Scoutmaster Podcast 61

And now it's to you, Scoutmaster. Hey, let me take you back a couple years ago, to Camp Olatto out there in California. Troop 14 is getting ready for bed.

All of a sudden there's a shout from inside one of the tents and there's some scuffling. And then the plaintiff cried: Mr Underwood, I think we have a problem.

So Mr Underwood asked what kind of problem? But there were just some more muffled thumps and some more scuffling.

After a moment he said: did you take care of it? And the scouts replied: yeah, it was a nickel. Yeah, it was a nickel.

Well, as Walter Underwood, who's a scout leader out there with Troop 14, reconstructed it, one of the scouts got into his sleeping bag and his barefoot touched a cold nickel, You know, like a coin, A nickel coin. Walter says that he's not sure what the scout thought that nickel was, but it made him jump. He jumped out and stomped the nickel until it wasn't dangerous anymore.

Hey, I guess we can be happy it wasn't a quarter or a deadly 50 cents. Hey, this is Podcast Number 61..

Hey, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Hey, thanks, Walter for the story. That was a story that Walter Underwood sent me by email. Yeah, the one that you heard just before the opening music there. Walter is a longtime listener and reader of the Scoutmaster blog and I sure do appreciate you getting in touch.

You can get in touch. You can send me stories and questions and emails- That's right- by email or over the phone, and you'll find out how to do that right here at the end of the podcast.

So let's see what came across this week. Don left a review on iTunes for the podcast. He says one of the best podcasts on scouting. I enjoy them from beginning to end.

Well, thank you very much, Don, for taking the trouble to do that. If you subscribe through iTunes, take a moment, go over and leave a review or a rating about the Scoutmaster Podcast. Sure would appreciate it. I heard from John Sloan. He said in April I'm taking over as Scoutmaster for the troop where I earned my eagle. Hey, good for you, John.

I've only recently gotten back involved with scouts and I'm trying very hard to get as informed as I can. Your podcasts are fantastic for that. I'm beginning to feel prepared to be a true mentor for our youth leadership.

Thanks so much for taking the time to put this information out there for people like me. Well, thanks, John, for getting in touch and thank you for the kind words And I'm very interested to hear how things go. Yeah, let me know after you take over in April how things are going. A lot of new Scoutmasters listen to this podcast.

A lot of people who are preparing to become Scoutmasters are assistant Scoutmasters, So we can all benefit from each other's experience. Dave wrote in and said this: Thanks again, Clark, for a great podcast. I've spread the word about you to my fellow Scouters. I never fail to harvest some gem from you each week.

Well, that's very kind of you, Dave, Thank you. Your podcast on incoming Webelos has me wondering, and that was last week's podcast, podcast number 60. We talked a little bit about Webelos transition time This spring. We welcomed no new Webelos, not one.

We did have five from my former pack that camped with us last year at a camperee and they seemed to have a great time. But they chose to go to another troop And that troop has many years of history and a long list of Eagle Scouts. In comparison, we're kind of small and struggling a little bit.

Now I had two questions for you. With the new national journey to excellence standards that result in a numerical rating, how will smaller troops have a chance to recruit?

The second question Dave had is when we invite local Webelos to troop meetings, I receive a lot of resentment from other Scoutmasters who feel entitled to their feeder packs, quote, unquote. How do we recruit Scouts in that kind of a climate?

Well, Dave, a couple of quick thoughts. The journey to excellence that Dave's mentions- most of you will be familiar with that if you're not.

There was years ago something called the Quality Unit Award and it was just an evaluation that was done, a self-evaluation of the troop program, And if you met so many criteria you were judged to be a quality unit. That turned into a couple of years ago the Centennial Quality Unit Award, or I forget exactly what the terminology was- And that was a program that went on for a couple of years and it was found to be. For a lot of people it was kind of confusing- I know it was for me.

And now this year BSA is rolling out, the journey to excellence, which looks to me like a pretty good evaluation of a troops program. I like this one better than I like either of the previous permutations.

So there's what the journey to excellence is And, Dave, I don't know if that's going to become a really important part of the way people evaluate. You know, Webelos parents evaluate troops. I can tell you, probably, that Webelos themselves are going to have no to little idea about those numbers and they're probably not going to care about them all that much. What they're going to care about is what the scouts, who the scouts and the troop are and how they are treated when they visited. And I'll be interested to hear if that becomes like a default kind of numerical standard by which people judge troops. I don't know that the quality unit ever earned us any Webelos.

I don't know if the Centennial Quality Unit thing ever earned us any Webelos, And I don't know if the journey to excellence will either. I think what's more important is the kind of relationship that you form with a pack and the kind of work that you do in recruiting them into the troop.

I think that puts you on a pretty even playing field. Your second question about getting resentment from other Scoutmasters who feel entitled to Webelos somehow- Yeah, that doesn't wash with me at all. I'll tell you I don't like that attitude. I've seen it before. You'll win, Dave, If you're going toe-to-toe with guys with an attitude like that. You're going to win because you don't have that attitude right.

