Scoutmaster Podcast 194

And now the old Scoutmaster, Humorist and author, Dave Berry, comes up with a good one every once in a while. He said this: it always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent. It sounds like Dave's been camping with us a couple of times.

Hey, this is podcast number 194.. Hey Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clark Greene. We got a lot lined up today. Let's take a look in the mailbag. Oh, we're on Stitchercom.

Did you know that you can access the podcast on any mobile device through Stitcher Smart Radio? I use that actually to listen to my own podcast and to other podcasts, And you can find out how to do that at Stitchercom. You'll find it in the Google App Store and you'll find it in the iTunes App Store too. Stitcher S-T-I-T-C-H-E-R- Stitcher Smart Radio. Over on Stitcher this past week, Tool, Matt, Tool, Matt left us a five star review. Thank you, Matt.

He said this is the best Scout Leaders podcast, sometimes funny, always useful sometimes. Oh, come on, If you're looking for tips to help you be a better Scouter, you found the right place. Thanks, Matt. Sure appreciate the kind words.

Rick Brown in Akron, Ohio with PAC 3015 and Troop 310, wrote in to ask: is there any way to download all of your podcasts? I'd like to download them all and listen to them while driving to work. Rick, you can do this by going to scoutmastercgcom.

Look for the link to the podcast archive and there you'll find you can download all of the past 193 editions of the podcast. Now, if you follow us on iTunes, you will note that finally, finally, I figured out how to get more than one podcast on iTunes.

I think there's the 10 past editions up there now. So we're on our way to fixing iTunes- Well, at least fixing our podcast on iTunes. But thanks for getting in touch, Rick, and I hope that helps. Carl Summer is with PAC 222 in Raleigh, North Carolina. He said this: I've started listening to the podcast In podcast one. There's this awesome arrangement of taps.

My brother's in a brass on some that would love to play this arrangement. Well, Carl boy, that's going back a while. That particular one you're talking about is called Taps for Maynard, Referring, of course, to Maynard Ferguson. It's pretty easy to find, actually, on the music service of your choice, Taps for Maynard.

Terry Dutton is with Troop 16 in Oak Park, Illinois, and he wrote in to say: I wanted to let you know I've turned your name into a verb. This weekend I was lucky enough to staff a Scoutmaster assistant Scoutmaster leader specific training course. Afterward I was talking with a fellow volunteer who's also a podcast listener. I mentioned to him that I did a lot of Clark greening during the training. Oh my, and they didn't throw you out on your ear.

Well, that's good, Terry. Specifically, when the discussion came to advancement, one leader said his scouts weren't motivated to sit down and work on requirements. I pointed out that our goal shouldn't be to do advancement but to do the Scout program, and advancement will follow as a natural outcome. The point hit home. I wanted you to know that your blog and podcast have had a positive impact on my work with Scouts and I'm happy to pass your influence on to others.

Thanks, Well, thank you, Terry. It's always heartening to know that people find all of this useful And, by the way, you hit that one right out of the park. Good for you. This Sunday, November 10, from nine to 10 pm Eastern Standard Time, is our November Scout Circle. Scout Circle is a live presentation where you can watch and you can also send in questions, And this time around this month we will be talking about the Weeblows to Scouts transition.

So go to scoutcircleorg and you'll be able to watch the presentation this Sunday, November 10, from nine to 10 pm Eastern Standard Time. So the blog's been a little quieter than usual because we're doing a lot of work behind the scenes. I will remind you yet again that I've got a new book due to be published within the next couple of weeks. It's already November, folks, and we're in the final throws of proofreading and referencing and all of the great stuff that has to happen when you put a book together. The book's called The Scouting Journey, and keep an eye open because soon we'll be able to do pre-orders for it. Part of this I'm going to do through the institution of a new backer program, And this will give you the opportunity to help us out here.

