Scoutmaster Podcast 177

And now it's the old Scoutmaster. If you haven't already been to summer camp this year, a couple of hints for you: Don't say these two things while you're at camp, please.

Could it rain any harder? Don't don't say that.

And and the other thing you don't want to say is: is it rain? It can't rain all the time.

Oh well, Hey, this is podcast number 177..

Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look in the mailbag. We heard from Michael Harrington. He is with troop 158 in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts And he wrote in to say this: in the last podcast you answered an email from someone who felt that the patrol method had its limitations. That email and your response to it was on target with an issue our troop has been through recently.

A group of nine Webelos crossed the road They've been through recently. A group of nine Webelos crossed over in February And before too long a few of the parents involved with that group decided that the patrol system just was not going to work. They wanted a rookie training camp for the new scouts. They wanted adults to be much more involved with what the whole troop was doing. And I explained that we had a troop guide and we had an assistant Scoutmaster who was looking after the new scouts to mentor them through. But they wanted something a lot more structured and a lot more adult involved.

I resisted and the upshot is they left The complaining adults, many of whom were former cub leaders, and one who was an Eagle Scout decided to join an adult led troop down the road from us. This made my fellow adult leaders here nervous And they wondered if we needed to have more adult involvement in planning, at meetings and on campouts. But I've got to tell you we're going to stick with the patrol method. We are going to train our youth leaders and let them lead their troop.

Well, good for you, Michael. Now, what you describe as a pretty rare occurrence, but every once in a while it's going to happen Nearly everybody. Once they get into a scout troop, especially if they've been working in cubs, it's going to have a little bit of an eye opener when it comes to working the patrol method and things like that. And we've talked about this many, many times. But good for you for standing up for your scouts.

You know, at that group that left, check in with them in a year or so, see if they're still in scouts. I'd be very curious to know about that. I've had similar things happen and they don't hang around for very long. Tony Florent wrote in on Facebook. He said: just found the podcast in the website.

Hey, Tony, come on, we've been here forever, right? But he said you guys rock.

Well, Tony, it's just me, but I'll. I'll take the compliment. James Chaplin is with crew 1833 down in Haymarket, Virginia. He said: I just got your book Thoughts on Scouting and I love it. It's right down my street in its short, simple ideas that hold great value. Being a Scoutmaster and being diagnosed with ADHD- That's why I can think like an 11 year old- you and me both, James, right, I am glued to it as I read on and I flip through the pages and I see a lot of Scoutmaster minutes and what you wrote, Both for troops and for my role as a trainer for future Scoutmasters.

I've been collecting this kind of thing for years and I'll be adding your thoughts to my collection. Well, thank you so much, James. I do appreciate it. And what James is talking about there is my book, That's right, a brand new book, Wow, with covers and pages and just like the grown ups have. It's called Thoughts on Scouting. If you go to scoutmastercgcom, you'll find out how to get a copy.

It's also available on Amazon, So you want to check that out. This is a summer podcast. We're taking it nice and light and easy.

I've got a couple of email questions to answer, And the first thing we're going to do, though, is in Scoutmaster ship, in seven minutes or less, we're going to talk about the main aim of scouting, So that's going to take up the rest of the entire podcast,

So let's get started, shall we Scoutmaster ship in seven minutes or less? In Baden Powell's writings, he talked about something called the main aim.

You know the point of it all, why we are in the business Right, Why? Why we do scouting, and aim, I think, is a particularly well chosen term, because I remember, ages ago, when I was a archery instructor at our scout camp. I learned pretty quickly that most scouts were not very interested in the beginning, not very interested in aiming really carefully or learning much about archery. What they wanted to do is they wanted to come down and grab arrows and a bow. They wanted to stand on the firing line and shoot as many arrows as possible into the target or near the target or just shoot an arrow, Right. I mean, that was the most exciting thing And that's what they wanted to do.

Now, after a while, I could convince them that if they would listen for a few minutes- that you know, and they calm down a bit, we'd go through the different steps of aiming, And if I remember correctly, in archery I think there's nine of them, And you know, nobody wants to hear. Well, you got to go through nine steps of this or that to really get good at this. But after a while, if you come down and you get patient, you begin to go through those steps and you begin to work your way through and you find out that just leveling the bow at the target and pulling the bow string back and releasing it is not going to get you very far. You have to go through the steps right.

