either. "Traditions" come and go. Too often what one is experiencing the past few years has somewhat worked, but it's not the way it has always been done. What if it could be better? Is that ever an option to consider? For a lot of people who want the status quo to continue, the answer is always an emphatic YES, but they don't have any valid reasons to support it.

 

2)"Kids don't know what they want", "Kids can't make decisions", "Kids..." etc. etc. What is being said here is that the adults don't really think these scouts are really smart enough to figure it out on their own. The assumption is that they are basically not trainable until they get older, more mature, etc. To set very low expectations for these boys insures their "success" and of course a nice pat on the self-esteem.

 

3)Failure on the part of the boys is directly translated as failure on the part of the adult leaders. This is the chaos thingy at meetings. No adult is going to be a failure if they can help it and will take over the reins to insure it. Each Eagle notch on their gun handle is the leader's source of reassurance of their success. Look at it as a nice pat on the self-esteem of the adult leadership.

 

4) What would happen if the boys got so good they didn't need the SM/ASM's anymore? See the reference to how this applies to parents in an earlier post. I always look forward to the day when my scouts say to me, "Mr. S. you can come along, but you have to be the grubmaster this time around, that's the only opening we have for this activity."

 

5) Most adults who are not ego-centric are usually very helping, well-meaning in their volunteering efforts and will always be the first to jump in and help a struggling scout. That's difficult to let the boys learn the hard lessons of life. It runs against every grain of my being, but I know it is best that I hold back and give each boy his opportunity to make it on his own. I can only make opportunities, I can't do it for him if I ever expect him to truly lead.

 

Only in the PM do I see any hope for those opportunities to be made available to the boys. Remember up and until they get into scouts they have been told what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and how often to do it. A natural leader may have figured it out, but they are not all that common in today's world. Instead they are masters of following, but have NO IDEA what it means to lead. The model they have seen is the bossy adults! What a lesson we have laid out for them to follow. The PM offers them the correct way to lead and be successful!

 

It may be the only chance many of these boys will ever get to see what real leadership is all about and the best environment is the small group patrol of their friends. There they can safely experiment and try out things to discover what their leadership style in life is going to be. "Bummer, fell on your face? What did you learn? What are you going to do differently next time?" That's mentoring, guiding, but NOT directing them in leadership.

 

These boys aren't stupid, give them the opportunity AND TIME to prove it!

 

Stosh(This message has been edited by jblake47)(This message has been edited by jblake47)

[CricketEagle]

Boy, this is a topic that can make my blood boil and is right on spot for a meeting I have today.

 

Patrol method can work very well...except..

 

In response to Tampa Turtle (TT hit the good points)

 

-Because leaders have not been trained...But even training does not make a good adult leader. It sure helps, but there has to be an ability to lead and instruct. Many lectures on EDGE method can't help if the adult is not apt to understand that part of the learning/growing process is to allow mistakes. (when safety not effected)...coach and help the boys grow..point out the good with the bad!.

 

-Adult leaders were never scouts.(or if they were, kinda forget all the small mistakes they made along the way...or that maybe someone pointed them in the right direct.)

 

-Adult leaders, who either missed scouts or want to re-live their scout days, want to be man-scouts. (spot on!!!, you can guide, but it really is for them, ditto for those trying to re-live there youth glory footbal days through the kids etc etc)

 

-(Some) Adult Leaders are tin-plated dictators with a god/messiah complex. (Oh yea, been there..)..adults leaders that block boys dreams..adults that YELL, knit-pick, rather than coach and guide.

 

 

May I add...

 

- parents that were never scouts (and expect cub scout treatment).

- parents that don't understand that it is more than just about "Your kid", it it is the 30 or 40 other boys as well

- adult leaders that live in "fear" of made up rules

- adult leaders that criize the boys for poor organizational skills, when the adults are often no better or worse.

 

Now off to a meeting with my COR to head off a possible revolt partly based on the exact topic here.

[Kudu]

The Patrol Method does NOT work because training excludes any mention of what Green Bar Bill called a "Real" Patrol.

 

CricketEagle writes:

 

Many lectures on EDGE method can't help if the adult is not apt to understand that part of the learning/growing process is to allow mistakes.

 

It bears repeating that our national office manager experts removed the Patrol Leader and ANY description of a working Patrol from the "Patrol Method" presentation of Scoutmaster specific training, and replaced them with a lecture on the EDGE success formula.

 

With Patrols and Patrol Leaders safely sanitized out of the "Patrol Method" presentation, the national training committee invented a new FAKE Baden-Powell quote that suggests that the Patrol Method is the way to "operate a Boy Scout Troop."

 

In case you missed that, it adds "Boy Scout Troop" again at the end of the FAKE quote.

 

Oh, and the FAKE Baden-Powell quote is signed "Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting," just so you understand the importance the Troop Method (doing everything as a whole Troop) is to office manager success formulas.

 

So ad hoc Patrols are a good thing.

 

That's right.

 

I said it.

 

Ad hoc Patrols are a good thing.

 

If your Troop is adult-run and focused like a laser-beam on adding Eagle to the resumes of indoor Cub Scout survivors who hate camping,

 

AND you want your "Real" Scouts to experience what Green Bar Bill meant by a "Real" Patrol,

 

AND what Baden-Powell "the founder of Scouting" meant by "Patrols,"

 

THEN ad hoc backpacking Patrols are the way to go.

 

Backpacking gets rid of all the Paper Eagle candidates!

 

We used ad hoc Patrols this weekend:

 

Our Long-Trekkers Patrol of six Scouts (an exclusive--by invitation only--group of jocks)

 

See:

 

 

decided Saturday morning to head in the opposite direction as the rest of the Troop, so as to spend more time getting to the same destination: The Canoe Base at McGregor Smith Scout Reservation.