What we really need to have as volunteers in scouting is an attitude of community scouting. If boys join another pack or another troop or another venture crew other than the one that we're associated with, we should be pleased because they're getting the benefits of the program. I mean, that's what it's all about, right. Just because they don't happen to join our program shouldn't be a cause for resentment And the fact that people are competing for their attention when they're Webelos- I don't know why that would be a cause of resentment.

So, Dave, I don't know what to tell you, but other than I just don't think that that's a very scout-like attitude for scout leaders to have, And I know you don't have that attitude, And if you just rise above it, people will notice that you have risen above it. I'm sorry that that's happening to you, but it's one of those little scouting dramas that sometimes are best ignored, you know.

So I hope that helps, Dave, and I'd like to continue discussing the whole subject with you.

This time around, this time around in Scoutmastership, in seven minutes or less, we're going to talk about deep philosophical meanings. That's right.

I mean get ready, And then we have an email that came in that I want to take a little time to answer And I think that's enough for any podcast, don't you? Well, let's get started, shall we?

There are things we know we know- Okay, I got that- And we also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know- I think I do- But there are also unknown unknowns.

What The ones we don't know? We don't know What.

Excuse me, but is this an unknown unknown? Yeah, really, What is he talking about? I'm not several unknowns and I just want to make this an unknown- unknown- I'm not going to say which it is. That was Eagle Scout Donald Rumsfeld when he was the Secretary of Defense.

We're not going to go into politics here, but I think it's an important little piece, a little statement that was made that got repeated often and people puzzled over it. Actually, I think some of the concepts that are there are probably a good thing for us to talk about as scout leaders.

Yeah, no, really, You know? Stick with me for a moment, Because what was contained in there is part of what psychologists call the four stages of competence.

So let's just review those quickly, shall we. Stage number one is unconscious incompetence. Stage number two is conscious incompetence. Stage number three is, can you guess, conscious competence. And stage number four, unconscious competence.

Now, what in the world does that have to do with the price of tea in China, you may be asking. Well, I will tell you exactly what it has to do with scouting. We're dealing and working with developing youth responsibility, developing youth leadership, And most of them come to us at the first stage of competence. Unconscious incompetence, I mean, they don't know what they don't know. They don't understand or know how to do something, And they don't recognize that they don't know how to do it. They don't even necessarily know that it exists.

That's really important for us to know, isn't it? If we base our evaluation on the idea that we have a whole lot of shared experience and a whole lot of shared knowledge with the guys in our troop who are 14,, 13,, 14,, 15 years old and who we are entrusting with real responsibility, we're in for a little bit of a shock, aren't we? Because they are unconsciously incompetent. I'm not saying anything bad about them. They just don't know what they don't know.

So they begin not knowing what they don't know, And then we want to get them to stage number two, which is conscious incompetence. Conscious incompetence does not understand or know how to do something, but they recognize the fact that they don't know how to do it.

So that's pretty important. The third stage we want to get them to is conscious competence.

In other words, we want them to be able to demonstrate the skill or knowledge with consciousness and concentration. I mean training scouts is leading through this progression of competence, these stages of competence. Before anybody progresses through these stages, they have to first encounter the Dunning-Kruger effect. I'm sure you're all familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect. Dunning-Kruger effect was put forward about 10 years ago by Justin Kruger and David Dunning. Basically, the effect describes that those with little knowledge or skill tend to overestimate their skills or knowledge And those with more knowledge or skill actually tend to underestimate their capabilities.

If you're at the stage of unconscious incompetence, you're probably going to overestimate your abilities. Now, who does this sound like?

Does this sound like you're a senior patrol leader? Does this sound like a patrol leader? They overestimate their skills or knowledge sometimes. They need to have a very realistic estimation of what they don't know. That's what training is Getting people to: stage number two of conscious incompetence. There are things that I don't know about that I need to know.

So how do we get this to happen? How do we make this happen?

Well, we ask a lot of questions. Here's an example: We just attended a bridge-crossing ceremony yesterday. There's a new patrol leader who's there to accept these new Webelos who are leaving Cub Scouts coming over into the troop. And I asked him.

I said: what do you want to know about these guys? And he kind of looked at me and he said, well, I really don't know.

So we were at stage one unconscious incompetence. What do you mean?

What do I want to know about these guys? I said, well, are you going to contact them any time? Yeah, I am.

What do you need to know to do that? Oh, I need to know what their phone numbers are.

I said, well, I'd begin with their names. You probably need to know their names, but you also need to know their phone numbers. He got it. He was consciously incompetent. Wow, I didn't think about that.

And then he went and got names and phone numbers. There's a couple of approaches there that could have been taken. In that particular scenario, I could have gotten the names and the phone numbers of the new Scouts for him and given them to him.

Now, that would have been a nice thing for me to do, but it probably wouldn't have been the most optimum way to make this happen, because my new patrol leader wouldn't have really progressed very far. He would have a paper with names and phone numbers on it. I could tell him: go get everybody's name and phone number, because you're going to need to call them. That would have been better than me just giving them to him, But also right then I'm kind of skipping over the idea that this is something that he needs to be thinking about.