I'll tell you something: We've had a big uptick in the number of readers and listeners at scoutmastercgcom, which is great news. That great news is accompanied by the need to upgrade our services, And that upgrade means we spend more money.

And so keep your eyes open because within the next week or so, I'm going to roll out pre-orders for the new book and this backer program where you can become a scoutmastercgcom backer, And we've got some premiums and gifts set up for those folks who are willing to do that. Within the next week or two, we'll get all that published. Another reminder, and in tune with the kind of theme of this podcast: Before long- the first of this coming year, January 1, 2014,- the list of eagle-required merit badges is going to change slightly, with the addition of cooking as a required merit badge and the new sustainability merit badge as an alternative to environmental science.

Now I've got a post about this with an infographic at scoutmastercgcom. If you go to the website, you'll see in the upper left hand corner a little graphic: changes to eagle-required merit badges. Click on that for the full post and the infographic that accompanies it, Just to remind everybody about the change to eagle-required merit badges that is coming.

That doesn't happen very often and it might catch you unawares, So make sure to check that post out. In this podcast, we're going to answer a few questions about eagle-scout and we're going to start that in scoutmastership in seven minutes or less by discussing what actually makes an eagle-scout, And I've got a couple of email questions to answer that relate to the subject.

So let's get started, shall we? Yeah, I think we shall.

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. If a group of scouters get together and they're going to spend a few hours together on a camping trip or something like that, and they've got time to sit around and talk, that talk will eventually turn to the question of what makes an eagle-scout, And I am going to give you the answer. That's right. This often discussed, much debated question has one simple answer: What makes an eagle-scout is a scout completes the requirements issued by the Boy Scouts of America and is approved by a duly constituted board of review. That's what makes an eagle-scout. There's nothing more to it.

That is it. So what about this often discussed and argued qualities of an eagle-scout, like maturity and leadership ability and active service and all of those things? All of these are embodied in the requirements, but they aren't requirements in and of themselves.

So let's take a look at maturity first. There's quite a laundry list of things that indicate the maturity of an eagle candidate. If he's made it to a board of review for eagle-scout, that means he's had the following experiences: He's earned 21 merit badges at a minimum. He served a minimum of 16 months in a position of responsibility. He's been camping for a bare minimum of at least 24 nights. He's proposed, planned and carried out an eagle service project and he's had a minimum of seven scoutmaster conferences and five boards of review.

Now, it's theoretically possible that a scout could hoodwink all of his merit badge counselors, all the members of his boards of review and all the scouts and leaders who signed off on his advancement requirements and the scoutmaster at all of those scoutmaster conferences. It is theoretically possible that he could somehow surreptitiously convince them that he was a mature young man. But there are many theoretical possibilities in life and few of them are likely. There are heated arguments sometimes over the chronological age of an eagle candidate. Some people think he's too young, Some people think he's too old. It's not important.

You should know by now that age and maturity do not always go hand in hand. I mean, if you've been listening to these podcasts, that should be clear.

I'm older than you And oh well, you get the idea. How about leadership ability?

Well, to get to an eagle board of review, a scout has held positions of responsibility for a minimum of 16 months. He may have been a great leader, He may have been very responsible, He may have been somewhat less than the ideal leader and he may have been somewhat less than ideally responsible.

If he's skated by doing a lackluster job, that's not the fault of the candidate so much as a failure of the leadership that is supposed to be overseeing his work. 16 months is plenty of time to discuss and mentor and coach and cajole and encourage and train any scout. If he hasn't shown up, if he hasn't done what he's supposed to do and we haven't taken action, it's unconscionably unfair to ambush him and say that his tenure in a position of responsibility is not satisfactory.

How about active service? Well, how can a scout do the things that we've talked about without being actively involved in scouts? There's much more heat than light in most discussions about what it means to be active. I have the antidote for that. There's very specific guidance about this in the Guide to Advancement.

