Follow
Scoutmaster Podcast 43
In This Podcast
Leadership tenure email question [6:44]
Podcast Notes
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Listen to this episode (00:26:22)
Get updates to Scoutmastercg.com by email
About Clarke Green
Comments
Sorry to hear about the SPL – but this happens from time to time – similar things have happened to me too. It follows if this has happened to two of us it means it has happened to two hundred more!
I have a bigger mouth than you Larry! It cuts both ways, sometimes we get a pat on the back, sometimes we get a kick in the pants.
We both know the Scouts will work this all out. Sometimes the committee’s job is to be nervous, the SM’s job is to calm them down.
Hi Guys
I’ll try to keep it fairly short. This is all close to home for me right now as my SPL quit Tuesday night. Not totally unexpected, but nevertheless a problem as we have a campout this weekend. Next Tuesday we’ll have elections, and maybe some patrol reorganization, even though it’s not February yet. Several committee members are concerned and I don’t think were entirely on board when I said the Scouts will work it out 🙂
By parliamentarian, as I said above, I didn’t mean teaching Scouts about government. What I was saying is that most parliamentarian governments have regular elections, but they also have the ability to remake and reshuffle things in between. That’s all I meant. Them, BAM, I’m right in the middle of it. How fitting for the guy with the big mouth.
AMEN Brother!
Good thoughts Allan! You guys keep me on my toes!
If, as I suggest, Scouts can elect a Patrol leader whenever they want it does not immediately follow that they will do this impulsively every two weeks. While this could happen in theory it does not commonly happen in practice.
I am not so much concerned that Scouts are learning about types of government as they are about the underlying principles of autonomy tempered by responsibility – the heart of the democratic process.
In the situation that was described to me it was clear that the no-show patrol leader needed to start carrying his weight, or to be replaced.
The question was how does one replace a patrol leader. My answer was that the patrol elects a new leader. So the next question follows – when and how does this happen? My answer is that the patrol may elect a leader at any time but this does not mean they do this cavalierly.
There’s a common false dichotomy when discussing youth leadership; we often think that if we give them full responsibility and authority then we have to stand by and watch them descend into chaos. The other extreme is the adults making all of the decisions and plans for them.
Coaching and mentoring from older Scouts and adult leaders are a check on Scouts making impulsive, poor decisions. We invest our Scouts with autonomy to make decisions but this comes with an expectation of responsibility.
As you note building patrols is hard in the absence of a strong model but we are not so much aiming at an ideal as taking our Scouts through a process.
Clark,
In every troop I have been associated with (6), I have always seen the practice of having a set term of office for troop youth leaders. This applied to the SPL who is voted in by the whole troop, and to Patrol Leaders, who are voted in by the patrol. The PL’s where considered troop leaders. Every six months to a year these troops would hold an official election to elect these youth leaders. This is the standard practice of every troop I have ever heard of.
But you are saying that we should train our scouts on the patrol level to elect a new patrol leader whenever they want. If they elect a guy, and then two weeks later feel disappointed in the decision, they just do it again.
This brings to mind a few questions. Do we lay any ground rules or set up a process for this to happen? If we think in terms of a parliamentary system, your idea seems fine. But in our constitutional democracy, there is always an agreed upon process that is followed before hand that sets the term of office, a candidates qualifications, a chain of command if an official steps down, etc. The patrol should be a vehicle where citizenship is learned, where each member has rights and responsibilities, and leadership is experienced. Do we have the scouts pattern this after American government, or some other?
How much autonomy does a patrol have? I could foresee that a patrol will want to be the “cool” patrol, and to that end would try to banish members that the group does not think is “cool”. This happened to us once at summer camp. A ringleader was making it hard for younger boys, and when the SPL showed up, he was driven out of camp in a rock throwing incident. I ended up expelling the “cool” ringleader from the troop after summer camp. We lost a couple of good scouts over this.
I know we should coach our scouts through the patrol building process, but it is hard when you have not seen it modeled very much.
Dude, that was just spot on.
The whole thing. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Maybe we should think of our troops as more parliamentarian. The Scouts form and reform their “government” (whatever you want to call it) as needed. I would think that is how Baden Powell would think of it.
I really liked it when you said “He’s 14”. As if that implied something to Boy Scout Leaders 🙂 Fantastic.
Also, it was great when you said that we WANT things like this to happen. That is so true. This attitude makes some folks very nervous, but it is exactly what we are trying to achieve.
Larry “Disciple of Clarke” Geiger