AIMS

• Growth in moral strength and character
• Participative Citizenship
• Development in physical, mental, and emotional fitness

Participative Citizenship is, I think, a matter that the guys struggle with.  Boy Scouts doesn’t exist until each young man with the young man next to him make it — Boy Scouts is not ready made. Nor is it made by adults, hence its name, “Boy Scouts.”   I’ve been struggling with how to explain this.  For now I’m thinking about it like cooking.  We have the recipe the ingredients and the cooks, but, until somebody cooks that is all we have.  Odd really that that is all it takes to make a community, some people, some values and somebody to keep it rolling.  That’s right somebody to keep it rolling, starting something is easy, what is hard is to finish it.  In general our frustration tolerance for difficulties in communication, motivation, and teamwork is amazingly low, perhaps again because we are seduced by our technologies to imagine that we are engaged with each other when we are really engaged with our machine and our selves and our machines and selves offer very little resistance.  It is hard to build community, but, truly, desperately at this place-time what is more important?

METHODS

• Advancement — “The Scoutmaster must be alert to check badge hunting as compared to badge earning.”
• Ideals — “The Scout Oath and Law are our binding disciplinary force.”
• Patrols — “The object of the patrol method is not so much saving the Scoutmaster trouble as to give responsibility to the boy.”  “The more responsibility the Scoutmaster gives his patrol leaders, the more they will respond.”
• Outdoors — “Scoutmasters need the capacity to enjoy the out-of-doors.”  “Boys can see adventure in a dirty old duck puddle, and if the Scoutmaster is a boys’ man he can see it, too.”
• Adult Association –“Scouting is a game for boys under the leadership of boys under the direction of a man.”
• Personal Growth — “In Scouting you are combating the brooding of selfishness.”  “We must change boys from a ‘what can I get’ to a ‘what can I give’ attitude.”
• Leadership Development — “In Scouting, a boy is encouraged to educate himself instead of being instructed.”
• Uniform — “Show me a poorly uniformed troop and I’ll show you a poorly uniformed leader.”

All of these quotes are from Robert Baden-Powell the founder of Boy Scouting.

What do you get when you combine the talents, skills, learning abilities, work ethic and dreams of your teenager?  You get the path to SUCCESS.

One vital tool for making dreams realities – goal setting.

First, open up communication with your Scout. Have a goal-defining session. Make sure you have plenty of time , even several sessions, to work through the following exercise. Have them sit down with a piece of paper and answer questions like the following.   They need to be honest and self-reflective and that takes time for young people.

• What do I want out of life?
• What do I most enjoy doing?
• What gives me joy?
• What do I value?
• Who is someone I admire and what characteristics do they have?
• If I could solve a world problem, what would it be?
• What am I good at?
• What makes me motivated?
• Where do I see myself in 5 years, 10, 15, 50?
• Where would I like to go?

Second, teach your Scout goal-setting strategies.

1. Define their goals (wishes are not goals because some are not probable or even possible , e.g. “I wish to go to the moon right now.”)
2. Discuss and brainstorm the steps needed to achieve their goals. Do this step for each individual goal. If needed, research the goal online or at the library or talk to school counselors for guidance on how to reach the goal.
3. Identify roadblocks to accomplishing the goals and create plans to deal with them. For example, are their financial problems or time constraints to accomplishing the goal?
4. Make deadlines. Don’t be overwhelmed by large goals, set small goals to help meet the large goals.
5. And finally, have them report on their progress every now and again.

In connection with the final step, a good idea is to set goals and evaluations to work around the school programs. For example, grades can show academic success, or sports programs can show physical prowess.  Scouting shows success with leadership  Talk about how good it feels to meet goals and the rewards that come. Also, set rewards for accomplishing goals, e.g. “I’ll pay for Drivers Education, after you’ve completed your Life Scout”.  Teen goal-setting is a life skill that can take your child far.

In the past I’ve linked to and shared this guys writing with the troop.  And it has stirred up controversy.  Which I am pretty comfortable with.  I’ll preface this link a little this time.  I don’t think I have to grow up and be like this guy.  Our troop, is here and now and grows out of its own tradition.  There is a lot that we do that is good and valuable.  There is some that we do that is familiar, but, isn’t the best and it is this that I want us to examine and shed.  This guy is one way for us to become self-conscious to ask ourselves are we doing the best we can to raise young men, to hold them to a high standard of excellence?

3 Rules of Scouting Leadership

• Explain how it is done – Tell them
• Demonstrate the steps – Show them
• Guide learners as they practice – Watch them do it
• Enable them to succeed on their own – Use memory aids, practice it and they teach it

The BSA has adopted a “new” training model.  It is being used across the program, in adult and youth leadership training, and it is appearing in the new rank requirements for youth advancement.

In the bad old days we said, “see, do, teach”.  And in truth this is the same, with “teach” detailed in the practices of “guide” and “enable”.  What does this mean in the real life?  Learning, in scouting, is not a once off click off, but, rather a matter of repetition.  And this is because we are looking for extremely high competence even “mastery”.  “Mastery” is defined as roughly 10 years of practice, or, 10,000 repetitions.  Basically we cannot look to our schools for models to understand this, rather, sports, is a better example.  Star athletes practice year around, the love of the sport is intrinsic and motivates them.  We hear kids say to one another “hey wanna play catch?”  And they go toss a ball around maybe every afternoon all summer long.  It is fun, sometimes easy, other times intense and competitive.  And so it goes with scouting.  I tell the guys that they can’t tie a knot till they can do it in the dark, in the howling wind and rain, while hanging from their knees, and being beaten by a flapping tarp.  Mastery is a rare level of accomplishment in our world of drive-thru instant gratification.

Your son may experience “Explain” for 18 months, and “demonstrate” for another 18 months, and “guide” for another 18 months, and at that point they may be Patrol leader for the first time, and he experiences for the first time our expectation that he create situations that “enable” others, to have the lesson “explained, demonstrated, and guided”, and that goes on for another 3-4 years.  And maybe, just, maybe, they will be Eagle Scouts at the end of it.  But, in truth, I wasn’t really an Eagle Scout, until sometime between 18 and 21, even though I was recognized at 16.  Again, mastery takes 10 years, and about 10,000 repetitions.  So when your son’s complain about having to repeat the basics all the time… well now you know.  In truth I don’t know if that is enough to get them to understand, but, perhaps it helps.