Scoutmaster Podcast 296

Hi, I'm Christopher Simone and I'm the Scoutmaster of Troop 71 in Plendome, New York. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me And now the old Scoutmaster.

Hopefully, within the next few months, you're going out winter camping and I want to remind you that winter camping is full of misery and suffering and discomfort and it's all

Over much too soon. Hey, this is podcast number 296.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green.

Let's turn to the mailbag. Hi, Clark, I wanted to fill you in on our recent developments since our last email chat. One of my assistant Scoutmasters did a trip up to Boundary Waters last year and after chatting, we feel confident to execute a plan to bring six to eight Scouts up this coming July.

Thanks so much for giving me a little oomph in the resources via your page. I've been reading them and putting them into a planning folder that we can review over Christmas break. Truly thank you for all you do. Lastly, I just finished.

So far, so good. It brought a couple of tears to my eyes and a couple of been there thoughts too. I especially like the part about how the Scoutmaster banners with his assistant Scoutmasters get the point across. Great book. Happy holidays from Bob.

Well, thanks so much, Bob. I'm happy that you enjoyed.

So far, so good. If you're not familiar with that folks, you can get it over at scoutmastercgcom or on Amazon.

The title of the book is: So Far, So Good. It's a new Scoutmaster story. Following up on that, there's a new five star review on Amazon of that book.

The author has an amazing gift of storytelling through a well thought out plot. He walks us through being a new Scoutmaster using what is no doubt his own experiences- and you're right- And those of others. If you're a new Scoutmaster, or a season one, this book will bring a few tears and a lot more laughs.

Well done Well. Thanks so much for that.

Hey, over on scoutmastercgcom, usually Tuesday and Wednesday mornings we have a live chat session. Lots of people check in. Watch our Twitter feed and our Facebook feed. If you want to participate, Come on over on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning and say hello. This past week, in addition to all of our frequent flyers, Patrick Hart, who's the Cubmaster of PAC 528 in Poston Kill, New York, checked in along with Buddy Lindsey, who's in Prague, Oklahoma, and Buddy's an Eagle Scout, who's getting back involved with Scouts.

Now, Once again, live chat Tuesday and Wednesday mornings usually. It'll be a little different during the holidays, no doubt, But come on over, check it out at scoutmastercgcom.

And while I've got your ear, I want to remind you that everything that we do is there to help our fellow Scouts, and I hear from folks all over the world who say it does just that. This podcast gets listened to in all 50 states- and I think it last count like 34 different countries- And to keep everything freely available, I depend on listeners like you to become backers. Backers are folks who make a one-time voluntary subscription payment that helps cover the expense of producing and publishing what you find on scoutmastercgcom, including the podcast.

So go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you'll find a number of options where you can become a scoutmastercgcom backer and even get autographed copies of my books. And this week I want to take a moment to personally thank John Dyer, Mike Marty, David Smith and James Stonehouse, who've all become backers since our last podcast. Go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page, Become a backer this week and I'll be sure to thank you during our next podcast.

Well, in this week's podcast I've got several interesting email questions to answer. So let's get started, shall we? There's a quartermaster. Everybody knows There's a song about him. This is how it goes. Just a little did.

He doesn't mean a thing, But when the boys are marching, how they love to sing, There were mice, mice eating up the rice in the stores. In the stores there were rats- rats big as blooming cats. In the quartermaster store. My eyes are dim. I cannot see. I have not brought my specs with me.

I have not brought my specs with me. Write me a letter, send it by name

Email. That is folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. Oh, these are all going to be anonymous emails this week. Some somewhat sensitive subjects.

Here's the first one. We have a family with two cubs in our pack who has difficulty paying their annual dues. In the past we've discounted their dues and I don't know actually how much that's been This year.

We have a new committee chair who's feeling frustrated due to lack of participation from other parents. We have about 50 cubs and a core group of five parents who do most of the planning.

Well, that sounds about right. We have three fundraisers every year. Our annual dues are leveraged against those fundraisers and the family I'm talking about hasn't participated in the fundraisers to any great extent. Our new committee chair is reluctant to give them a discount, and I really understand, and I've felt the same when I've been struggling to provide a quality program, while other parents seem apathetic at best.

Now I've had more time in my role, I'm no longer really resentful and I'd rather see these boys stay in scouting. Am I out of line, expecting the rest of the packs- families- to support the program for these scouts whose parents don't participate?