I'm not going to go into it now, but there's a three-level test for determining if a scout is active or not and the view from a thousand feet. On that test, it's determined that he's satisfied the expectations of his unit.

He's done, and then there are other alternatives if it is determined that somehow he has not satisfied the expectations of his unit. Check it out in the Guide to Advancement. It's very clear and it's very easy to follow.

What about the often stated undue influence of parents on an Eagle candidate? I've had the privilege of presenting more than 50 and somewhat less than 100 Eagle badges. To tell you the truth, I really lost count right around 40.. Of those scouts, of those somewhere between 50 and 100 scouts, two may have had more help from their parents than I would have liked, But it didn't devalue becoming an Eagle scout. It wasn't some tragic miscarriage of justice. I would have just liked those particular parents to back off for a little bit and let the poor scout breathe.

You know what I'm saying. It is theoretically possible that parents can step in and do all the work for the scout, write his proposals and his reports. It's a theoretical possibility but I've never seen it happen. I've seen parents be a little overheated about this, be a little over-involved about it kind of helicopter around. I wish they wouldn't, But to my lights it did not seriously impact the value of the process that the scout went through towards becoming an Eagle. Every scout who's ever earned the rank of Eagle did it individually and in the opinion of the people he was working with, he met the requirements at that time.

So right now we've had a million plus scouts become Eagle scouts throughout the history of the Boy Scouts of America And I will bet that in the case of at least half of them, someone thought they probably didn't deserve it, Or they were at least a little skeptical about whether or not that particular scout had achieved- really really achieved- becoming an Eagle scout. Our district advancement chair is an old scouting buddy of mine and he regularly gets phone calls or emails that cast doubts on the suitability of a particular Eagle candidate And his reply to the people who bring these concerns to him is that they can appear at the border review or they can prepare a letter to send to the border review. But he is not the messenger and he will certainly not permit anonymous accusations. He tells me that nine out of 10 people never follow up. They are never convinced enough to follow themselves and represent these concerns.

Now I've been around for a while but I can tell you, as a younger Scoutmaster I used to chase my tail about these things with just about every Eagle candidate. I used to look at the requirements and think that they were just too simple, that they should be tougher, that we should aim higher. We all have- we all have- some idealized conceptualization of what we think an Eagle scout would be. You have my ideal Eagle scout. You have your ideal Eagle scout.

I think it's better that we understand the wisdom of simple universal requirements that are applied on an individual basis, where the final say is left up to a border review. Who understand the award and make a final judgment? I'll talk about this in the answer to an email in a moment. I have a hobby about griping about the quality of the work a scout does since 1910.. We've been at it for a century. We've suspected that there are scouts getting away with something and that they have not risen to our idealized model.

But I have to tell you something: every Eagle award I've ever presented was created by the Boy Scouts of America. I never embroidered an Eagle insignia or hand forged an Eagle medal. It's not my award to protect unworthy opponents.

And finally, I think that there is way too much danks over the quote quality, unquote of Eagle Scouts, when what really needs attention is not the quality of work done by scouts but the quality of attitude, understanding and motivations of the adults that work with them. 10,, 9,, 8,, 7,, 6,, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, let's start the fun.

Email, that is folks. And here's an answer to one of your emails. This email came to me and the person in the Senate requested that I withhold their name, but they wrote to say this: I've thoroughly enjoyed your website and podcast. They were pointed out to me by a fellow scouter in my son's Cub Scout pack.

I think you provide a common sense of scouting that sometimes gets lost by well-meaning adults. I have been involved with scouting as an adult volunteer for the past seven years. I've been a den leader and assistant Cub Master and a Cub Master.

I'm now our pack committee chair. I also serve as the advancement chair for my older son's troop. I've tried to educate myself as much as I can with the training offered, both online and in person. I've been to many training events and Scout University and all that sort of thing. Recently, several Scouts in our troop completed the Eagle Scout rank. Several of us are beginning to form the opinion that some of the requirements are being signed off without being completed.

