Re-Visioning Your Troop

Delivering Scouting Without Apology

Taken as a whole, this website has multiple audiences. Those involved in national BSA who hope to find solutions as it shrinks. Those outside of national who oppose the direction we are going. Those who prepare alternatives.

This final page is for those who deliver Scouting within the system.

As Scoutmaster, you can restore true Scouting methods in your troop. This page does not ask you to leave. It asks you to lead. It does not assume either that the system will or will not change nationally. It insists that Scouting’s methods can and must be restored, regardless. That you can do so locally.

You held the program together in your troop despite the national changes that impacted you, directly or indirectly. To help you restore traditional Scouting in your troop, the previous pages of this website identified subtle changes in the BSA over the years. And thus enable you to implement methods that will make your troop more fun and facilitate individual growth.

You don’t need permission to do what’s right. You need the conviction to do it.

“The Scoutmaster must be alert to check badge hunting as compared to badge earning.” — Baden-Powell

“Be First Class.” That’s what the old handbooks said. Not “Trail to Eagle.” Not “Earn badges.” Be something. Become someone.

What You Must Deliver

These are the irreducible elements. If you deliver these, you provide Scouting. If you omit them, you provide something less.

• Patrol Method: Not just small groups. Real autonomy. Real leadership. Real consequences.
  • Eliminate the New Scout Patrol
  • Maintain your patrols with similar size and ranks
  • Patrols camp separately with their own cooking fire
  • Patrols create their own menus, purchase their own food, and cook it themselves.
  • Frequent patrol competition, usually in Scout skills.
  • Most advancement through First Class Scout is within the patrol
• Out-of-doors experiences: challenged by nature, not just viewing it.
• Challenge: Physical, emotional, moral. Not sanitized. Not simulated.
• Mentoring: Adults guide, not command. Model, not manage. Plural mentorship. All adult leaders must be open to mentoring.
• Advancement: A path that requires growth, not just attendance.
  • They must complete one rank before beginning the next
  • Merit Badge counselors must be knowledgeable in the subject
  • Focus on experiences over classroom learning
  • Your troop should produce lots of Eagles because it is large and your program is tough and fun. Not because adults hold their hands and take advancement off of their shoulders.
• Trust a Scout’s Honor
  • They are trusted when they talk of requirement completion
  • They are trusted when they travel within camp
  • As always, SPL/SM to be informed of where they are going and with whom

What You Must Avoid

These are the seductive compromises. They look helpful. They feel polite. They are the drift.

• Programmed Fun: Entertainment pretending to be engagement. Let your Patrol Leaders offer fundamental games and activities that pull in the Scouts’ focus and keep all the Scouts involved. Your job as Scoutmaster is to train your Patrol Leaders, and theirs is to train the Scouts.
• Adult Control: Troop run by committee, not by Scouts. What makes a proper Scout troop an amazing thing is that Scouts elect their Patrol Leaders from among their peers and those Patrol Leaders run the show. Don’t rob Scouts of this unique experience.
• Safetyism: Avoiding tough experiences at the cost of growth. It is especially important that Scouts learn by doing, and nothing prepares them to do well better than feeling the stress of hard work and challenge. Competition should be boisterous. Challenge should push them to and a little bit past their known limits. That is where real growth happens.
• Metrics Over Meaning: Advancement without challenge and at maximum speed. Having badges is nice, but knowing that you earned them every step of the way is far better. A Scout who takes their time making First Class and knows they did every little bit of that work for themselves will benefit far more than a Scout who sets the world land-speed record for making Eagle by doing the bare minimum. In a crisis, that First Class Scout will have much greater confidence and be of far greater use to his fellow man.
• Appeasement: Saying yes to diluted approaches to preserve peace. Standing up for what you believe sets an example for your Scouts and reminds other leaders that you are the key. Without you, they can appoint some less committed Scoutmaster, but can he attract the kind of membership you can? You have leverage, and you should use it so that your Scouts have the best experiences.
• Gender mixing: Distraction, and a door to disaster. Both boys and girls have the right to “safe spaces” where the other sex is absent so boys can be boys, girls can be girls, and everyone focuses on Scouting, not on looking good for the other gender. The older boys are distracted; the younger boys are uncomfortable. Separate units will not deprive Scouts of anything, while mixed units almost surely will. The needs of your Scouts are more important than the needs of political activists who insist there is no difference between boys and girls.

You Inherit More Than a Troop

As Scoutmaster, you are not just the leader. You are the heir to a movement that was built by visionaries. But soon after, it was absorbed by bureaucratic systems.

• Seton gave Scouting its soul: ritual, nature, meaning. He left when it was stripped away.
• Beard gave it frontier grit and self-reliance. He watched it become managed.
• Boyce gave it reach. But his Lone Scouts were swallowed and forgotten.
• Thousands of boys built patrols without permission. They didn’t wait for charters. They were the spark.

You inherit their struggle. You inherit their unfinished work. Delivering Scouting without apology means honoring what they built, and refusing what suppressed it.

The BSA believes you are its servant. That you must obey. But as the Scoutmaster, you are the center of the program. Even the national bureaucracy, with its preference for rules over experiences, understands that your unpaid “babysitting services” are the products for which it charges hefty fees.

You are the key to your troop. Yet you cannot act alone. Get the support of the other leaders to make changes. They need to see the larger picture.

There is a more delicate question. How does your sponsoring institution feel about the issues raised on the Woke Policies page? Make sure that you see eye-to-eye with your sponsor on these issues. Know what their standards are. Let them know that where there is a conflict, your loyalty is to their ethical standards, over BSA rules. They need to stand with you. And you with them. Remember, your troop DOES NOT BELONG TO THE BSA. IT BELONGS TO, IS A PART OF, YOUR SPONSORING ORGANIZATION.

What About the Future? Where is Scouting Going?

I don’t have a crystal ball or a time machine. However, I’m providing you with the layout of what was, how it changed, and where we are. So that, whatever the future holds, you can make good decisions for your Troop. For your Scouts.

The BSA organization idolizes the World Organization of the Scouting Movement (WOSM) as the sole custodian of Scouting. (The optional purple patch above your left uniform pocket is the WOSM insignia.) Nothing could be further from the truth. The WOSM only includes the dominant Scout associations of each country. There are scores of other Scout associations. Why? Why doesn’t everyone just join their country’s association designated by the WOSM?

It’s called “Indie” Scouting, meaning “independent”. Each tries to recapture the traditional Scouting largely left behind by the WOSM associations. You see, issues with the introduction of woke culture (anti-God, against universal ethical principles, accepting promiscuity, preference for formal education over outdoor experience) are not limited to US Scouting. Indie Scouting associations exist to emphasize Scouting’s primitive outdoor skills and methods. Smaller organizations, equivalent to WOSM, bring those bastions of traditional Scouting into contact with each other.

Here in the US, Indie Scouting is hampered by the BSA Congressional Charter. They can’t use the word “scout” or “scouting”. Most BSA alternatives are associated with churches. But in many other countries, Indie Scouting is not suppressed.

Conclusion

Some may not like this page because it reveals the truth: National is not the fulcrum. You are. They are not the future. You are.

And the numbers prove it. Retention. Engagement. Growth. All of it hinges on you, the Scoutmaster who delivers Scouting without apology.

Locally, the largest troops are those whose programs are the most like what I grew up with. I see frequent and challenging camping and hiking. I see patrols grappling with menus and cooking. I see Scout skills. I see patrol competition.