Recomendations

Locally, the largest troops are those whose programs are the most like what I grew up with. The most like what you see proposed on this page. “Modernization” does not make Scouting fun. Or teach more deeply. Quite the opposite.

Eliminate the New Scout Patrol

The New Scout Patrol transfers responsibility for advancement to First Class away from the other patrols of the troop. This advancement focuses on outdoor Scout skills. Thus, the existence of this pseudo-patrol:

• Minimizes involvement by the rest of the troop in Scout skills.
• Minimizes patrol competition.
  • Patrols do not have similar ages and experience.
  • Scout skills were the typical subjects of the competition.
• Removes the need for patrols to camp regularly.
• Kills the Patrol Method.

Restore Patrol Method

• Nearly every troop event should have patrol competition.
• Patrols should be of similar size and ranks. Each should have at least one new Scout and at least one Scout who is First Class. When assigning new Scouts to patrols, try to even them out.
• Most advancement toward First Class Scout should take place entirely within the patrols.
• A Senior Scout Patrol is not a problem. It shouldn’t normally compete against the other patrols, but rather help run competitions and do other functions.

Camp in the Wilderness

• Scouts should camp in nature, with minimal infrastructure.
• Scouts should camp by patrol. There should be separation between the patrols when a troop camps.
• Ideally, each patrol site should have a single ground fire over which all cooking is done by the patrol. Where this kind of fire is prohibited, concession to the land owners rules is necessary. But all cooking requirements for advancement should be completed over wood fires.
• A troop should camp nearly every month of the year.

Requirements Should Challenge

• Swimming should be required for Eagle. It is a fundamental Scout skill.
• Lifesaving should be required for Eagle. Eagle Scouts should be able to do water rescue.
• Hiking should also be required for Eagle. It is a fundamental Scout skill.
• Environmental Science should be required for Eagle. It is also a fundamental Scout skill.
• All Merit badges should include at least some hands-on requirements.

Require Completion of a Rank Before Beginning the Next

• The lower ranks, through First Class Scout, are designed to be a ladder to climb. Each is meant to be a substantial achievement, requiring many months to complete. Attaining these non-immediate goals teaches persistence.
• The inclusion of the same topic (such as first aid) in multiple ranks is intended to spread out the material over time and increase retention.
• Allowing the Scout to work on all aspects of a single subject at the same time eliminates these valuable aspects of the advancement program.

Encourage Mentoring to Prevent Grooming

• Mentoring is a key element of good Scouting. Good Scouting is impossible without it.
  • Scoutmaster’s Conference, required for advancement, is mentoring.
  • The primary way we teach leadership in Scouting is by individual feedback: mentoring.
  • Adult Leadership (Method of Scouting) requires mentoring.
  • Handling failure or rule violations requires mentoring.
  • The Scoutmaster / Senior Patrol Leader relationship requires mentoring.
• The requirement for no one-on-one contact between Scout and Scouter prohibits mentoring unless visible to others.
  • Blocks good Scouting in troops that don’t understand that no one has to be close enough to hear, they just have to be visible to others.
  • Has kicked many good Scouters out who were not even suspected of actual grooming or abuse.
    • Treats accidental violation while mentoring the same as actual grooming.
    • Treats off-color remarks the same as actual grooming.
  • Implies that inappropriate but consensual teen romance should be treated as actual grooming.
• If a Scout feels he is being groomed, he needs to know that he can talk frankly and privately to you, which is mentoring. The rules do not protect him; he is silenced by them.
• The requirement for no one-on-one contact between Scout and Scouter is widely misinterpreted to mean no mentoring.
  • Protects Groomers by teaching everyone to ignore one-on-one contact.
  • National needs to clearly encourage mentoring in the Barriers to Abuse training. The general suppression of mentoring has to stop.
  • The only real safeguard is plural mentorship: a culture where youth have multiple guides, where no adult can monopolize trust. Mentoring should be encouraged. The more the better. Scouting without mentoring is not cautious. It is broken.