Well, before I answer that question, let me go. Let me go on for a moment about the frustration that you and your committee chair are experiencing. Sounds like you've pretty much gotten over it, but at one point every scouter looks around and wonders if, if anybody understands what they're trying to do.

I mean, why don't parents help out more? Why are they not paying attention?

Why do they seem so apathetic? But the drumbeat of that sort of complaint has been pretty steady since scouting began. It's really nothing new, It's not likely to change and it's something that you have to get over. And I'll tell you anyone if you're experiencing this sort of frustration is kind of your own fault.

Okay, that's the bad news. The good news is the solution is a simple change of perspective. You'll find the problem mostly fades away when you start paying attention to what's really important and that's your scouts, of course. Stop paying attention to parents reactions and, if you're honest with yourself, it's really a small percentage of parents who are truly apathetic or reactionary and cause you agita. Right and focus your effort and attention on your scouts, because scouts are always appreciative of what you do.

Now you might have to look hard to see that appreciation, but they are always appreciative of what you do and we have to recall that scouters are first and foremost, servants to their community. We can certainly appreciate each other's dedication and sacrifice, but I wouldn't expect many parents to recognize that very often or to be particularly helpful, and I wouldn't draw a comparison between your dedication and sacrifice and commitment to everything and theirs. You made a decision to do this. Go ahead and do it.

The way that other people react- well, it may be a little disturbing and frustrating, and you know what that's fine- it always is. Just keep on keeping on.

Pay attention to your scouts, because we have to understand that what seems very small and insignificant to us can be life changing for a child and the honor of being part of that is really payment enough for all the work that we do. Now I'm no smarter and energetic or kind or dedicated than you are. I am just a sensitive to feeling unappreciated or frustrated with the work that we do. But I do have one thing that perhaps you do not, and that is the perspective of a few decades of experience, and that perspective helps me tone down the idea that I'm unappreciated or feeling frustrated about the work that I'm doing.

I live in a pretty small town and when I take a stroll around town I generally run into one of my past scouts or one of their family members, and most of them have at this point traveled well into adulthood- and you know, honestly, it's not all that often that they come out and say thank you, but they don't have to. They show me their children and they tell me about their lives, and that's all the thanks that I need. If you just started doing this, you don't have that perspective yet. It's not that you're inconsiderate or or blinded or anything like that. It's just something that comes after you've been doing this for a while.

Okay, and all this is a very wordy, roundabout way to answer a fairly simple question: should your pack offer support to children whose parents aren't really holding up their end of the bargain? Yeah, if it's at all possible. Of course, The real thing here is not whether their parents are interested, engaged and helpful, but what's in the best interest of the child that you're serving. Just like you and I, none of our scouts got to choose their parents. They play the hand that they're dealt and their children. They don't have a lot of control over their lives and when parents are disengaged or surly or apathetic, it it can't be the scouts fault.

They're not making their parents that way because they didn't get to choose their parents. And I'll be the first to tell you that there are a very few families who are so profoundly dysfunctional it- I guess you know it- makes it nearly impossible for their children to participate in something like scouts. After 35 years of serving hundreds of families, I could tell you plenty of stories- worse than anything that you have likely encountered, I hope.

But thankfully these kind of stories are relatively few and I've got to tell you we've subsidized many families over the years so their children could be scouts and I can't point to any instance where that wasn't in the child's best interest, or it was money poorly spent. What is in the best interest of the child that's sitting right in front of you and wants to be a scout? That's really the answer to your question, I and I truly hope that helps. This next email begins. I wanted to get your take on what constitutes adding to or taking away from a merit badge course before quoting the guide to advancement to me.

I want to make two points for the canoeing and kayaking merit badge. Rather than have the scouts parrot the answers they find in the merit badge book, aren't there other teaching methods available to use? For instance, when I counsel this merit badge, we learn skills on creeks, rivers and bays. We take a field trip to canoe stores to look over canoes and gear.

Is this kind of thing adding to the requirements? I don't think it is, because I'm interested in the teaching method, not just the completion of the requirements.

What's your view regarding this particular example? The second point I wanted to make is: just as scouts attend summer camp in our merit badges, I and others who I enlist to help teach required merit badge classes for my troop and non-required classes in areas that we have interested. Is conducting classes for the merit badges appropriate.

