Scoutmaster Podcast 304

I'm Paul Farley and I'm a Webelos leader and PAC trainer with PAC 525 in Peachtree Corners, Georgia. This edition of Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like us.

And now the old Scoutmaster, You know, one of my old Scouts, is working up in Alaska now and I was just corresponding with him the other day. He got lost. Apparently he couldn't get his bearing straight. Bearing straight, Okay.

Little geographical humor? Very little, I guess.

Hey, this is podcast number 304.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look at the mailbag We heard this week from Larry Faust, who is the assistant Scoutmaster of Troop 303 in Spring Hill, Florida. He said: at last you've honored our troop with the past episode, your 303rd. And indeed I did, Larry, On behalf of our Scouts leaders and community.

I just wanted to take this time during my drive home from the troop meeting to salute you for everything you do for Scouting. Well, I returned the salute right back to you, Troop 303 and Larry. And this week is Troop 304's week. And let's see, Oh yes, Over on Amazon.

This week William C Bankston posted a very kind review of my book- so far, so good, And in his review he said Clark's impact on Scouter Training through his blog and podcast can only be described as impressive. His book is a great way to spend a little more time with him. He makes frank but compassionate points and clearly expresses his view of how a quality Scout program can work Well.

Thanks so much, William. That was very kind of you. I really appreciate that. I'm glad you got something out of the book.

I am just a hairsprout away from being able to get an audio version of So Far, So Good to you. Hopefully by this time next week it will be a done deal. I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I don't know about you, but that's kind of my preferred way of quote, reading unquote, a book.

You know audiobooks And I thought that So Far, So Good would lend itself well to an audiobook And we've got all the recordings taken care of. Just a few more steps and we'll get it to you And I'm excited about that. I'm excited that we're going to have that for you. Every week I try and have a couple of live chat sessions. These usually happen on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. They happen over at Scoutmasterscgcom.

If you keep an eye on our Facebook feed and our Twitter feed, you can come over and join us. It's?

You know it's a pretty simple thing. We talk about profound subjects such as the weather. But in addition to the many frequent fliers who check in on our live chats, we also heard this week from Paul Teal, who's a Scoutmaster in Houston, Texas, Jeff Bodicum, who's a Scoutmaster of Troop 131 in Holmdell, New Jersey, And Brian Bush, who's the Scoutmaster for Troop 792 in St Louis, Missouri. All three of those folks checked in for their first time on the live chat this past week.

Hey, if you're a regular reader and listener and the resources that we've created have helped you, here's how you can return the favor. There's two major ways to make this happen. You can support the blog and podcast by making a one-time payment and becoming a Scoutmastercgcom backer, or you can make kind of a continuing subscription payment via Patreon by pledging $5 a month or more.

There are some special premiums available to anyone who becomes a patron or a backer, And to become a backer, you go to Scoutmastercgcom, Click the support link at the top of the page and you'll find a number of options that'll make you a backer, And there's also now a link to my Patreon page there. And so to become a patron, you can either start at Scoutmastercgcom and click that link to the Patreon page right at the top of my page or you can go directly to wwwpatreoncom- backslash Scoutmastercg.

And I want to take a moment to personally thank James Keith, Danny Van Pelt and Gerald Dosh, who have all become patrons since our last week's podcast. Become a backer or a patron this week And I'll make sure to thank you personally on next week's podcast.

Well, I've got three things lined up for you today. I have a message from one of you, one of your stories. I have some thoughts about Founder's Day- because, hey, it's February 22nd, It's Founder's Day- Going to find out more about what that means here. And I have a quick email question about patrols I wanted to share with you, And that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast.

So let's get started, shall we?

Well, this message comes to us from Craig Dixon, who is a Scoutmaster out in California. Craig travels for his job And here's some reflections about his visit to the Scouting Museum. Hi, this is Craig Dixon. I'm Scoutmaster at Troop 682 in Poway, California. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the Scouting Museum in Irving, Texas. I travel a fair amount.

Over the years I've run into quite a number of scouting related things during my travels. I was in Ottawa, Illinois, and turned out they have a small scout museum there. This summer I was in Washington DC and I found the Monument to Boy Scouts that's right between the Washington Monument and the White House. More recently, though, a couple of weeks ago, I was in the Dallas area for work, about half a mile down the street from the Scouting Museum. There's a number of nice displays from the different decades, though I have to say the 50s decade. One had a 1980s Pinewood car in it.

