Scoutmaster Podcast 285

I'm Chuck Wolf and I am an Assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 342 in Raleigh, North Carolina. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now for you, Scoutmaster- Little-known fact in British royal history: King Richard III ran a camping equipment store- It was the royal camping equipment store- right Right there in London, And every December he would put a big sign in the window that read: Now is the winter of our discount tents. Yep, that's all I got.

Hey, this is podcast number 285.. Hey, Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Oh my, let's take a look at the mailbag.

Oh, right over on Amazon We got a very kind review of my book- So Far, So Good- from Kendall Brown. He said I read this when it first came out and I loved it. I bought two copies, gave one away to a fellow scouter, the second one to other Assistant Scoutmasters in R Troop.

There are so many nuggets of how to run a boy-led troop using the patrol method and how to handle the quote difficulties- unquote- that inevitably occur with youth. Keep up the good work, Clark.

Well, thank you so much, Kendall. I do so appreciate that If you haven't seen: So Far, So Good: a new Scoutmaster story. It's an easy read and it's just kind of in a storytelling style. Talks about the patrol method and how you work at it and how you work with scouts to make it happen. You can get it on Amazon, obviously, and you can get an electronic version for your Kindle reader or any other reader at scoutmastercgcom. And while I'm on the subject, if you're a regular reader and listener and the resources that I've created have helped you, I'm asking you return the favor by becoming a scoutmastercgcom backer.

The funds we get from backers go to cover the expenses of producing and publishing everything at scoutmastercgcom and including this podcast you're listening to right now. So go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you can choose from a number of options to support this work. I'd like to take a moment to personally thank John Clements, Paul Menina, Kelly Tansy and Gerald Dosh, who've all become backers since our last podcast. Once again, go to scoutmastercgcom, become a backer this week and I'll be sure to thank you during our next podcast. If you keep an eye on our Facebook feed and our Twitter feed, I should say we hit a considerable Facebook milestone this week. If Facebook, if you're not interested in it.

Just this won't take long, But we got 10,000 likes on Facebook, So we've got 10,000 people looking in on scoutmastercgcom on Facebook. Thanks everybody, That was a pretty big deal and I really appreciate that.

But anyway, if you keep an eye on the Facebook feed and our Twitter feed, you will find out that we have live chat sessions And usually these are Tuesday and Wednesday mornings from eight o'clock to around noon time or a little past Eastern time And you can check in and there's a lot of folks that do- we call them our frequent flyers- and they check in and we just discuss. It's just kind of hanging out, And sometimes there are matters of great import and sometimes it's just kind of hanging out.

So but I wanted to thank Nick Young, who's an assistant scoutmaster in Southeast Minnesota, who was on the chat this week, as was Jeff Bee, who is an assistant scoutmaster in Nebraska, and Francisco Lea checked in. He's in Tucson, Arizona, where he's currently the scoutmaster of Troop 339..

Brad from North Florida, who's a past cubmaster and now working with his son's second year Webelos Den was there, And Kelly, who's in Iowa, currently the troop committee chair, and during the chat she says she's probably going to become a tiger den leader for her youngest this year. So being a tiger den leader, what a great thing to do and what a great thing for a good experience scouter to do. You should check that out. If you're a good experience scouter and you're not going to too many meetings already, go to the pack and offer to help them with the tiger den.

So in this week's podcast, I want to spend some time in Scoutmaster's ship. In seven minutes or less, which is going to be more than seven minutes, which it almost always is, because you know I like to talk- I want to share some thinking about how we deal with the influences of the broader world, of our broader culture, when we're working with our scouts, and that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast.

So let's get started. Shall we? He's my favorite all time boys scout. You're my favorite all time boys scout. You're my favorite all time boys scout. You were always on the beat boy, beat boy.

Yeah, You were always on the beat boy, beat boy. I'm hanging in the street boy, street boy.

We were dancing to the beat boy, beat boy. Yeah, Feel my favorite all-time boys now. Feel my favorite all-time boys now. He's my favorite all-time boys Scout.

