Scoutmaster Podcast 172

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And now to your Scoutmaster. You know, whoever said where there's smoke there's fire likely had never gone camping with my scouts.

Hey, this is podcast number 172.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. The mailbag is just absolutely jam-packed.

So let's get right to it, shall we? Here's the messages that you've sent me, and if you're listening and you'd like to get in touch, you can email me at Clark C-L-A-R-K-E at scoutmastercgcom. Mike Arliss wrote in and he said: I enjoy reading your blog. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for getting in touch.

Keith Palki is with Troop 11 in Juneau, Alaska, And he said: Clark, I really like your infographics but I don't have access to a good color printer. I'd like to have them for troop meetings.

Are they available for purchase anywhere? No, Keith, unfortunately they're not. There's got to be a copy center or something there with a decent color printer, and you can also always just print them out in black and white. You can do that. Greg Gotcher is Cubmaster with Troop 372 in Waterford, Wisconsin, And he wrote in to say I came across your site a few weeks ago and I've downloaded all the podcasts onto my mobile device and have listened to all my trips to and from work. Just really love them.

Thanks, Greg, Glad to hear you're listening. I'm glad you're enjoying things.

I think we accompany a lot of people to and from work, So if you're headed in the morning or headed home in the afternoon, I hope you have a good day or had a good day. How about that?

Tracy Lucas is with Scout Troop 2379 in Canyon Country, California, And she wrote in to say this: you've been our partner on this long and winding journey, So I thought I'd update you just a little bit. Over the past several years, even before my husband Dave became our Scoutmaster, our troop endured kind of a split.

Some parents laughed because they didn't like the way scouting was going in our troop And we did lose a couple of leaders who were more interested in their own personal scouting experience than in serving the boys. At last year's summer camp we only had nine scouts go, but we had a vision and faith in the program to watch these scouts go to camp and have their own experience and figure things out on their own Soon.

After that we welcomed two new families through scouts talking to their friends, And then this spring we had five Webelos and their parents crossover from Cub Scouts. Our new guys are having fun and they've invited their friends as well. This year we'll have 17 scouts go to camp and five adults will be accompanying them. Thank you for being a source of encouragement, advice and for being our Monday morning inspiration.

Before the challenge of a Tuesday night meeting, A scouting family that we have known for many years chose to join our troop. This week, When they visited the troop, their two sons found the scouts were planning meetings and future trips and setting advancement goals, something that had been missing from their scouting experience. When one mentioned something he wanted to do, all of our scouts tried to work it into the calendar. He was shocked both at the willingness of the Patrol Leaders Council to do this and that it could even happen in the first place. You're right. When the scouts own the program, they find it much more exciting and interesting.

I just thought I'd let you know and to say thanks and also to encourage everyone listening that it may take time, sometimes years, as it did in our case- but it's worth it when we get to watch the scouts do for themselves. Well, thanks so much, Tracy. We've emailed back and forth a few times. I sure appreciate your words of support and thanks and your encouragement to your fellow scouters.

You know, sometimes it takes a long time to make things happen, but after a while it does pay off. Roger Eakins is in Tule, Utah, and he said: I'm a scribe on a wood badge course and I'd love to include your 15 thoughts for Scout Leaders Infographic in the Gazette. Of course I'd give you credit to you in your blog. Please let me know if this is okay. Absolutely, Roger. Feel free to use it.

I appreciate it when people do and everything we produce is to advance scouting and it's freely offered Anything that we have- the podcasts, the videos, any of the posts, the infographics, anything. Feel free to use them however you like, and all's we ask is that you let people know where you found them. If you keep up with scouting online, you probably know who Frank Maynard is. Frank Maynard is a longtime committee chairman who blogs at bobwhiteblathercom and he wrote in to say this: your advice in podcast number 171, that was our last podcast folks for Jeff and Oxnard, who thought his troop may have too much adult involvement on scout campouts was great. New parents do tend to get confused and the notion that scout camping is anything like the parent and son camping they did in Cub Scouts really kind of needs to be erased as soon as possible.

Most parents do relate well to the concept of sports team organization and dynamics. It's something they can understand. There is a difference, though, in that coaches in sports teams usually have a lot more control over what happens. They run the drills, they call the place, select players and things like that. And in scouting and a Scoutmaster's job is really quite different. He helps those processes but he's only mentoring the team captain or the senior patrol leader and he's not really directly involved in calling the shots while the game is being played.