They had a section with an animated Scoutmaster, which- the animated Scoutmaster is out of order, which I don't know. Was that trying to tell me something? Probably the highlight of the museum was the Norman Rockwell exhibit, including the original of the famous picture of the Scoutmaster.

They also had paintings from the more recent scout artists, And there was one that was from the 70s that had the boy running by in the exact Boy Scout swimsuit that I had in 1973. I thought that was kind of fun. There are three things, pretty much, that every scout has or does that they had nothing about. There was not a thing about how uniforms have changed. They had nothing about handbook And what surprised me even more was there was not a thing about summer camp. You'd think at least they might have had a large map.

They had that for OA lodges, but not not about Scout camps. Scout camp is kind of the central experience of Scouting.

The other thing that really disappointed me with there was almost no mention of a patrol method at all. There were on display one or two different patrol flags, but very little, if any, discussion of it at all.

And then there's another presentation near the front that uses an animated Baden Powell. They actually got the voice right, judging from the little clips that Clark played on his podcast every week, But they made him come off like a crotchety old man.

Now I suppose if you're in the area it's probably worthwhile to stop by. It's nice enough, but I really wouldn't have any reason to recommend that you go out of your way. If you guys are interested in seeing the pictures that I took of the monument in Washington DC, they're on my troops website at troops682.com. Thanks for that, Craig. Really appreciate you taking the time. Hey, if you have a story to tell, it's really easy to make it happen.

There'll be a link about how to do that in the podcast notes for this podcast. OK, tell me your story, Love to hear it and share it with everybody.

Like I said earlier, today is Founder's Day. February 22nd is the birthday of Scouting's founder, Lieutenant General, the Right, Honorable Lord Baden Powell. OMG, GCMG, G-C-V-O-K-C-B-D-L. It must have been tough to address letters to him.

You know what I'm saying. And in addition to Founder's Day, there is also something celebrated today called World Thinking Day, and that's celebrated annually on the 22nd of February by Girl Guides, Girl Scouts and some boy-oriented associations all around the world. It's a day when they think about their sisters and brothers in all the countries of the world, the meaning of guiding and its global impact. I have a resource to share with you from the World Association of Girl Guides that explains some activities and things that they do for Thinking Day, for Thinking Day 2016.. Back to Founder's Day for a moment. You should have a passing familiarity with some of the personal history of the founder of Scouting, Baden Powell.

He was born on the 22nd of February in 1857, which is Duke little quick math- 159 years ago in Paddington London, England. His family called him Stevie and his father died when he was three And, as a tribute to his father, his mother changed their family name to the hyphenated Baden Powell. Stevie went on to become a soldier and an officer in the British Army and became a national hero for his part in the Boer War in South Africa in 1900.. He returned to England in 1903 to find that a military training manual that he had written, called AIDS to Scouting, had become a real bestseller and it was being used by teachers and youth organizations all over Great Britain. He decided to rewrite AIDS to Scouting for a youth audience And in August of 1907, he held a camp on Brown Sea Island right there in Pool Harbor in southern England for 20 boys to test out his ideas.

And then he published Scouting for Boys in six installments in 1908. And that book has sold approximately 150 million copies and is the fourth bestselling book of the 20th century. And soon this became an international phenomenon. By 1922, there were more than a million scouts in 32 countries. By 1939, the number of scouts was an excess of 3.3 million. If you're interested in BP's personal history, author Tim Jill wrote a book called Baden Powell, Founder of the Scouts, And it is perhaps the most authoritative and, some would say, in not a completely complimentary way, most exhaustive of the many biographies of Baden Powell available.

I've read it. It's a pretty good read. It's a very academic biography of 700 plus pages. If you really want a detailed account of his life, that's a great read And I'll have a link to Tim Jill's book in the podcast notes. Like any man, any famous man, any celebrity, any influential man, Baden Powell was in part a product of his times, as was his outlook.

Now, if you look close at Baden Powell, you'll find dated attitudes about culture and race and gender, But you'll also find his genius. You'll find the foundational ideas that he synthesized from his own experience and the work of men like Ernest Thompson Seton into what would become the worldwide scouting movement. And time has tested those ideas, as has the experience of tens of millions of men and women who've become scouts and scouters over more than a century Now. Perhaps the best distillation of what Baden Powell was aiming at when the scouting movement came into being. It's kind of interesting to call him a founder. I don't know how accurate that is, because I don't think he had any intention of founding this worldwide movement.

I think it was almost an accident. I think it was the power of the ideas that he put into scouting for boys, just kind of touched off this, this worldwide phenomenon that just sprouted up spontaneously.