So the third scenario, the one that I just described, is asking him the question: what do you need to know about these guys And are you going to contact them any time? That makes him think, That makes him discover what he does not know and then move ahead to the next stage to begin to address it. And that particular skill is much, much more important than him having a set of names and telephone numbers.

So let's review this very quickly. There are four stages of competence. There's unconscious incompetence, In other words, somebody does not know what they don't know. Then there's conscious incompetence: They don't necessarily understand something, but they recognize that they don't understand it.

And then stage number three is conscious competence, where they're able to demonstrate the skill or knowledge with consciousness and concentration. And stage number four, by the way, we didn't discuss very much but is unconscious competence, And that is being so well practiced in the skill or knowledge that it's kind of second nature And a person at this stage is able to teach others the skill. There's a number of things in life that you and I as adults are unconsciously competent about. Those things correspond to things that a lot of our youth leaders are still at stage one. They don't know that, they don't know them.

So it's our job to help them begin to understand that and to get them to move on through the stages of competence. I mentioned the Dunning-Kruger effect again And just to review, that's the phenomenon that those with little knowledge or skill tend to overestimate their skills or knowledge And those with more knowledge or skill actually tend to underestimate their capabilities.

One of the most important things we can do as scout leaders is help our scouts develop the internal process of going through these stages of competence and gaining skill and knowledge and then learning not to overestimate that skill and knowledge but being open to developing them and to working on them. We do that in several different ways. Probably the most effective one is by asking them a lot of leading questions and getting them to discover a lot of these things for themselves. Hi, this is Dr Paul Auerbach, and you are listening to Clarke Green on the Scoutmaster Podcast Email. That is, folks,

And here's an answer to one of your emails. Hey, I have this email from Assistant Scoutmaster Michael Vino of Troop 2000 in Brockton, Mass. He says this: I've been told scouts can't use power tools, but the BSA guidelines I read say they can. The only thing is is that they're completely void of any specific information as to which tools are allowed and which ones aren't. I need to know this because it will determine how I'm going to counsel some merit badges And it will determine which ones I'm going to counsel and which ones I'm not.

Where can I go to get the requested info? Well, Mike, first of all, thanks for getting in touch. This is a pretty easy question to answer.

Go to the Guide to Safe Scouting and there will be a link to that guide in the post that contains this podcast online And you're going to find in the Guide to Safe Scouting, a chart, And that chart is going to say that anyone who is a Boy Scout, that's ten and a half years or older and registered as a Boy Scout, is permitted to use power tools. You should note that the guide is silent on which power tools they get to use, because that is going to be up to whoever is running the activity. I'm a carpenter by trade and I have a lot of familiarity with the subject.

Now, I don't have a problem with most 11-year-olds operating a battery power drill. You know, with proper supervision and proper training, That's not a problem. But I'm not going to- really There's not too many 11-year-olds that I have using a circular saw.

Now, that being said, there are some 17-year-old Scouts who worry me when they use something like a butter knife, and I wouldn't let them within ten feet of a circular saw, And that's the reason that there isn't a specific listing of who gets to do what You're supposed to, as an adult, use your experience and common sense to determine who's going to be able to use what power tool, And you're going to train them properly and you're going to give them all of the safety information they need, And you're going to be backed up in that, because all of the craft merit badges that would use power tools. They have safety elements built in around that.

Now, before we talk about that, I do need to mention that any one of the craft merit badges- you know woodworking, wood carving, you know leather work, all of those, all of those can be completed with hand tools And I kind of prefer it that way because it kind of slows down the process and you get to know what you're doing better. It's a little slower but it can be completed, And you'll also note that there's a safety element built into all of those merit badges.

Woodworking merit badge says this: show that you know first aid for injuries and also tell what precautions must be taken to help prevent the loss of eyesight or hearing and explain why and when it's necessary to use a dust mask, and then tell your counselor what precautions you take to safely use your tools. So obviously, if you're using a dust mask and hearing protection, to me that would indicate that you know you might end up using power tools to fulfill this merit badge in some situations.

You know people come up with some of these rules off the top of their heads sometimes because if they're not familiar with power tools they may think, wow, I don't want any children using power tools. Well, children could be trained to use them, just like they can be trained to use pocket knives, And it can be done safely with the right kind of supervision and the right kind of training. If you have any personal doubt as to your abilities in that department, then don't do it. Sometimes a troop or a camp or a council may overlay some safety rules, whether they're advisable or inadvisable. I'm not going to judge, But the BSA itself does not.

So as a merit badge counselor, as a volunteer merit badge counselor, I wouldn't have any problem with you going out and properly showing scouts how to safely use power tools and using your supervision and judgment to assure that they don't get injured by them. I hope that helps. Thanks a lot, Mike, for becoming a merit badge counselor. It's a lot of fun, And if I can help you with any other questions, let me know. You can get in touch with your questions. That's right, you can.

Your questions, your comments, your funny stories, you can get in touch with me here at the Scoutmaster Podcast. I'm going to tell you how to do that in just a moment.