Scoutmaster Podcast 359

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Here we go. And now scoutmaster Troop 38 in New Berlin, Wisconsin, was out camping on the shore in Door County And they were sitting down at dinner getting ready to eat the sausages that they had cooked over the fire And this fellow strides into their camp And under his arm he has one of the native shorebirds and he offers to trade it for one of those German sausages that the scouts had prepared.

And they said, yeah, why not? And that, as you may imagine, was the day that Troop 38 took a turn for the worst. You work on that for a little bit And if you need to have that explained to you, I'll send you to Matt Weiss, who shared that little story with me. He's the Scoutmaster Troop 38 in New Berlin, Wisconsin.

Thank you, Matt, I think. Hey, this is podcast number 359..

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green.

Quick reminder before we get going here today, we'll have a podcast next week, a special holiday podcast next week, by the way, And then we'll be off for a couple of weeks during the holidays. We'll be back next year with the beginning of a series of podcasts about the foundations of scouting.

I think that's what it'll be called the foundations of scouting, or something like that. Today, I have a thought for you that addresses one of the things that I get asked about very frequently. I see a lot of emails about the subject of discipline in a scout troop, And it's something that we talk about fairly often. As a matter of fact, we talked about these principles a couple of three podcasts ago when scouts misbehave.

I'll link to that in the podcast notes, as well as to an article that I linked to in that other podcast, which is constructive scouting discipline, And I don't mind repeating myself. It's an important subject we are sure to deal with, And it's one that is not all that easy to figure out.

So let's get started, shall we?

So here's a tale of two troops. Pretty dramatic, huh? Just imagine you've got two troops, troop A and troop B. Both troops have average scouts.

Whatever average means who do what average scouts do? They're pretty much the same troop.

Now, both troop A and troop B have a well-defined procedural approach to discipline and misbehavior. Troop A publishes a guide that defines the rules, how those rules are enforced and the penalties for breaking those rules. Troop B does not have a guide.

They have no written rules, So they don't really have any defined measures for policing the rules And they don't have any defined penalties for breaking the rules. For the purposes of illustration, let's pretend an average scout in troop A decides to misbehave in precisely the same manner as an average scout in troop B. They both do exactly the same thing.

Now, exactly what that thing is isn't really all that important to the story, but the nature of what they've done, the way that they've misbehaved, it's reasonably serious. It's serious enough for everybody to take notice of and to deal with.

Now the scouts from troop A. They refer to their guide, They figure out what rule has been broken and they follow the prescribed penalty for breaking the rules, which is because it's a fairly serious problem. The scout is suspended for the next two months. The scouts from troop B sit down with the scout, They counsel him, They speak with his parents. The scout apologizes ultimately and promises not to misbehave in the same way again. But a month later the scout from troop B misbehaves in the same way again.

So the scouts get together, they counsel with the scout, they talk to his parents and everyone agrees he'll have to forego actively participating with the troop until he and his parents have figured out how to assure everyone that he's not going to continue to misbehave. Two weeks after that discussion the scout comes back to troop B with his parents. They assure the scout that they've addressed the misbehavior and it won't be repeated. Meanwhile, two months after the first incident from the scout in troop A, he's pretty much decided he's not all that interested in scouts anymore. But his parents are going to make him go back, as parents probably should do, and he misbehaves in the same way And the scouts from troop B look at their rulebook. They figure out that he's broken the same rule twice.

They look at their disciplinary rules and the scouts kicked out of the troop permanently. But the story doesn't end there, because his parents decide that this is unfair and unjust and they make a stink about the whole thing and it consumes a lot of emotional real estate and a lot of time And it's really another few months before the whole issue is finally out of everybody's mind and settled. Meanwhile, back in troop B. Our typical scout is moving on. Now. He's no angel, He's not an easy customer.

He requires a lot of talking and discussing, but he manages to stay involved with his troop. Now remember what I said: Both troop A and troop B have an equally well-defined procedural approach to discipline and misbehavior. And I told you that troop A has a guide with rules and enforcements and penalties.

So what is troop B's procedure? Well, troop B has no written rules, so they measure the conduct of their scouts against the scout oath and law. When a scout in troop B misbehaves, a discussion follows and in the discussion the scouts ask what points of the scout oath and law apply to the situation.

If the misbehavior is serious enough, the scout's parents will be brought into the discussion, made aware of the circumstances, so they can take any action that they may choose to take. And since troop B has no rules, they don't have any need to police the rules or predetermined penalties for breaking them.

So there's no punishments, There's no suspensions, There's nothing. There's nothing like that, And this tends to make the atmosphere in troop B a little lighter than it is in troop A, Since every scout and every circumstance is different. Troop B responds to problems on a case-by-case basis. Troop B does recognize the difference between a single instance of misbehavior and a pattern of misbehavior And they agree that if a scout has a pattern of misbehavior they will consult with the scout's parents and tell them it's their responsibility to take action to correct the problem before the scout can return to actively participating. But hopefully the way that they deal with behavior on a case-by-case basis makes that instance extraordinarily rare.

Now, looking from the outside in, troop A seems to be a more disciplined bunch. Troop B kind of seems lax and permissive And if you think that you'd be wrong, If anything, the standards of behavior in troop B are higher and more demanding than the standards of behavior in troop A.

If you have a list of rules and and enforcements and punishments, everything's pretty cut and dried And that's not always, you know, a bad thing. But internalizing the ideals of the scout oath and law is a lot harder. The expectations in that situation are much more strict and much more effective. Both troop A and troop B have to find a way to bridge the gap between expectations and experience. The expectation is scouts, according to the scout law, are trustworthy, But our experience tells us that they often are not.

So there's a gap between our expectations and our experience and we have to bridge that somehow. The scouts in troop A decide to bridge that with rules. It's a simple, well-defined way. They don't have to exercise much judgment because the rules do it for them. The scouts in troop B end up doing a lot harder work, especially emotionally, bridging the gap by applying the ideals of the scout oath and law. Both of the troops definitely strive to create a safe environment of opportunities to live out the oath and law.

Troop B goes a little farther by leveraging the inevitable missteps, misbehaviors, mistakes, failures into developing an internal standard of ideals based on the scout oath and law, because everything we need is in the scout oath and law. It addresses every situation. It's simple and in nearly every scout has those things at least committed to memory. When your standard of conduct and behavior is the scout oath and law, it's difficult to effectively argue your way out of having misbehaved. When you misbehave and somebody sits down and calls you on it and says what part of the scout oath and law apply to this, you have to think about it. You have to look inside, You have to be honest with yourself and that utter honesty and transparency that we approach these ideals with is not necessarily a familiar territory for scouts, because in most other areas of their lives they have rules and enforcements and punishments.

It takes some bravery to have complete trust in scouts When you know by experience they cannot be completely trustworthy and you can't breach that absolute trust and lower your expectations. You have to assure that the environment they go scouting in is safe, physically and emotionally. Yes, using the scout oath and law as a standard is not lax and not permissive. It's just used in exchange for having sets of rules. And the great thing about beginning with the very simple aspiration a scout is trustworthy is it opens up to us a measured and compassionate approach to problems that are inevitably going to come along, because the scout oath and law are broad enough and strong enough to be able to handle any situation that we're given. That's my thought for this week.

Like I said in the opening, I think it's incredibly important. It bears repeating. Hopefully, the way that it was put today in this podcast will be of some help to you. I'd love to hear your opinion. You can get in touch with me. It's very easy to do And I'll tell you how to do that in just a moment.