And at the first World Jamboree, more than 10 years after the publication of the book that, he was kind of acclaimed- And, I think, probably rather reluctantly- to be the chief scout of the world and they opened up a world scouting office And I kind of get the impression that he was a reluctant founder, to tell you the truth. But, that being said, his ideas still motivate scouts all over the world And, as I said, the probably the best distillation of those ideas that have stood the test of time are in a very thin book called AIDS to Scoutmastership.

I'll have a link to that in the podcast notes And I've, as I've said many times, I think AIDS to Scoutmastership is kind of required reading. OK, the language is a little stilted and a product of its time, But it's worth reading because there you see the foundational ideas of scouting, ideas that spawned this incredible movement that's still alive and still vital in the lives of people a hundred years later.

Shortly before his death in Kenya in the 1940s, Baden Powell wrote this: The movement has already, in the comparatively short time of its existence, established itself on a wide and so strong of footing as to show most encouraging promise of what may be possible to it in the coming years. Its aim is to produce healthy, happy, helpful citizens of both sexes, to eradicate the prevailing narrow self interest- personal, political, sectarian and national- and to substitute for it a broader spirit of self sacrifice and service in the cause of humanity, and thus to develop mutual goodwill and cooperation, not only within our own country, but abroad, between all countries. Experience shows that this consummation is no idle or fantastic dream, but is a practicable possibility if we work for it, And it means, when attained, peace, prosperity and happiness for all. Therefore, you who are scouts and guide are not only doing a great work for your neighbor's children, but are also helping in practical fashion to bring to pass peace and goodwill on earth.

So, from my heart, I wish you Godspeed in your effort And in that spirit. Everyone happy Founders Day. Send it by name Email, that is folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. I wanted to include in the email section this week just a couple more thoughts that I would append to what I had to say in last week's podcast about patrols.

After talking about the foundational ideas that Baden Powell had, I want to say that one of our challenges is taking those ideas and having those ideas inspire our methods so that our methods remain relevant. Now we can't use exactly the same methods that were used a century ago.

We can use the same ideas, though, And there are a couple of things at least that make a lot of BP's methods and Green Bar Bill's methods about patrols kind of impractical for us today. But the ideas are solid.

So separating method from idea is really the point of what I want to say here. If you look at the methods that BP applied to patrols and then Bill Hillcourt or Green Bar Bill advised us about, those exact methods need to be modified to meet the kind of societal and cultural changes that have happened over the past century. One of the things is that scouts are entering scout troops- at least here in the BSA- at a much younger age and developmental horizon than they did all those decades ago.

Originally boys had to be 12 years old to join a scout troop, and a 12 year old, you know, from 1910 to 1950- would have been probably significantly more mature than a 12 year old today, And that's not saying anything about 12 year olds today. It's more of a comment on the societal and cultural norms of the day. We delay certain cultural and societal norms for 12 year olds today that they were expected to meet decades ago, because we've expanded the number of years that they spend in schooling.

So the difference between where our boys come to us, that kind of developmental horizon where they come to us now at 10 and a half, is going to be a pretty big sea change from a 12 year old in the first 50 years of scouting. The other thing that I think is an interesting societal and cultural change is the mobility of children. Today There's not too many places where they're walking to school or have their own neighborhood gangs on the same basis as they did in that first 50 years of scouting.

So patrol cohesion over time becomes a little problematic, especially as their alliances and interest shift. Again, I'm not saying that this is a problem for us to fight, but just simply something that we should adapt to.

Now I've never suggested that really mixing ages in patrols is an important thing or necessarily even a good idea. It's not unimportant or a bad idea either. It's going to be different with different scouts because as soon as you get eight personalities of people that age together. Some aspects of it may be predictable, but you can't set detailed way of handling all of the different variables that are going to happen in a situation like that.

What I was aimed at trying to point out last week was, I think the problem is is that we have a pretty pervasive understanding that we adults should be engineering who is in what patrol, And I think that is because we don't have a very clear understanding of why we have patrols in the first place. And going back to what the founder said, he said the whole thing with patrols, the whole way that patrols work, and the reason that we have patrols is not to save scouter's time or not to impose an efficient management system on a group of scouts, But because it is all of the interactions within the patrol is they do what scouts do that are truly aimed at developing the kind of character we want to develop in scouting.

So that's just in addition to what I had to say on last week's podcast about patrols, but I kind of synthesized into one big answer for today's podcast. Hey, if you want to get in touch with me, I'd love to hear from you and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.