Trust a Scout’s Honor

• Require Scout Investure
  • All Scout troops should have a formal ceremony for new Scouts in which they pledge to keep the Scout Oath and Law. This should include former Cub Scouts, who previously took it as a Cub.
  • All other units (Packs, Posts, Ships, and Crews) likewise.
• We must fix or eliminate all rules that assume that a Scout cannot be trusted.
  • Trust goes both ways. If we do not trust them, if our actions reveal that we do not expect them to be Trustworthy, they will not be Trustworthy.
  • We must eliminate the rule that forbids a Scout to travel alone from his campsite to and through the public parts of camp, and back.
    • It is impossible to obey if no other Scouts are going to the same place (such as a Merit Badge) at the same time. And thus, on a practical level, it requires dishonesty.
  • We should eliminate the rule that forbids a boy and a girl from traveling as a pair.
    • Suppress teen romance by keeping the boy and girl camping areas as separate as possible so that they are only together in the public common areas of camp.
      • Logically more effective than unenforceable (and widely ignored) buddy system rules. This prevents a boy and a girl from traveling alone together without a rule that implies that we do not trust them. “It is risky to order a boy not to do something; it immediately opens to him the adventure of doing it.” — Baden-Powell. Let’s not give them ideas.
      • For practical reasons, very small troops are forced to operate as a combined (family) troop, whether they are chartered as a single (family) troop, or as a linked pair of troops.
        • Campsites containing both boys and girls (at separate ends) should be in a distinct area separate from the boy troops and the girl troops. Fortunately, this means more leadership present, and thus less likelihood of inappropriate activities. But ideally, girls should have safe spaces without the distraction of boys. And boys should have safe spaces without the distraction of girls.
        • Only two leaders, including at least one female leader, should be required in such a campsite, regardless of the charter. See the “Simplify Two Deep Leadership Rule” section below.
    • A Scout must keep his PL/SPL/SM aware of where he is going. Travel alone into wilderness areas is forbidden for safety reasons and does not require separate relationship rules.
• If a Scout describes to his Merit Badge Counselor what he did for a “prerequisite” requirement in detail, the Counselor should be allowed and encouraged to take the Scout at his word.
• If a Scout breaks his word of honor, he should be subject to sanctions. He is not a Scout if he is not Trustworthy.

Restore Name “Boy Scouts of America”

The change from “Boy Scouts of America” to “Scouting America”

• The boys don’t like it.
  • It’s no longer a safe space for them to be a boy; to be masculine.
  • Aligned with the school system that considers masculinity toxic.
  • When combined with girls, the girls typically dominate the leadership positions as they mature at a faster rate.
  • Numbers didn’t recover. They continue to fall.
• The girls don’t like it.
  • They signed up for “Boy Scouts of America”, not a watered-down brand.
  • The name change signals the very spirit they came for is slipping away.
• It suggests we’re making the program easier. And we are.
  • Advancement has been sped up.
  • Programs have been eliminated.
• It signals we’re embarrassed by our legacy.
  • It gives the impression we’re ashamed of our hundred-year tradition of character development.
  • Worse, it suggests we’re trying to bury our sexual abuse history when healing requires transparency.
• It has been interpreted in the press as yet another left-wing radical program change.
  • Significant, as our membership has always leaned conservative.
  • Churches continue to disassociate from the BSA because policies conflict with Scripture.
  • Individuals leave when they decide the BSA is no longer consistent with their beliefs.
• Endorsed by the left.
  • Yet progressive-controlled public schools are even less cooperative with our recruiting than they used to be.
• It’s a rebrand in name only. The public still refers to us as “Boy Scouts.”
• We tried this already in the early ’70s. “Scouting USA” (thankfully) vanished without a ripple.
• The initials “SA” already meant something else in youth services: Sexual Abuse.
• The rebrand did not accomplish the objective of becoming gender-neutral..
  • “BSA” remains our abbreviation and a part of badges, patches, and programs.
  • The “B” means “boy”, so we did not even meet that objective.

The name change is a flop. A disaster. Ineffective. Displeases our constituencies. Brings attention to our mistakes. Signals our shame. Dismisses our history. It will go down as one of the worst debacles in the history of branding.