What do we do about the outside influences in the lives of our Scouts? To begin with, let's figure out what's outside and what's inside.

So for the purposes of this discussion, let's make this very, very simple. Okay, Outside influences on our Scouts are something that's beyond the scope of our control as Scouts. Inside influences are something within the scope of our control as Scouts.

So let's take a look at what's outside of our control. So pick any time in the last century or the century preceding that, or indeed the one preceding that, and you'll read about adults working with young people battling the broader influences, the outside ones, that they can't control, And confronting something you can't control feels terrible, doesn't it? I mean, it's just very oh, it's upsetting and it takes up a lot of energy and a lot of time. It's it's a kind of silly and it's also really aggravating and frustrating.

There's a lot of bad feeling that comes with it, isn't there? You have a feeling of helplessness and you just try and fight against things.

I want to suggest a better way of dealing with these things beyond our control. Okay, Because we're outnumbered, We're outgunned.

Here's how psychologist and social philosopher BF Skinner put it in his book Walden II, He said each of us has interests which conflict with the interests of everybody else. Everybody else we call society. It's a powerful opponent and it almost always wins.

Oh, here and there, an individual prevails for a while and he gets what he wants. Sometimes he storms the culture of a society and changes it to his own advantage, But society wins in the long run, for it has the advantage of numbers and age.

So, while we're on this philosophical plane for a moment, we're all humans, right, We're all swimming in a sea of influences, Call them what you may. Some of them are within our control and some of them are outside of our control, And these influences, for good or ill, have always been with us. They're a part of what we'll call for the purposes of this discussion, the human condition.

Now, I hear from a lot of people and I am. One of the common threads that I hear from scouts about is things like outside influences, like video games and cell phones, and the level of involvement of the scouts, parents and things that are really not within the scope of a scouter's control.

Now, think about this, okay, Because before we had cell phones and video games to contend with, there was TV, and before TV there was radio. And before radio there was moving pictures. And before moving pictures there was burlesque shows in vaudeville. And before burlesque shows in vaudeville there were spicy novels.

And you know that guy Gutenberg, with his movable type, he caused a lot of trouble. Now I'm not saying that influences that are outside the scope of our control are are either insignificant or they're totally objectively good or bad.

You know, we just have to accept the premise that our scouts are subject to a number of influences beyond the scope of our control. It's part of the human condition.

So what do we do? Do we just give up or do we go to battle with these influences?

So let's get tie all of this to some very practical things we can apply in our work as scouts. I think that if we go to battle with the human condition, it means we're fighting a losing battle. Remember, society wins in the long run, for it has the advantage of numbers and age.

Now you can look at something like that and you go, oh well, let's just give up. Then You know, we don't, we, there's nothing we can do.

So we'll just give up and let these influences roll over us and roll over our scouts, and everything will go to hell in a hand basket. But that's not what I'm saying. If battling the human condition is fighting a losing battle, that doesn't mean that the only other option is surrendering.

I'm not saying that we're going to surrender, but we have to get to a point to make some progress. And when we accept that these influences have always been there and they will always be there- they simply are what they are- we're going to start making some progress. In his book Aids to Scoutmastership, Baden Powell discusses dealing with these types of broad outside influences. He he talks about things like moving pictures in almost exactly the same terms that I hear applied to things like cell phones and the internet today. But after he kind of examines the corrosive influence of moving pictures on our youth, he encourages us to replace those influences with something positive. And he quoted me says: you can't do this by forbidding or punishment, but by substituting something at least equally attractive but good in its effects.

And over and over again in his writings Baden Powell talks about this very simple concept, and you know what it boils down to. It's kind of trite and you've heard it a thousand times before. It's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

So we don't give up. We don't let the broader influences of the human condition just roll over us and say, well, nothing I can control, oh well, we'll just do it. But we don't go to battle with them either. What we do, we set up something that, as Baden Powell said, is equally attractive but good in its effects, And once I started doing just that, I learned not to battle with these things anymore and I honestly I don't pay much attention to them because it's really a waste of my time. I'm trying to control things I can't control. I'm not going to do that.