One Scout was three days away from his 18th birthday when I received a call from his Eagle Coach to get his Merit Badge record. As we've reviewed the records we found that he was one elective short. I was told a short time later that he was going to be doing the Sports Merit Badge. That very evening The Eagle Coach said he was going to sign up to be a Sports Merit Badge counselor.

Counsel the badge with the Scout that evening and then the Scout would bring me the blue card later on. And the Scout did deliver the blue card, signed by the new Merit Badge counselor and the Scoutmaster, later that evening. I did what I do with any Merit Badge card: I accepted it and I recorded it. I looked at the requirements for Sports Merit Badge and I doubt he could have completed all of the requirements in one meeting in one evening with a Merit Badge counselor. It bothered me for a day or two and I discussed it with our troop committee chair and made him aware of these concerns.

Here's what I'd like to know: What should I have done? What could I have done? This just doesn't sit right. It would be tragic if a Scout ran out of time, but if they didn't complete the requirements they don't earn the rank.

I think the Eagle Coach and our Scoutmaster kind of enabled this Scout and pencil whip to the requirements. I would value your opinion on the question. Thanks for your time and keep up the great work.

Well, first of all, thanks for the kind comments and, as always, I'm glad to hear folks find what I do useful. What you relate is a fairly familiar story, so let me offer you some advice that maybe can help you handle the situation.

First, to gain a little perspective: 99 times out of 100 things go well with advancement and Scouts roll right along with everything's done. Once in a while we run into situations like the ones that you described. Specifically, there's one way of parsing the sports merit badge requirements. For a Scout who's been active in a sport previously, that may have satisfied the counselor in one evening. I've seen this happen before. I don't think it's a proper interpretation of the requirements.

But I'm not the counselor. I didn't discuss this with the Scout and I didn't sign the blue card, and neither did you.

So you did what every responsible advancement chair should do. You accepted the blue card at face value, you registered the advancement, but at the same time you've got one eye open looking for the sort of thing that made you uncomfortable, And I think you probably understood that. You are in a position to correct the counselor or to question his signature, and I'm going to encourage you to be very happy about that. You aren't the arbiter of who did what and whether or not they should receive credit for it. That is up to the merit badge counselor or the person who signs any rank requirement. That signature is never questioned because that's how we handle an advancement system based on honor and trust.

If we started questioning every signature and retesting every requirement, we undermined this system of honor and trust. The problem with the system of honor and trust is that human beings are involved.

So every once in a while, you're going to have a good fifth suspicion that something has gone wrong If, after some thought, you are still convinced that something was shortcut or something wasn't proper. We don't argue with the merit badge counselor and we certainly don't penalize a scout because he was basically doing what he was told to do.

So in this case, you go to the folks who register merit badge counselors and you make them aware of this situation, and I would just note that calling on the telephone or having a face-to-face conversation is always preferable to emailing. Don't make emails out of these kinds of situations, because emails take on a life of their own. Talk to the person.

Tell the district or council advancement chairman exactly what you've told me in this email, but include the names and the dates, and then that puts the ball in their court where it belongs. They're the ones who certify merit badge counselors, not you.

So one cardinal rule is that scouts do not suffer from mistakes made by adults, because they have little control over what adults do. Hopefully, in the eventual resolution of the situation you're describing, the scout won't be made to suffer.

Now, as I mentioned earlier in this podcast, the day after the first Eagle Scout got his badge, someone somewhere started complaining about pencil whipping and shortcuts, and I'm going to tell you and everybody who's listening, in the best spirit of friendship and in the spirit of one who shares the same concerns, that that kind of attitude is not productive or helpful in the least. We scouters can make a hobby out of being preoccupied with things that go wrong and we form clubs of moaners and groaners, and I know this because I was the founding member of a couple. If there are serious problems with the advancement program in our troops, we start working towards correcting them. Scouters can form bad habits, just like anybody else, but these can be fixed with some training and counseling from a knowledgeable person, that makes a big difference. The attitude in which you do that is the spirit of a helpful brother rather than just a nitpicking.

