Scoutmaster Podcast 17

And now, to you, Scoutmaster.

Remember Smokey the Bear and the commercials that used to be on TV when we were kids? You know, only you can prevent forest fires and how just one careless match could burn down a whole forest. So, if I ever met Smokey, I would ask him, how is it that one careless match can burn down a whole forest, but it takes a whole box of matches to start a campfire?

Answer me that, Mr. Smokey Bear. Hey, this is podcast number 17.

So, welcome back to the Scoutmaster's podcast. This is Clarke Green. On this podcast, in Scoutmastership, in seven minutes or less, we're going to talk about some ways to retain older Scouts. Always an important subject.

And then, a historic recording from a little-known radio show about Brick Mason, the Scoutmaster superhero. I don't know if you ever listened to that when you were a kid, but I found some old historic recordings. Later on today, I'm going to be recording an interview with David Scott, who is one of the authors of a new book that's coming out this June called The Scouting Party. And what it is, it's a very thorough historical study of three personalities that were involved in the founding of the BSA. Baden Powell, Ernest Thompson-Seaton, and Dan Beard. And it's a really interesting history. And it's not just a history, but there's a lot of things that we can learn about Scouting and that we can use as we go forward into our next hundred years. David's done a marvelous job of putting this book together.

I have an advanced copy of it, and I've been very interested to read it. So, hopefully, that interview will be on the next edition of the Scoutmasters podcast. But there's plenty for us to do today.

So, let's get started.

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. Someday soon, we're going to sit down with the troop and we're going to do a little bit of a membership assessment survey. We're going to see how many scouts we brought in and how many scouts we lost.

It's been a particularly active year in that wise. We've brought in about 16 new scouts to a troop of about 35, which is a pretty big bump. And I know of at least five that we're going to lose this year.

And the reason that we're losing them is they are too old. Yeah, they're turning 18 and they can't be Boy Scouts anymore. Most of them are headed off to college. A couple might be hanging around the house for a little while, so we might be able to work with them as adult leaders. But it'll be a sad time. So, here's a question.

How do we retain older scouts? How do we keep their interest? This is a big deal sometimes. If you put a few scoutmasters in a room, eventually they will start talking.

It's a surprise. But the subject will come down to, you know, how do we keep our older boys engaged and interested? How do we keep from losing our 15, 16-year-old scouts to car keys and girlfriends and things like that?

A lot of troops do struggle with that. Not everyone has that problem. Here's what generally, to my mind, keeps older scouts interested. For one, they run their troop. They have real, uncoerced, and independent responsibility for the welfare of the troops program. They own their own triumphs and their own failures. This makes for an endlessly interesting and engaging involvement for a guy who's 15, 16, 17 years old. They really enjoy that. They're encouraged and supported by the adult leadership, but from a respectful distance.

They're not nannied. They're not helicoptered. The adults accept that mistakes are inevitable. You have to have a bit of serendipity to understand that, you know, not every mistake is a punishable crime. We're on the side of the boys, right? We're on the side of our scouts. We don't want to punish them for making mistakes. We want to encourage them through them.

You know, you have to let older scouts be teenagers. Teenagers. Now, never at the risk of propriety or safety. Teenagers do really strange, unpredictable, and downright hilarious things at times. I mean, let's see. Let me see if I can give you a roster of interesting things. Purple hair, green hair, I think red hair.

The affectation of some of the goth, you know, type of stuff. The studded wristbands, the strange necklaces, the funny hats. Believe it or not, a monocle.

I don't know where he found it. I had a guy who wore a monocle around. Do you remember being a teenager? They do crazy stuff like that. There's a hundred little quirks, and you might raise an eyebrow to it, and you might wonder.

But I'm going to save my energy for more important battles. If a guy shows up and, you know, he wants to express himself in that particular way, I am going to work along with him rather than, you know, tell him to go get his hair cut or to stop dying at purple or whatever. So a lot of these things are attitude, right?

And not the attitude of the scouts, but the attitude of the adults that are working with them. I mean, you have to be a realist. And if you look at the glass, it should always be half full.

We have to accept that a boy of 15, 16 is not going to make every single outing or every single meeting. We need to encourage them to participate in a number of things in their community and show some interest out there.