It's kind of difficult for an adult scout leader, especially one with coaching experience, to realize and embrace the difference between sports and scouting. In that regard, Of course, training is important, and boy scout leader fast start training and the Scoutmaster specific training gives everyone a better understanding of scouting as a whole, The differences between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and the role of adults in a troop. And once we're trained we've got to agree to follow the program.

We can't go through training and later decide it just won't work that way and invent some alternate reality form of scouting for ourselves. You're exactly right, Frank. Thanks for your words of encouragement there.

And you know folks get over and look at bobwhiteblathercom. Go read what Frank has to say. He's spot on and he has some wonderful advice for scouters. Dave Klein wrote in to say this: I'm standing in Costco with a giant smile and teary eyes listening to your last podcast and your piece about Mother's Day. Thanks, Dave, I'm glad you enjoyed that. Ray Britton is a Scoutmaster with Troop 42 and he's a Scoutmaster.

And he's a Scoutmaster and he's a Scoutmaster. And he's a Scoutmaster with Troop 42 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He says after years I still love your podcast. I discovered it near the beginning and look forward to every installment. That is something I can say about few podcast, TV shows or magazines. Thanks for all you do for us scouters who are kind of lost in the wilderness out there.

Count me as a Scoutmaster CG disciple. Keep up the outstanding work. Enjoyed the scout circle presentation last night and I am tempted to join you in Switzerland next year. Thanks, Ray, I really appreciate your words of encouragement there. Scout Circle is a monthly live presentation we've been doing this year and it's coming along. It's working pretty good.

Try to do a live monthly presentation online and you'll discover that it's not quite so easy as it sounds, But anyway, over at scoutcircleorg you can see the presentation that Arlan Ward and I recorded last night. I was actually the guest this time talking about Kondersteg International Scout Center, the trip that our troop took over there in 2011 and the trip that we are planning for 2014.. If you're listening and you would like to have a really wonderful experience for your scouts, go check out last night's presentation on scoutcircleorg. You can learn a little something about Kondersteg International Scout Center and how we arrange our trips and everything like that, and hopefully it will encourage you to take a look into making such a trip for your troop or your venture crew.

Bob Case is with troop 61 in Corning, New York, and he said: I want to say thank you, Clark, for reading my article on bullying last week and thank you, Bob, for offering it. As everybody knows, this is a constant, ongoing concern for all of us something we want to watch for.

We want to create a culture in scouting that is bully free. Once again, thanks, Bob, for your contribution to that. Sherry writes another interesting blog that I just discovered this week. It's cubscoutideascom. Cubscoutideas- all one word dot com, Sherry said. You made me tear up a little bit when I read your piece about Scout Mother's Day.

I have two Cub Scouts who just finished his Tiger year and one who just finished Webelos one. My husband and I have been den leader since the oldest started in Cub Scouts.

When I think that this is his last year until he's a Boy Scout, it's very bittersweet. He says he wants to earn his Eagle rank and I hope he does. Then I'll be the mom fumbling around with pins and wiping tears away. I just discovered your site and I'm anxious to read more of your posts, thanks.

Thank you so much, Sherry. I'm glad you enjoyed that. It's great to be involved in Scouting and I really appreciate the information that you've put out there for Cub Scout leaders at cubscoutideascom. And thanks for being in touch. Check out our YouTube channel.

Last week we posted a video review of the Brunton Restore Solar Battery Charger, which is, you know, 10 years ago was a product that probably didn't exist. I got one from our sponsors and I got a chance to kick the tires and use it some. And if you're interested in a device that you can carry with you and will charge your mobile devices while you're out camping or traveling, take a look at that video and make sure to check out our YouTube channel. It's scoutmastercg over on YouTube.

So this podcast is being recorded on May 20, 2013, and it has been my habit on the blog and in podcasts to stay away from debatable questions of religion and politics and things like that, but unless you've been living under a rock for these past few months, you are aware the Boy Scouts of America, our Scouting organization, has undertaken a lengthy and thorough examination of its membership standards. After this review, our national executive board has drafted a membership standards resolution that will be voted on on Thursday, May 23, at the BSA annual meeting. There's approximately 1400 voting members representing 265 local councils nationwide, and they're going to vote on a resolution that, in short, removes the stipulation that youth members can be excluded from membership in the BSA based solely on their sexual orientation. In this podcast, we're going to spend a little bit of time discussing this issue and sharing with you some of the information that the BSA has published for the voting members.

