Scoutmaster Podcast 306

I'm John Clements and I'm the committee chair with Troops 692 in Casabary, Florida. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by patrons like me. Thanks, Clark.

And now to you, Scoutmaster. So during our last visit to Condorsteg International Scout Center in Condorsteg, Switzerland, one of my scouts said to me: you know, it would be really cool to be Swiss.

And I said: what makes you say that? And he says: well, the flag is a big plus.

Oh boy, we've done it again. Yes, this is podcast number 306.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look in the mailbag. Brian Hildebrand wrote in about our last podcast, podcast 305.

We discussed John Thurman and the patrol system And in that discussion I related a story that John Thurman wrote about a brand new patrol in the early, early days of scouting. And Brian Hildebrand wrote in and said: I really like that story. The only thing left to imagine is where they got their hands on a scout handbook And whether their parents even knew that they were going out camping or permitted them to go that first night.

And did the policemen show up? Because he saw them out there camping, or maybe one of their parents sent them looking for them. But this story of scouts before adult scout involved in it was very interesting. Thanks for all you do for the scouting movement.

Well, thank you, Brian, for getting in touch. Another way to get in touch with us is through a live chat session And we try to have a couple every week, usually Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.

Keep an eye on our Facebook feed and our Twitter feed And we'll let you know when we're going to be live. At scoutmastercgcom- And a number of people checked in this past week, We had some lively discussions And, in addition to our frequent fliers who've been on the chat before, we heard from Sean Sherwin, who's a Scoutmaster of Troop 312 in Green River, Wyoming. Eric Song, who's a training chair in Georgia, Mike Vale, who is with the first Almyra scout group in Ontario. Rob M, who is a committee chair for PAC 135, an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 235 in North Plainfield, New Jersey.

So come and join us when we have a live chat. We'd love to hear from you. Over the past couple of weeks I've been talking about seminarcgcom And this is going to be my take on kind of an interactive training and learning environment for scouters And to make this feasible, to get it launched, we started working through patreoncom.

I'm going to talk to you more about that in a moment, But I want to let you know. Within the next week or so I want to have the introduction to our first seminar ready to go, And this one is going to be about challenge learning and achievement in scouting- And that's a fancy way for saying advancement. But there's a method to that title and it'll be explained in the introduction.

So keep an eye open for that and check us out at Patreon, because I want to ask a favor of you. If what we're doing has helped you, if you're a regular reader and listener, you can return the favor in one of two ways. You can support the podcast by making a one-time payment and become a scoutmastercgcom backer, Or you can make a subscription payment via Patreon by pledging $5 or more a month. That also helps us get seminarcg off the ground. If you become a patron through Patreon, There's special premiums available to anyone who becomes a patron or a backer.

So here's how to make either of those things happen. To become a backer, it's pretty simple: Go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you'll find a number of options there that will make you a backer And I want to take a moment to personally thank Michael Nelson and Laura Hiley, who've become backers since our last podcast.

Now to become a patron, you can click the link to my Patreon page in the podcast notes or you can go directly to wwwpatreoncom- backslash scoutmastercg. Patreon- p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com backslash scoutmastercg. And if you become a patron or a backer this week, I'll make sure to thank you personally in our next podcast.

Well, the remainder of this podcast is going to be taken up with a discussion about planning and your patroller's council, because I get a fair number of questions about that and it was the subject of some of our talk during the live chat this week And I thought I'd take the opportunity to kind of lay out some ideas about planning that might help you and your scouts, And that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast. So let's get started, shall we?

The question of scouts, planning and the way the patroller's council plans and how those things work is actually simple. But most simple things are kind of complex.

I mean, you know this is not something that you necessarily can reduce down to okay, A, B, C: 1,, 2, 3.. This is how you do it. What you have to understand is why we do it first.

So I want to zoom way, way out, because I think there's one thing that will really help you work with your patroller's council to form plans and it will make the whole planning process a lot less difficult. So zoom in way, way out.

We're zooming way way out because I need to begin with one observation, and I want to contextualize that observation first by saying I am not a big fan of people my age, and I'm 56 years old. I'm not a big fan of people my age making that myopic judgment that things were better when we were younger or things were better at some time in the indeterminate past, because this can't possibly be true, because no matter where you put a pin in the long pageant of history, older people were always saying that about younger people.

They were always complaining that things used to be great, now they're horrible. I don't buy it. I don't think you should buy it either.

So this observation is not about how great things used to be and everything's horrible now. No, I wanted to just observe that things have changed since I was the age of my scouts in this world.

There are more options and choices available to people now than there were when I was their age. Now, that's just an observation. I'm certainly not saying that more options are bad, because I don't think objectively, that they are. I'm just saying that this may help you, if you're in my generation, begin to understand the particular things that we're dealing with when we're asking our scouts to sit down and think through and plan things.

Okay, so we've got that right. Let's stay zoomed out for a moment and just look at the idea of a society or a culture and the number of options that people within that society or culture have. Every progressive society believes in the freedom of choice and that more choice equals more freedom, and more freedom equals greater welfare for the citizens in that society. Right, But we're learning that simply increasing options does not necessarily improve our welfare or our lives.