You know, I will have, oh, maybe one out of four or five guys who all they do is scouts. The other ones are involved in everything. They're in marching band. They're in AP courses.

They're, you know, in the Future Business Leaders of America. They're in the school play. Well, if I start harping on them about not being at my meetings or on my campouts while they're doing other things, they're going to get disinterested very quickly. We cooperate with those things in the community.

We don't fight against them. We're not in competition with them. A healthy, strong, vibrant atmosphere of positive peer pressure is good. Positive peer pressure is good. You know, where we celebrate achievements and we minimize shortfalls.

And if that gets out into the troop, that's a fun place to be. It's an encouraging and affirming place to be. A real concern and care for the welfare of younger scouts has really got to be the first priority within a troop. It's got to be something that is promulgated amongst the older boys and it will work.

There's no hazing. There's no cruelty. There's no bullying. It's not tolerated and it's not part of the culture of the troop. That keeps older boys interested.

Scoutmasters and their assistants, we can't nitpick the older scouts' decisions or offer much in the way of unsolicited advice. It gets tiresome for them. Older scouts need to have plenty of time to spend together. They'll always value the time they spent working with younger scouts, but they've got to have plenty of time with their peers.

They will find those times and if you can identify them, it's maybe of an evening when you're in camp. It's at the table with the patrol leader's council when you're not. They need to be able to associate with guys their own age and they need to work with younger scouts. And there's a balance there and it's not that hard to achieve.

Scouts, both old and young, in a troop that retains older scouts, are made to feel accepted, safe, and happy. These are general, attitudinal, underlying, broad concepts to what keep older boys involved in scouting.

They're treated with some respect, even when, you know, they come in with the purple hair. We have a realistic expectation of their involvement. We create a culture in the troop of concern for our younger scouts and we invest that in the older scouts.

They have real responsibility that's not coerced, that's not forced upon them, but it's something that they take upon themselves. And we make sure that everybody feels accepted, safe, and happy.

Older scouts will hang around. They really will. Try a few of those things and let me know how they work.

The time is marked by a lack of truth. The world turns to Rick Mason, Scoutmaster. Ah, and how is the Bison Patrol this fine evening? Ah, it's Buffalo, isn't it? Where? No, no, Mr. Mason, that's the name of our patrol. The Buffaloes? Oh.

Naturally. Yes. Hey, hey, don't forget you're having supper with us tonight, right, Mr. M? Ah, the vaporous essences emanating from the melange of meat and vegetables you are preparing has sharply piqued my assorience.

Yeah, okay. Hey, Johnny, how you doing? Hey. Wow, Mr. M. Hey, doesn't that stew smell great? Precisely. Jeez, I could eat a horse. Now, do I understand you to exercise a figure of speech?

Yeah. Or to express the intention to consume an actual equine? Hey, fellas, we better build the fire up a little bit, huh? What? Scouts, I fear I must tell you, you have fundamentally underestimated the volume of fuel required to raise the temperature of your comestibles and thus achieve a state of optimum edibility.

What? Get some more sticks. Hey, you guys, the stew's ready. Here you go, Mr. M. Ah, thank you. Ouchie, ouchie. You okay there, Mr. M.? Ouchie, ouchie, ouchie, ouch.

Yes, it seems the aluminum alloy of my mess kit was chosen for its ability to transfer heat to its exterior surface. Yeah, yeah, you gotta watch out. The stew was really hot and it was on the fire.

Join us again for another exciting episode in the career of Richard Mason. king of the scoutmaster. Okay. Boy Scouts! Boy Scouts!

Here's a recent email I received. We have an issue in our troop that I think is going to develop into a real dust-up if I don't step in promptly. We have formed an adult patrol to show the Scouts how they should be working together and show them also what they can do with camp cooking. We're not going to do lobster and prime rib, but we're not going to do oatmeal in a bag either. We have many adults that love cooking outside and want to bring all their gadgets to the outing. My committee chair wants us only to use troop equipment, even though many adults, me included, have purchased over the years all sorts of equipment to make our camping experience even more enjoyable.

My question is this. Is there any guidance from the BSA as to what the adults are allowed to bring on a campout, or is this strictly a troop-by-troop decision?

Well, I'm reading a lot between the lines here, and what I am seeing is I'm seeing a troop where the adults are going to take up two sides of a question, and they're going to start throwing policies back at one another.