The reason that I am choosing to discuss this now is that I think that this is a historic moment in the history of the BSA. Now, when I broach this subject on the blog or on the podcast, it is clear everyone listening- and everyone reading is not necessarily going to be in agreement with my opinions or with the opinions of our national executive committee. The BSA has prepared a voting member information packet that's available as a pdf file.

If you'll go to scoutmastercgcom, you'll find the post that I'm referring to and I'll make sure to link it to this podcast so that you can go and read that packet yourself if you like, and it describes the voting process and includes the findings of the membership standards review. Now, in addition to that membership information packet, our national president, Wayne Perry, and a member of the national executive committee, Nathan Rosenberg, and our chief scout executive, Wayne Brock, hosted an in-depth discussion of the BSA's membership standards resolution back at the end of April and they recorded this discussion and it is available for viewing. You'll find that video at scoutmastercgcom. We're all aware that this membership standards review is a historic effort on the part of the BSA. No matter where you come down on this, you can certainly say thank you to the people who put their hearts and minds and thousands of volunteer hours into this process in an honest desire to do their best for our scouts. We all owe them our appreciation.

The presentation that I'm speaking of- the video presentation- is a long one- it lasts about an hour- but it's worth your time. What I found particularly interesting was a narrative of what happened at the meeting of the committee assembled to draft the membership resolution, and this was related by our national executive committee vice president for human resources. His name is Lyle Knight. He said that, whatever your personal opinion might be, someone who was working on this resolution shared your opinion. If you'll go and listen to that video and listen to our national leaders, you're soon going to understand. We're going to be choosing one of two paths: we're going to choose to change our membership standards or we're going to choose to maintain them as they are right now.

There's a slide that was shared on the video that I've been talking about that kind of describes what happens if we change and what happens if we don't change. Basically, what happens if the membership policy changes is it's projected we're going to experience an initial decline in membership of around 15% in both youth and adult members. We're going to probably experience a significant financial loss nationally and we'll possibly lose a significant number of chartered partners. That's a very sobering reality, isn't it, and I know that it's causing us a lot of angst and sadness and distress. As sobering as the projected results changing the membership policy is, the projected results of not changing it is probably even more dire.

The BSA has lost nearly 30% of our membership over the past dozen or so years. I'm sure that there are many reasons for that. I know personally, at least in our council.

We can attribute a lot of this membership stagnation and this loss of membership to the current policy. That's not going to be true in every part of the country and I understand that. But I can tell you from my own experience and the reactions that we get when we're recruiting for Cub Scouts that this policy is a barrier to participation for a number of people that we talk to.

So not changing this membership policy means that we're probably going to continue to see this loss of membership and see it accelerate. We're going to see a continued erosion of financial support and, I think, an accelerated marginalization of the BSA.

So on the one hand, we know that there's an immediate loss and an immediate result from changing the policy, but the long-term results of not changing it are even worse than the immediate results of changing it. But it's still enough to think that if we change this membership policy it will immediately open the floodgates and result in a significant increase in membership. Perhaps the best case scenario is that our rate of loss slows down. Perhaps we'll see that loss level out and we may see a modest increase over the next several years. I do agree with what our national executive board has projected: the BSA is going to be a significantly smaller and significantly less relevant organization to the vast majority of American families in years to come.

So I do join the members of our national executive board in calling on support for the resolution and, beyond that, a spirit of cooperation. No matter what happens this Thursday, we're going to see some of our valuable adult volunteers and chartering organizations decide that they can no longer identify themselves with the BSA. That is tragic and it's unfortunate. I can understand the depth of emotion involved in that kind of decision and I've had discussions via email with people who are really feeling this and are really having an internal struggle with it.

Despite all the wrangling and all the discussion and all the assumptions that our national leadership, over and over again in their deliberations on this, has emphasized, their actions are in response to one single concern: what is the best course of action for our scouts? I believe they're earnestly trying to provide the best answer that they can.

I believe that's a question that all of us have to answer: how do we best serve our scouts whenever? To answer that question to the best of my ability. Any responsible volunteer is endeavoring to answer that question to the best of their ability.