I feel I provide more learning time than many of the classes taught at camp and try to inspire the scouts by incorporating field trips and exercises to learn the materials so they can complete the requirements. I'm interested in training scouts to be leaders and accomplish men, but some scout parents want a merit badge mill approach and accuse me of expanding on the requirements. Others are pleased because their children are challenged and are learning hobbies and skills rather than passing off requirements. Once again, I'm interested in your opinion as to what constitutes adding to a merit badge.

Well, there's a lot to deal with there and I'm going to do my best to offer my reflections to your questions, and there will be no quotes from the guide to advancement. Okay, I begin by noting: all right, there's no such thing as a merit badge course. There's only a set of merit badge requirements that should be fulfilled as scouts do things that scouts do. If it's canoeing and kayaking or a merit badge like that, they should be out canoeing, kayaking and they should be doing the things that fulfill the requirements to the merit badge. Naturally, we don't have to set up a special course. Let's go on a canoe trip now.

I don't see anything that you explained in your first example as an expansion of the requirements, so long as you aren't requiring scouts to participate in a number of activities like going to the canoe store or going paddling or anything like that with you, specifically before you'd allow to them to fulfill the requirements. And this takes a little explaining. The key verbs in the requirements are things like explain, show, tell, demonstrate. They're the key to what needs to be done towards fulfilling the requirement.

If a scout came to me as a counselor for canoeing merit badge and they said they were ready to explain the different sorts of PFDs, you know I'd be happy to have them do so and if they did it adequately, I'd be happy to sign them off on that requirement. Now if I said to them I'm not going to sign off on the requirement until you visit the store with me and we look at the PFDs, I could see somebody arguing that I've expanded on the requirement.

I mean, I get what you're trying to accomplish and I think it's very meritorious. But you see what I mean here. The requirements are pretty simple. They have active verbs in them that describe how they're to be fulfilled. And if that's the way you want to counsel the badge, that's fine.

But you know some people are going to look at that and they're going to say: well, you're adding on to the requirements when the when my scout's ready to fulfill this requirement right now because he has the experience of the knowledge and you are requiring him to go on this field trip with you. Well, you, you understand what I mean.

Now, as to your second point, I don't think merit badge classes should happen anywhere ever at all, and I know that's a minority opinion. Scouting is not a school and honestly, I get a little apoplectic when anyone sits scouts down to teach them something in a classroom setting. I really don't like it. Our scouts spend a majority of their time in school. Already. Scouting is a verb, it's about doing things, not sitting and listening.

And I've got to say it does not take much imagination to make everything about a merit badge experiential and active and part of doing what scouts do. We don't need classes, we need scouting. Now. I've been a merit badge counselor for ages. I've counseled dozens of scouts in different badges. I've done it as a member of the summer camp staff, with big crowds of scouts, and I've got to tell you after all that if I had my way we'd never counsel more than three or four scouts in a merit badge at a time and they would be actively doing things for the entire time.

I'm afraid that much of scouting has kind of devolved into a merit badge delivery system where scouts fill out worksheets and have a minimum amount of experiences and get badges, and I think it's a shame, I think it's a functional flaw in the way the required the merit badges are written, giving scouts a merit badge book with all the answers in it and saying all you have to do is really find the answers and parrot them out on a piece of paper, this worksheet that I've prepared and that minimizes the number of experiences that you have to have to fulfill the requirements for the badge. And that's the real problem as far as I'm concerned.

I think that it's kind of dismal the way that a lot of merit badges are written and administered and they frankly just bore me to tears. Half a dozen requirements in every badge seem to be written to be intentionally boring and thwart any attempt to make them engaging or lively.

Now I get what you're saying when you tell me I'm interested in training scouts to be leaders and accomplished men, but those things are not our aim. Those are a result of reaching our aim, but that's not what we're aimed at. Our aim is developing character, because people of character can go on to become accomplished and to lead others, but it all starts with who they are on the inside. Accomplishments and leadership are things we do.

Our character is who we are and there are plenty of accomplishment and leaders who wouldn't know good character if it hit them in the rear. Now I imagine we probably agree about this and my difference with you is possibly largely semantic. But your approach to scouting changes when you understand our aim is the development of character. I know mine did.