 

They ran into a dead end at Shinn Ditch, waist deep alligator-infested swamp water (which didn't look so formidable on the map), so they plotted a new course. They camped in what appeared to be an Indian burial ground on land dug up by wild hogs, with the north end of Shinn Ditch between them and the adult Patrol, out of sight, out of mind.

 

The Short-Trekkers of only four Scouts this time (nerds and misfits too noisy for the jocks)

 

See:

 

 

hiked without adult supervision for the first time. It was also their first time cooking over gasoline backpacking stoves without adults or older Scouts supervising -- they managed to tip over their spaghetti pot only two times! They also camped a football field away from the other Patrols.

 

The Long-Trekkers hosted a campfire, the first time everybody got together. I took advantage of their Indian burial Patrol site to tell a violent ghost story about zombie office managers who wear beads around their necks and pursue Boy Scouts through the Florida swamps in order to teach them indoor success formulas.

 

At the end of the tale I was met with hushed silence, very unusual for this crowd.

 

Today at Thorns & Roses, however, they clapped at the mention of the ghost story and asked me to prepare a new tale for the next campout.

 

Yours at 300 feet,

 

Kudu

http://kudu.net

(This message has been edited by kudu)

[BartHumphries]

Nice, Kudu, we'll get there.

[Eamonn]

Think it's worth saying that the Patrol method is a goal.

When everything comes together and it works that's great but a lot of the time there are reasons why it is a work in progress.

 

"Youth Led". "Boy Led". Call it what you will can and does work only after the leaders(Youth and adult.) Understand and grasp why it should work and how it can be made work.

Old fogies like myself are known to harp on about: "Train Them, Trust Them, Let Them Lead". But sometimes don't stress the importance of the first part "Train Them."

 

I like food, I like to eat! I'm a great cook and most of the time I can enjoy cooking. I'm interested in eating and have the skills needed to come up with a nice meal.

Still all too often the conversation in our house tends to go something like:

HWMBO asks "What do you want for dinner?" I reply "What have you got?" This leads to a great deal of silliness, her telling me that I know what we have, me saying that I don't and we end up having chicken. - Again.

SM's need to do what they can to set the youth leaders up for successes: Ensure that they have the skills needed to perform the tasks that they will encounter. Try to ensure that whatever it is that is being done is something that interests the majority of the Scouts and if needed provide options that combat the deer caught in the head-lights look when Scouts are asked "What do you want to do?"

Just about every Scout needs new challenges and excitement in order to keep him coming back. At time a PLC will need to be nudged into doing something new instead of the same old same old.

 

One big challenge for the adults is allowing what will happen to happen.

As adults we tend to have a vision of what the completed project will look like or what we want it to look like. It can be hard to stand by and watch as Scouts don't perform or do the project to our expectations.

The temptation to rush in and fix everything is great, allowing them to work things out and maybe not ending up with the end product that we expected is hard.

 

All adults who work with Scouts need to remind themselves that they have two ears and one mouth.

Taking the time to listen to P/L's and youth leaders, learning to ask open ended questions and not offer solutions or jump in will most times result in the Scout working out what he wanted to know by himself.

Once or twice a year the SM should take a look at what he or she has done at the PLC?

Look long and hard at what is really happening.

When I was a new leader I thought I was using the Patrol method, but when I took a close look, all I was doing was using the PLC as a messenger service. I was telling the P/L's what was going on and what was happening and they were carrying the message back to the Patrols.

There were times when I looked that I saw that I was acting like a coach. Again the PLC was not running the Troop they were just playing along to my playbook. -There were times when this was what was needed. - The trick is knowing when the time has come that it's no longer needed.

 

There are some wonderful Troops in the area where I live that just don't use the Patrol method they never have and as long as the guys who are in leadership position are around and taking new leaders under their wing. -Never will.

I'm not exactly sure what it is they are doing? Or how they go about getting it done?

I do think that they might be cheating the Scouts out of something? But it would be 100% wrong of me to point the finger or put them down for the way they do things.

Sure it's not the way I'd do it, but it works for them.

I have to admit the smug way some leaders have of bad mouthing others who do things a little different than maybe they might do them along with the guys who want to bash others over the head with quotations from BP (Be they real or not1) to me is just very un-scout-like.

Eamonn.

[Eagledad]

>>Independence and self-confidence in a teenager is a major threat to parents in today's world. If my boy grows up to be independent and self-confident, he may leave home and make a life of his own. Seriously, there are a lot of parents that can't handle that idea.

[OldGreyEagle]

I do not beleive Kudu ever said that it was easy to teaach/train patrol leaders to take his patrol off without adults, only that Green Bill Bill's prescribed training in the Patrol Method was the best approach

 

I think, if wrong I am sure it will be pointed out

 

Note also, that to have a Patrol Outing in the "Old Days" it did require the patrol to develop a plan, submit to the scoutmaster who then either approved or turned the request. Its not like the BSA ever promoted the idea of a untrained kids flocking into the woods unsuoervised

[Stosh]

Going off into the woods unsupervised is the final test of all they learned, not the first step of seeing what they can do.

 

It's kinda like taking an aptitude test to see what kind of musical instrument you MAY be capable of learning. Then the training and practice starts.

 

However, with that being said, what's the point of purchasing an instrument, practicing your butt off for many years, getting very proficient and then never having a concert?

 

">>Independence and self-confidence in a teenager is a major threat to parents in today's world. If my boy grows up to be independent and self-confident, he may leave home and make a life of his own. Seriously, there are a lot of parents that can't handle that idea.

[Eagledad]

>>However, with that being said, what's the point of purchasing an instrument, practicing your butt off for many years, getting very proficient and then never having a concert?