You have to go through these different components of a good aim and then you become a pretty good shooter. So I think when we're involved in scouting as adults, it's kind of the same way.

It's such an exciting prospect to work with these boys and to get to go camping and all the skills and the badges and all this great stuff, And so you run right down to the firing line and you level the bow at the target, start shooting off arrows as quickly as you can, And pretty soon you find out. Well, I really don't have- I don't have- that much idea of what I'm doing.

So you may back off and you may study a little bit and get yourself trained and try and hone your skills and soon learn about what you do, So that our scouts get out of scouting what was intended for them to get out of scouting. And what is that, by the way?

Well, it's pretty simple. I mean, there's lots and lots of different ways to say it, but it's very, very simple, Just off the top of my head. I'm not even. I'm not reading anything I've written. The main aim of scouting is to make good people right, To make good, cooperative, active citizens who are compassionate, decent human beings who are going to be an asset to their family and their society and their culture. That's our aim.

Everything else is all just icing on the cake, It's all details and it's not the aim. Learning how to build a fire- okay, Let's just break that down for a moment.

Okay, Take one of these really massively important skills, or what we think is massively important. Learning how to build a campfire, okay, Well, we can send people off into adulthood having learned how to build a campfire and a hundred other really important scout skills, And, yeah, will they have benefited? Yeah, somewhat, but we haven't reached the main aim if that's all we send them with right.

So why are we out in the woods camping around? Why are we building campfires and things like that if our main aim is not that?

Well, because we know that the process of getting out into the woods to go camping are the process of building a campfire and cooking your food over it and setting up a tent and sleeping overnight in the woods and working with your patrol. We know that that process achieves the main aim.

So what should you be keeping your eye on as a scout leader? What should you be thinking about all the time? Think about what you're aiming at.

Now, when I was an archery instructor, I had a guy come down and those of you who are familiar with archery would know about traditional archery and there's a technique in archery called of aiming, an archery called the instinctive technique. It's not very scientific Basically, it's just kind of this Zen type thing where you center in on the center of the target and everything. And a young man come down with his traditional archery kit and he used the range and he was just drilling the center out of the archery target. And I talked to him and I said: tell me a little bit about this instinctive aiming technique.

I said what? Just walk me through it, Tell me what you're doing.

He says, well, there's an X in the middle of the target And I picture that X and I line up everything and I shoot for that X. I said what?

X in the middle of the target? And so we walk the 20 feet down to the targets and, yes, in the middle of this printed target was about a quarter inch tall X, a little black X, about a quarter of an inch tall. I had never really even seen it before and from 20 feet away I doubt anybody could see it, but he knew it was there.

I say that to say this: you're aiming at something that you can't necessarily see, but instinctively you know what it is, and that is to build a decent human being. After you've been through this for a few years, you're gonna have a better instincts, You're gonna have more experience, but just don't get hung up in all of the other things you know. Yes, when it's your turn to instruct, instruct effectively. When it's your turn to evaluate, evaluate effectively. When it's your turn to do any of the other things, do them effectively. But remember there's one aim, and one aim only, and that's what you need to concentrate on.

Once you do that, you stop getting frustrated, You stop getting caught up in the thousand little details and you start paying attention to the process, and that makes you a happier scouter, and happier scouters have happier scouts. We don't doubt about it. I wanna jump up and scream and shout it: Oh, get ready for uniform. Cause, baby, I was born to be a scout. Oh, cause, baby, I was born to be a whoop. Here comes the Scoutmaster driver.

John the scout will be a little faster. Stick on the gas.

Are we there yet? I wanna build a bridge for my eagle project. Find me a letter, send it by name. Email, that is, folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. We got an email from Scott Anderson, who is with a scout troop in Shoreview, Minnesota, And Scott says this first: wow And thank you. Stumbled onto your site and it's just filled with great info. Little overwhelming to find it all in one place. I stepped into the position of Scoutmaster about one year ago. The previous Scoutmaster had held the position for 22 years Now.

Those years of consistent leadership were very positive but, as you might imagine, they led to this kind of creeping influence of adult leaders and a little bit of stagnation. So, as a new Scoutmaster, I wanted to make some changes, Chiefly to restore the patrol method, And I'm getting some resistance from some of the old assistant Scoutmasters, some of the old guard, with having the senior patrol leader point positions of responsibility and sign off rank requirements. They think if we let scouts sign off on requirements they're just gonna let things slide. I don't agree.