Now, from a practical standpoint, I can tell you that we never do merit badges connected with troop activities other than when we go to summer camp. One or two in five of our scouts who hang in there past their second year, probably second or third year, become eagle scouts. They go out and they find counselors, they set up meetings and they earn badges away from troop meetings and activities. They manage somehow. Unfortunately, at summer camp they spend their week in this wonderful natural paradise sitting on their tails on a bench somewhere listening to somebody talk about a merit badge.

I think it's a straight-up pity. And for years I've tried to persuade them to go fishing or take a hike or climb a tree or build a fort, but they've yet to take me up on any of those things, because we are powerless, more or less against the ever-growing merit badge delivery system.

I think it's way overblown, takes up way too much time. That's better spent being scouts now. That's probably more than anyone expected as far as an answer to that question goes, but I hope you find something useful in it. And finally, email number three begins. I have been a Scoutmaster for the past 12 years and I am stepping down because I've been asked to be our district commissioner. Our committee chair is asking me to come up with questions as we interview three possible candidates to become our next Scoutmaster.

I have some, but thought you may be able to quick me to point me in the right direction. All three of the candidates are trained and that makes things a little bit easier.

Well, this is an interesting question because here we are. We got to hire a new Scoutmaster and we're going to use the same methods that we used to hire an employee. I wouldn't be looking at it that way at all. I would not have any applications or interviews or anything like that, because being a Scoutmaster is something very, very different. I wouldn't choose a Scoutmaster based on their merit or past service in scouting. I wouldn't choose them based on training and I wouldn't choose them based on experience, because, when it all comes down to it, these are various insignificant indicators that they're going to be the right person to be a good Scoutmaster.

I've known lots of trained, experienced and meritorious volunteers who may or may not get the spirit of the work and may or may not be the right people to put in the role of being a Scoutmaster. So if you're faced with this choice, I want to share with you something that happened back in the late 1920s, because in 1928 Admiral Byrd the Polar Explorer asked the Boy Scouts of America to help him out to select a scout to take on the year and a half exploration of Antarctica.

So this was a very big deal and it was publicized all over the country and local committees vetted hundreds of applications. They forwarded 88 of those applications to the national office, who went on that list down to six candidates who were then invited to New York City to spend 10 days of rigorous testing and extensive interviews with various experts.

So they went through that 10 days and the experts issued their opinions. But Admiral Byrd had a very ingenious idea that settled the question very simply: these guys had spent 10 days doing all this stuff and being tested and living on the ship that was going to go to Antarctica.

So Admiral Byrd knows he's got to choose one of these six and he has all his expert reports and things like that. But he says, look, the way I'm going to do this is I'm going to actually get these guys to tell me who the best guy is. And he asked them the question.

Here's a hypothetical for you: instead of one person going, let's say three people are going. One of them is you and you choose the other two out of your fellow scouts who you most trust, who you would want to have go along with you. One of the six was selected by five of his fellow scouts and it turned out to be Paul Seiple, a 19 year old Eagle Scout from Erie, Pennsylvania, who went on to have an incredibly distinguished career as a polar explorer and a climatologist. That's one of my favorite scouting stories. I just think it's brilliant and that's how I would do this. If I was faced with selecting a new Scoutmaster from a number of candidates, I would ask all of the adult volunteers and all of the youth leaders in the troop to answer one question.

Now, I understand that youth leaders can't be appointed to be a Scoutmaster, but I'd ask them the question in exactly the same way: if you were appointed to be our next Scoutmaster, who would you most trust to take over in your absence? That's the one question. You don't sit everybody down in a group and ask this question. You do this one person at a time. You don't explain what you're doing at all. You just ask the question, just the single name on a slip of paper of the person they would most trust to take over in their absence if they were the Scoutmaster.

They can choose any other adult volunteer other than yourself, of course, but they must choose only one, not two or three. I think if you did that, the majority of what's written on the slips of paper you ended up with after you've asked everyone- all of your adult volunteers and all of your youth leaders- would be the same name. And that name may be the obvious choice, or somebody nobody suspected would be a choice, and if I was the committee chair and you do it that way, that name is the choice that I would go with. But you've been the Scoutmaster for a dozen years.

You've worked with all three of these people and you already know who this is supposed to be, right, I mean, you know, and that will be the name on the majority of the replies that you get to that one question. I'd be really interested, if you actually do it that way, to hear the result. Hey, if you have a question for me, it's very easy to get in touch and I'd love to have you do that, and I'm going to tell you how in just a moment.