The more options there are, the easier it is to regret anything that we did not choose. It's kind of a paradox, isn't it? If you want to really delve into that subject, try googling the paradox of choice, because there's a lot to be said about it. But for the purposes of our conversation, let's just agree that more options does not always make things better, and actually there are a set of circumstances where having more options can make things worse.

Okay, so we got that right. So now we can zoom in a little bit, because when I get questions from scouts about the way scouts plan, I usually hear one of two things.

The first one is that they don't plan very well or at all, And the second one is that they always plan the same things and they want me to give them new and creative program ideas for their scouts to do. And I think a lot of that has to do with the idea that we're convinced that the more choices they have, the better things will be. And I'm telling you that that's not necessarily so. We're worried that our scouts will be bored or that we'll lose older scouts because they're doing the same thing all the time.

And I'm going to say that's not necessarily so, because the answer to all this is relatively simple. Scouting is not a product that we choose to purchase off a shelf that comes in a number of sizes and colors. It's a really a very simple thing. Scouting is a progressive set of experiences designed to achieve a specific aim.

So when you sit down with your scouts to plan the first question you want to ask is not: what are we going to do. The first question you want to ask is: who are we? And in the podcast notes I will link to my 15 minute patrol leader training, one side of an eight and a half by 11 sheet. That's all, And this talks about the answer to that question.

So, in short, the answer to that question is when we ask: Hey, who are we? While we're scouts, Then we can ask ourselves: what do scouts do? And those things become our plans.

Okay, scouts go camping and they learn skills and apply them to their activities, They explore hobbies and careers, They serve their community, They're responsible to organize and plan their own activities And they put the scout oath and law into practice. So, if you follow my logic, fairly simple- We don't begin by asking: what are we going to do.

We begin by saying: who are we? Well, we're scouts.

What do scouts do? Huh, well, we're going to do the things that scouts do.

Now, if that's not making sense, let me give you this analogy: A basketball team is made up of basketball players and they play the game of basketball. They don't go to the basketball court and say: what are we going to do?

What game will we play? No, they know. They've all sorted this out when they signed up to be a basketball player. They know the game that they're going to play. When they get to the basketball court, they don't begin by painting boundaries on the floor and setting up the baskets, because that's already been determined. They don't sit down and discuss what rules they're going to play by, because the rules have already been set up right.

So when the patrol leaders council sits down to plan, they do not begin with a blank sheet of paper. Their scouts and scouts do specific things. The field of play is already determined and the rules are already written.

So there are a set of constraints that we have when we're scouts, And these constraints do not mean an unlimited number of choices. Remember what we talked about a moment ago. The idea of an unlimited number of choices seems like a really great idea, because more choices means more freedom. But we know that that breaks down at a certain point And more choices is not more freedom. More choices may mean a really baffling ordeal of trying to figure out which one to choose.

And here's an analogy for you With that: go to the grocery store and go to the salad dressing aisle. How many salad dressings are there?

100? 200?

Who can choose? If you were asked to make a choice, you got to pick one salad dressing there for the rest of your life.

Good luck with that, because as soon as you make a choice, all of the other options are going to be staring back at you and make you doubt whether or not you've made the right choice, And so that choice doesn't bring you satisfaction and fulfillment. The choice brings you uncertainty.

That's the nature of choosing, and especially in the present culture that we're living in, The number of choices that we have does not necessarily equal fulfillment and happiness. So the idea of unlimited choice is not necessarily a positive one.

When we sit down with our scouts and say here's a blank piece of paper, You can do anything you want, No, we have a game, We have rules, We have a field of play. It's already all set up, and within those constraints, you see, we can make a number of choices, And the number of those choices is practically unlimited.

And alls we have to do to triage that number of choices is to ask ourselves some questions, You know, can we afford to do that particular activity? Is it logistically possible? And the whole idea of planning then becomes much simpler.

So let's go back and review this. First of all, I would say that one observable change that's happened since I was the age of my scouts is the number of choices available to them have grown exponentially.

Not only you know the number of salad dressings available at the grocery store, but the number of choices they have in their lives for who they can be and what they will do, And what we do is. We normally equate welfare with freedom, freedom with the number of choices, But we also understand that just adding options to the list is not necessarily the best thing for us. An unlimited number of choices can result in confusion and dissatisfaction, not focus and fulfillment. Right, We don't begin planning by asking: what do you want to do.

We begin planning by asking who are we, And the answer is: we're scouts. And then we ask ourselves: what do scouts do?

Well, we have a defined field of play and a defined set of rules by which we play our game, And so it is within those constraints that we begin making choices about what we want to do. To dial all of this heady talk down to a very, very practical level, Check out my 15 minute patrol leader training, because scouts do very specific things to achieve a very specific set of aims, And so those are the things that we're going to plan on doing. I hope that makes sense, And I'd like to hear your comments and reactions and questions about what I've talked about today.

So I want you to get in touch with me. It's a very simple thing to do, And you're going to find out how to do it in just a moment.