On this particular issue, we'll reach different conclusions, but we ought to be able to find a way forward that really is the best solution for all of the scouts we're serving now and all of the scouts that we can potentially serve in the future. Looking at the history of scouting and reading what our founder, Robert Baden-Powell, had to say about it can help us look forward a bit. After scouting was founded, it quickly spread around the world, just spontaneously. Baden-Powell wrote this about those years: he said scouting was not a year old before other countries had formed their own branches. Outside training has spread to 42 different countries around the world and has proved its potentiality as a factor in world peace.

Now, at that time, some urged Baden-Powell that this spontaneous growth was probably not a great idea. You need to stop and control this and patent your idea so that other people in other countries can't just pick it up and start using it. It's an exclusive movement and it's going to become diluted and diminished when people in other countries start using it. You should have some control over that. They may not get it right. It's too unstable and too uncertain just to let it go.

I think Baden-Powell sensed that this spontaneous growth of scouting was not really dangerous and it didn't threaten to dilute scouting and make it something that he didn't intend it to be. I think that he saw that this spontaneity and the diversity that resulted from it would in fact become one of the greatest and strongest things about scouting.

I think his vision evolved. He was a military man and he incorporated a lot of militaristic ideas into scouting. As scouting started to spread through the world, he saw it as a vehicle for world peace. Baden-Powell would call the first international scout gathering in 1920 the first reunion of the world's boyhood in the aftermath of World War I. After 10 days of camping and working together in Olympia, London, the scouts of more than 20 nations met with Baden-Powell and they asked him to make this appeal. At the end of what would become known as the first world jamboree, he said this: brother scouts, I ask you to make a solemn choice.

Differences exist between people of the world in thought and temperament. This jamboree has taught us that, with mutual give and take, under a common ideal, sympathy and harmony are established. If it be your will, therefore, let us endeavor to develop amongst our boys such comradeship, through the world wide scout spirit of brotherhood, that peace and good will may henceforth reign among men.

Are you willing to join me in this high enterprise? And the scouts that heard this appeal responded overwhelmingly yes, we will. In writing about this momentous occasion, Baden-Powell quoted the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote: it's through brotherhood and not through organization that the world should be ordered. We are citizens of the kingdom of ideas. There will be men large enough to see the human race as a whole and who understand that the good of the community as a family does exist. Baden-Powell added to this, if we reflect that we are all members of the human family and we're only here on this earth for a short span of life, we realize that the petty differences and fighting for little selfish ends are out of place in the creator's scheme.

Tagore's thought and Baden-Powell's word described the promise of scouting very simply: we can all get along with each other if we try. Some scouts in a patrol may want one thing for dinner while they're camping and someone another thing.

What do they do? They discuss and they debate and they arrive at a decision.

That really kind of seemingly insignificant decision made by a bunch of boys is something that is going to echo throughout their lives and throughout the world, with the message: we can get along with each other if we try, scouting spread spontaneously. And only then was it clothed in the garments of tradition and policy and rules and regulations. If organizations grow too inflexible and arthritic to suit the vitality of the ideas that created them, they have to renew themselves, they have to change or they're going to crumble and fall.

Now, naturally, not everybody is invigorated and energized by change. There are those of us, in every successive generation in human history, who, on reaching a certain age, think that the world has become worse somehow.

But I think really. I think our best days are ahead. I wouldn't exchange the time that we're living in, with all its problems and difficulties, for any era in the past. I don't think there's any perfect place for us to return to in the past and I don't think there's any ideal future ahead.

I think what we have is we have now, and I think that we're called on to be leaders right now. The scouting idea grows despite us.

We can't hold it back, no matter how hard we try. In these past few months, we've all been caught up in working to define the future of the Boy Scouts of America.

We've argued, we've debated, we've listened and talked and now a decision is going to be made. The decision is just a start.

Whatever is decided, you know some of us are going to disagree and some of us may leave. Change and innovation are uncertain and dynamic and unpredictable elements. They challenge us, they upset us, but we ought to welcome the idea of change and we ought to work hard to see what's next. The scouting idea will continue on to change the world one scout at a time. Baden Powell's appeal nearly a century ago at that first world jamboree is still alive to us today. Let us therefore endeavor to develop amongst our scouts such comradeship, through the worldwide scout spirit of brotherhood, that peace and goodwill can henceforth reign among men.

Are you willing to join this high enterprise? We can all get along if we try.

We can all make this work, wherever we end up at the end of this week, let's resolve this, that we're going to roll up our sleeves and we're going to endeavor to work together in the best way possible to serve our scouts, because that's the point of all of this, isn't it? We can all get along if we try