I think that's a really bad idea. Instead of arguing this question, why not apply the scouting program to it, and let's see what we come up with. You know, look for the broad concepts of what scouting is to be and see if there's an answer there.

So let's start with the direct policy question. Is there any guidance from the BSA as to what adults are allowed to bring on a campout? Well, there's some lists in the Scoutmaster handbook of things that are suggested to bring. There's prohibition against bringing certain things.

But I don't know of any kind of a policy that you would turn to to kind of make a decision about how elaborate your camp gadgets are going to be. I do know the underlying principle that will help you solve this problem. I'm going to begin by saying patrols are not for adults.

Scouting? It's not for adults. Scouting is for boys. That's right. Did he just say scouting is not for adults? Yeah, that's what I said. Yeah, we go on backpacking trips and we go on hiking trips and we go on camping trips and things like that. But we have to maintain a respectable distance so that scouts can function as scouts.

And that their experience is not colored by a bunch of adults looking over their shoulders all the time. The main reason they want to do this, so the email says, is to show the scouts how they should be working together and show them just what they can do with camp cooking.

I got news for you. They don't have a whole lot of patience for it. Once in a while you come along and you have a real camp chef who really wants to do stuff up. But as far as they're concerned, for the most part, if you have a boy living in your household and he's 14 years old, 15 years old, meals are an impediment to doing something else.

Am I right? I mean, you want to get through that as fast as you can and you want to move on. Well, wait a minute. We're supposed to teach them how to cook outside and things like that. Well, of course. But they're just going to be aggravated by an adult patrol who's constantly trying to show them what they should be doing.

They're going to be aggravated by the fact that the adult patrol has a bunch of gear that they can't even hope to have. And they're going to be aggravated by the fact that adults are transgressing on their playing field and trying to play.

I really don't think it's a good idea. Listen, I know, I know that a lot of troops have, you know, kind of an old goat patrol or a rocking chair patrol and things like that. And if you look, you can find patches for it and everything like that. But let's try and decide, answer the question, with the scout program itself, just look at some of the underlying concepts and see if that's a good idea.

Now, you would think with scouting being around for 100 years that somebody's tried this out before. Hey, we'll have an example patrol of adults and that'll show the boys what to do and that that would be a tremendously effective and wonderful way to go about it. Do you see that anywhere in the program?

Do you see it anywhere over the past 100 years of history with the program? I don't. I haven't seen it. I like to have fun and I like to pal around with my fellow adult leaders just as much as anybody.

But we're going to draw the line at kind of stepping onto the field and playing the same game that the scouts are. The response I received to that particular set of thoughts was that I don't know what the right answer is, but you've given me further food for thought.

Man, adults sure can screw up a good thing, no? Yeah, that's right. Most of my problems as a scoutmaster have come because adults, though good intentioned, nice folks, get the wrong ideas about things sometimes. And here's what I think the three major things are. They lose sight of the aims of scouting.

They try to make scouting easier or more fun for themselves. Or they assume scouting is even remotely about their participation in it. No. What are we there for?

What are we supposed to do? We're supposed to be there so scouts can go camping. We help them with administrative things. We keep the troop records and things like that. We do whatever they can't do. We lend the whole thing a little bit of continuity.

We do some training. We do some mentoring. You know, frankly, if adults won't go on outings because they can't tow along all their gadgets or be part of a patrol, I'm just as happy to have them stay home.

Now, that might seem a bit strong to you. I know a troop needs adults in order to operate. But 80% of the leadership in a well-run troop comes from the scouts.

And quite frankly, if you have the wrong idea about scouting, stay home. Now, I've devoted, you know, the greater part of my adult life in a great measure to making sure that scouting works in my troop. And I understand that there is a crucial role for adults to help out.

But at the same time, if we think it's all about us, if we think that we're going to form some kind of idealized patrol that is going to show scouts the way, then I think we need to go back and we just kind of need to quietly reexamine exactly why we're involved and what the goals of the program are.

And we need to stick with that. Let's put our energy into that. Do you want to bring along your gadgets? I really don't have a problem. I don't have a problem with that. But don't do it as an example for boys about what they should be doing.

Let them find their own way. Let them figure things out. Mentor. Guide. Help them discover. It's just a much more satisfying way of being involved in scouting as I've told you.