Now, there's no accusation intended there. It's a tall order for anyone who finds something like this and finds it upsetting to maintain the right spirit and the right attitude. But you'll find if you do that, things get better faster.

So when it comes to advancement, we leave the judgment to the person who signs the requirement and any improprieties that come to light you address them by talking to the people who can actually do something about it. And then we go around shedding as much light as we can on the whole affair rather than cursing the darkness. I'll tell you, in my troop patrol leaders sign 99% of the advancement requirements up to first class. When I have a Scoutmasters conference I do a quick spot check on this. I'm not questioning signatures, I'm not retesting requirements. I just pick out a requirement at random and I ask a scout to describe to me how he got that requirement signed off.

Every so often- not commonly, but every so often- I'm dissatisfied with the answer that the scout gives me and I note who signed the requirement once the Scoutmasters conference is over, I go to the youth leader that signed the requirement. I ask him to describe to me exactly what happened and I encourage him to read the requirement very carefully. That moment of realization, that aha moment, usually follows when the scout who signs understands that maybe he didn't do it properly. I encourage him to do better. I may even ask if he thinks he should go over that particular requirement with the scout again, just to make sure that the scout really understands what's going on. I don't penalize the scout who had his book signed for somebody else's mistake.

That just wouldn't be fair. Now listen, I'm a nitpicker.

I get exercised and I see something out of line in my own troop, so I understand how uncomfortable this sort of thing can feel. Thankfully, after years of concentrated practice, I don't make a fool of myself more than once or twice a week now, so I truly hope that helps. The next email also makes it to the podcast anonymously and they wrote in to say this: we're a fairly new troop and we're still refining our understanding of positions.

As far as the Eagle application goes, what should each adult review before signing the Eagle application? Who reviews scout spirit, the scout oath ranks, merit badges, project references and all that.

Is it the Scoutmaster? Is it the committee chair, the district chair?

Do we all review everything or do each of us specialize? Well, actually it's very simple. If you look at the Eagle rank application, once the scouts completed the requirements, including the Scoutmasters conference, the application and you have the scout and the Scoutmaster in the committee chair sign it. You don't end up reviewing anything other than your advancement records to fill out the application. The folks at the Eagle border review take care of assessing the candidate. You're just supplying the information that they need to do that in a responsible manner.

Now I sent that answer to the author of the email and they replied with this: what if the committee chair thinks it's his job to assess scout spirit in active status and tells the scout they have to attend X number of meetings and Y number of outings and Z number of summer camps, or he's not going to sign the application? I thought this committee chair was strictly administrative, reviewing the accuracy of records and paperwork, but our committee chair seems to think he has a broader role.

Well, from time to time this sort of thing happens and frankly, it's a shame that an adult would do such a thing and in the case of this committee chair, I think a little training and a little study would help them better understand their role in the Eagle Scout process. If there's absolutely no reasoning with the committee chair, then the scout and his parents can request a border review under disputed circumstances. You find directions on how to do this in the Guide to Advancement 2013 in section everybody got their pencils ready- 8.0.3.2, entitled initiating an Eagle Scout border review under disputed circumstances.

Now, this is only available for the Eagle Scout rank. It's held at the district or council level and volunteers from the candidates unit are not involved.

If a unit leader or committee chair does not agree that a scout's met the requirements before a border review is held, you know, step one is they should meet with the scout- the scout's parents perhaps- and come to an understanding of all the viewpoints and see what they can work out. They should maybe talk to their district or council advancement chair to make sure that their expectations are not more than are actually required. But if that person remains unconvinced and they don't want to sign the Eagle Scout rank application, if that's the case, the application is returned to the scout or his parent or guardian and they write a letter that explains the circumstances and they request a border review under disputed circumstances. You attach that letter to the completed Eagle Scout application and you send it with the service project workbook to the council service center.