Simplify the Two Deep Leadership Rule

Unfortunately, the rule is being interpreted to mean that if two linked troops are camping together (with separate sleeping areas for the boys and girls), then they need two qualified leaders for each troop, meaning four total. But if they were a combined (family) troop, only two would be required. This standard is being enforced at summer camp, where a linked pair of troops without four qualified leaders has to send either all their boys or all their girls to provisional. Some troops have created special contracts between the parties to solve this issue. But this is bureaucracy, unrelated to safety.

In practice, Scouters are cross-registering in each sponsored unit so that they can help out. But that should be unnecessary, and does not solve the above issue.

To generally make it easier for all cases of multiple units sponsored by a single organization, I propose the following simplification. Any Scouter approved by a sponsoring organization should, for compliance with the Two Deep Leadership rule, be allowed to substitute for any other leadership position, at any event, in any unit sponsored by that organization. It would be unnecessary to get separate approval from the sponsoring organization for each of its units in which you might be called upon to help. If the sponsoring organization has declared that you are trustworthy in one unit, it follows that you can be trusted in another.

Second, if the leadership of the troops, and by implication the sponsoring organization, are fine with their boy and girl troops camping in separate areas of a single site, then the Two Deep Leadership rule should not require four leaders, but just two.

Eliminate UnScoutlike Policies

• Eliminate DEI
  • Eliminate the Citizenship in Society Merit Badge.
  • Eliminate all programs and training related to the DEI concept. Substitute discussions of related points of the Scout Law.
  • Do not rename programs just to concede to political pressure.
    • Name “Target and Range Activities” back to “Shooting Sports”.
• Sexual conduct in Scouting
  • Remains forbidden.
  • Human sexuality is generally not discussed.
    • No discussion of homosexuality.
    • No discussion or encouragement of Scouts to think of themselves as a different gender.
  • Scouts are not sexually intimate during Scout events or on Scouting property. Neither heterosexual nor homosexual. Nor any romantic preludes, such as kissing, handholding, and flirting.
  • Scouts must be registered consistent with their physical gender. Boys cannot claim to be girls and join a girl troop. Nor vice versa. Regardless of the sincerity of their belief in being the other gender, by allowing this, the current policy cancels all other gender-related youth protection barriers. It is unacceptable to most parents. And many Scouts. If this actually becomes at all common, it will kill the BSA all by itself. The BSA only continues to exist because few know of this policy, and few troops would actually allow it.
• Linked and combined (family) troops
  • Combined (family) troops are not recommended.
    • 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 looking good for the other gender.
  • Troop campsites in Scout camp should be designated for a single gender, and those for a particular gender are located adjacent to each other. In other words, boy troops are over here, and girl troops are over there.
  • If it is necessary to have a campsite containing both boys and girls because of the small number of youth, any campsites containing both boys and girls should be in a separate area of camp, distinct from both the boy troops area and the girl troops area. See the Simplify the Two Deep Leadership Rule section for leadership requirements.
• Remove the bias toward the methods of formal education over Scout methods in all programs
  • Rank requirements
  • Merit Badges
  • Wood Badge
  • NYLT

Allow Competition

The Congressional Charter granted to the Boy Scouts of America in 1916 gave the BSA a perpetual monopoly over the use of words like “Scout”, “Scouting”, and all other unique words that it uses to describe its program. And in effect, a trademark over every symbol it adopts. The Girl Scouts of the USA has a similar charter. Only those two organizations are allowed to use any scouting terminology in the United States.

The purpose of these charters, the apparent intent of Congress, was to remove all competition from those two organizations. There were many competitors, some large and some just individual troops, which were combined into the BSA.

The resulting lack of competition is the single most important cause of all of the issues raised on this website.

With competition allowed, changes over the last 50 years would have caused entire troops to charter with an alternative to the BSA. Instead, they either continued with a program that did not reflect their values or walked away (as so many have done). With competition, the BSA would have been forced to reject proposed changes that were not consistent with the religious and traditional values of the folks who are attracted to Scouting. Or, to lose membership to competitors.

The Congressional Charter of the BSA should be revised to allow other organizations to use words like ‘Scout”, “Scouting”, and “Scouter”, consistent with their use in multiple non-US organizations worldwide. And to use methods, procedures, and requirements of the BSA. The BSA’s specific symbols should remain protected.