I think that their peers are a little tougher on them than any adult would be. Reading through a little bit of your website, I was wondering what your take would be on those issues. Thanks again for publishing the website. I have spent untold hours researching this type of thing all over the web all we know to find it consolidated into one really useful site.

Well, Scott, thanks for your kind words and thanks for getting in touch. Sounds like, as a new Scoutmaster, you're making things happen, and good on you for that. You're right about the senior patrol leader. The senior patrol leader appoints the quarter master and the scribe and things like that. You know. Of course, the patrol leaders are elected by the scouts and their patrol And that's straight out of the Scoutmaster handbook.

So why anybody would be pushing you on that one, You know? I don't know what their beef would be about that.

And I think if you pointed out to them in the Scoutmaster handbook, maybe they'll change their minds. And if they don't change their minds, point it out to them and say this is what we're doing anyway and just move on ahead. Scouts signing requirements for other scouts- that's permitted to and it's good practice. I will tell you this: getting a requirement signed has nothing to do with anyone being tough or anyone letting somebody else slide by on something.

I mean, what is advancement all about Is: are we doing the whole advancement system because it's especially important that to the future, that our scouts know how to build campfires and tie knots? If that's all we had in mind, it would be kind of silly.

We use advancement because, as I just spoke about, it's a process through which our scouts grow into these decent people that we wanna make, who learn to think for themselves and then develop an internal standard of honor and service. The skills that we use as a part of this process are really nowhere near as important as the process itself. When scouts sign requirements for other scouts, think about the kind of processes that work there. Think about the interpersonal dynamics in play, the kind of judgment and responsibility being practiced, Something that is being denied to them if adults are the only ones allowed to sign off requirements. The skill and the level of skill isn't as important as the process of learning and testing and judgment and working with others. That's why scouts should be signing requirements.

I hope that helps, and good on you again, Scott, for being a good Scoutmaster and using the patrol method. Dawn is an adult volunteer with a scout troop in Virginia and she wrote in to ask: is it appropriate for Eagle Scoutmaster Conferences to be in the private home of the Scoutmaster? It just doesn't seem right to me.

Well, Dawn, thanks for getting in touch and kudos for recognizing a potentially bad situation. If you're an adult volunteer, you've been through youth protection and you hear that conferences are being held at the Scoutmaster's home and that may make you feel a little bit uneasy, and that uneasy feeling should direct you to make sure that things are above board and being done properly.

If you go and look at the youth protection guidelines, the simple answer to your question- is it appropriate for an Eagle Scoutmaster Conference to be held at the Scoutmaster's house? You know, the simple answer is yes, but there are some very important qualifications to that answer. Youth protection guidelines specify that there is never to be any one-on-one contact between an adult and a scout. One-on-one contact is defined as a discussion or a meeting or anything that is exclusively between an adult and a scout, not being observed or shared with a third person. If the scout is invited to the Scoutmaster's home and the Scoutmaster's family is at home- his wife or his children are at home, or the scout is accompanied by a parent or a fellow scout and the conversation takes place where it can be observed by others, It's within youth protection guidelines. If those conditions aren't present, then someone needs to report this to their council executive.

That's right. Just report it to the council executive, Who will do all the work that they are paid to do. At that point, If you don't know exactly what's going on, I'd encourage you to ask the scout or the Scoutmaster about this and assure yourself that youth protection is being followed. And that's a very simple question. If you're talking to the scout, say: I understand you visited Mr So-and-So's house for your Eagle Conference.

Can you tell me who was there And could you tell me where you had the Eagle Conference? Okay, and you can ask the Scoutmaster the same thing You can say. I heard John came over to your house.

Were you two the only people at your house or did he bring a buddy with him? I don't think that those are improper questions to ask. Good on you, Dawn, for having recognized a potentially dangerous situation, or just follow it through and check it up. Nobody should ever be offended by somebody asking those sorts of questions, because we're all committed to youth protection and to following youth protection guidelines. If you wanna get in touch with me, if you have a question for me, you can email me, and you're gonna find out how to do that in just a moment.