Now the council advancement chair or staff advisor or other designated volunteer notifies the unit leader and the unit committee that the request has been received and they guide the process through the council or district advancement committee according to the practices that have been established locally. That border review meets and the unit leader or committee chair is informed of their decision, and that's the way that that works. Border review under disputed circumstances should not be a routine procedure. It is there to resolve issues when a scout or their parents feel that they will not get a fair hearing from their own unit, and that may be the course of action that you need to take if it turns out that the situation you describe simply can't be resolved any other way. I hope that helps. And three is the charm when it comes to everything, including emails, which people do not want to have their names mentioned.

So this final email for today's podcast comes from someone who asks: I've been asked to help staff a council event that will teach scout skills for scouts through first class rank after being a file of your podcast for a long time. This kind of makes me uneasy. I can't find where such an event is prohibited in the guide to advancement, but to me this isn't in the spirit of the patrol method. Just having an event for a day where scouts learn a bunch of scout skills, with the obvious goal being that they're going to get them signed off, makes me feel a little queasy.

So I have three questions for you. Is this kind of thing permissible under BSA rules?

Do you think Baden Powell would approve of it, and how can I tactfully turn down the request for me to get involved with it? I don't know about the details of the proposed event, but if it's as you describe, I kind of agree with your assessment. For all its good intentions, I don't think it's consistent with the patrol method of youth leadership.

Advancement is something that happens naturally through applying the patrol system, you know, by just doing what scouts do. I don't think that we accomplish very much by holding events intended to check things off a list. If you separate the requirements from the patrol experience, you kind of take all the life out of them and you just end up with this list of things to do. Now. The guide to advancement doesn't prohibit every wrong headed approach. It describes the right way and leaves the rest to training and common sense.

When the guide to advancement describes the right approach, it says this: a scout advances from tender foot to eagle by doing things with his patrol and troop, with his leaders and on his own. A well rounded and active unit program that generates advancement as a natural outcome should take boys to first class in their first 12 to 18 months. It also says: a scout learns by doing and as he learns he grows in his ability to do his part as a member of the patrol and troop. As he develops knowledge and skill, he's asked to teach others, and this way he learns and develops leadership.

So it's not that we're looking for prohibitions, as much as you know, looking for the right way to go. Would Baden Powell approve of this?

Well, I haven't spoken to him in a long time, but I think it's pretty easy to tell what his attitude would be by reading what he's written. He said once: the patrol system is the one essential feature in which scout training differs from that of all other organizations. Where the system is properly applied, it is absolutely bound to bring success. It can't help itself. The formation of boys into patrols of six to eight and training them as separate units, each under their own responsible leader, is the key to a good troop. The patrol is the unit of scouting.

Always, whether for work, for play, for discipline or duty, an invaluable step in character training is to put responsibility onto the individual. This is immediately gained when a patrol leader becomes responsible for the command of his patrol. It is up to him to take hold of and develop the qualities of each scout in his patrol. It sounds a big order, but in practice it works. Baden Powell usually wrote about what works and he didn't describe every single practice. That wouldn't work.

But if we pay attention to what works, we don't have to worry about what doesn't. Now, how do you bow out of an invitation like this?

I think you tell the folks that ask you that your study and training tell you this really isn't the best road to go, that we don't gather scouts together in big herds and teach them skills that scouts learn and achieve in the context of the patrol. That a well rounded and active unit program that generates advancement as a natural outcome should take boys to first class in their first 12 to 18 months of membership. Let me tell you this: you've got a good eye and you played that well.

You've caught the spirit of scouting and, let's be honest, you really already knew the answer I was going to give you, didn't you? I'm happy to answer your email questions, and you can get in touch with me and we'll find out how to do that in just a moment.