What I found is, if I apply my energy in my time to making sure scouts get the opportunities to do what scouts do and I make the most of those opportunities, I don't have to worry about battling outside influences, because I've got something better. I've got a program of lively activities at whose center is the scout oath and the scout law and the development of character and man. It really, really works. I don't have to forbid my scouts to bring video games and cell phones on camping trips.

I just need to make sure that there's no reason they would need to have them because they're so engaged and excited in developing their character and discovering all of this wonderful stuff about the scout, oath and law through these vibrant, engaging activities. They don't need a cell phone, you know I I haven't even thought about my cell phone- that it shouts down all of these other influences. Each of our scouts has talents and abilities and each has challenges and difficulties.

The interesting thing is, if we spend our time focusing on how scouting can have a positive influence on developing the talents and abilities the, their challenges and difficulties and the outside influences over which we have no control and are part of the human condition, they kind of become irrelevant. So remember we were talking about inside and outside that stuff, outside our control and inside our control.

Well, getting getting our scouts into the scouting environment right, getting them into the place where we do have some control, is an incredibly powerful force for good in their lives. The other thing that you'll see if you read back, you know, like I said, over the last century of scouting, you will see scouts talking about the influence of an involvement of scouts families and how it affects their involvement in scouting. This is also almost totally beyond the scope of our control of scouts.

We can encourage and incentivize families to work in a certain way for us. But beyond that, we can't go into everybody's homes and tell them how to raise their children.

If you think about it, every parent that I've ever known, myself included, is a good influence in some ways- and I'm not so great- or about influence in others, and you got to kind of roll with that and you have to accept the fact that the way parents are is, for the most part, beyond the scope of your control. So any so let's buy a show of hands. Tell me who picked their parents.

Which one who's listening picked their parents? I don't see any hands.

Okay, nobody picks their parents. Our scouts didn't choose their parents and changing how their parents are is certainly beyond the scope of their control. And if you, if you accept that scouts are pretty powerless to change their parents and they play the hand that they're, they're dealt them, we get some clues about how to work with them individually to help them discover and realize their potential, no matter what kind of influence their parents are asserting. And it can be hard work for us to find a way to make that happen for each individual scout and I've there have been many times where I've talked with parents, formally or informally, and I've made some suggestions about how things could go better for them in the context of how things are going and scouting.

Sometimes it means getting more involved, something more often than not it's kind of like: oh well, back, often, let him do his thing, and sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't- again beyond the scope of my control. If I spend my time and my energy on things that are wholly within my power- right, like making sure my scouts get the opportunities to do what scouts do, and I work at making the most of each of those opportunities, then I begin to see progress in their lives. I begin to see the scout oath and law active in their lives and, in the relatively short amount of time that their lives are within the scope of my control, I help them learn things that will enable them to navigate that wide world of influences that are beyond the scope of my control.

So, as I said before, this is- this is a kind of a wordy, complicated way of saying: hey, you know, instead of cursing in darkness, let's light a candle here. Instead of battling with the human condition, let's get really good at providing opportunities for our scouts to live the oath and law and grow in character, grow in stature as human beings and enable them to navigate the rest of their lives and the rest of the world beyond the scope of our control. It works, I got to tell you it works. If you think that it's going to work in a week and a half, if you think that it's going to work in a year or even two, you're probably mistaken. It takes a long time. It takes a lot of patience, it takes getting a real handle on the principles of scouting and the principles in the oath and law.

And remember, we're not about controlling and changing the conduct of our scouts, because if that was our goal, all we need to do is make a bunch of rules- okay, and that's the easiest way to control the conduct of a group of people- set up a bunch of laws and rules that controls their conduct. But we have a bigger aim, don't we?

We have something much bigger than controlling their conduct, because we understand that their conduct and the way that they navigate the world is motivated by their character, by the kind of human being they are. Rather than trying to control their conduct, what we're doing is we're building their character. Rules, control conduct. They do a very good job of that. But to build character you use principles, and the principles in the scout oath and law are incredibly strong tools to do just that.