by
George Avery
As an ol' coot who worked with Scouts (quit it 23 years ago)
in GENTLER
times, I must agree with the statement, in particular the last
two
sentences.
I'm the one gettin' the education from these totally imept young
men as I
attempt to train them in how to care for themselves and others.
Genesis and the Mario Brothers, et. al.do not have any particle
of what
it takes to become a MAN, or what one must do to train others
in the ART.
If anything is calculated to make a grown man cry it is the hought
that
so many of our youth have been and are being deprived of the
ability to
live succeed and enjoy life in a Real World.
Don't need or want sympathy. Jis dwell, on what I've said and
maybe find
a way to help out in the training of what should become our future LEADERS
The expectations that are set have a lot to do with the behaviour that develops. We lost *all* of the older group of boys in our troop at once due to high school graduation, etc, leaving us with (mostly) a bunch of 11-12 year olds that needed to be taught what to do in Scouting. We made the mistake of doing to much for them, and are now having to go through the joyful process of raising the standards. Thankfully, we've got a couple of kids with
some leadership ability who are thinking the same thing - we let them know
what is expected and they see that it's done. The key, though, is letting them
know what is acceptable, and what isn't. We had two 11-12 year old brothers
start fighting on a campout recently, and started to step in, pulling back when
we saw the 14 year old Senior Patrol Leader handle the situation by
separating them and sitting them down under neighboring trees with no
participation in the activities. It worked, but it worked because the older boy
had been told what was expected and acceptable.
We've got adult leaders who often like to complain about the antics of the
kids, but who sit in the back of troop meetings and don't interact. I'm a firm
believer in interacting with the kids enough that they learn not only what I
tell them, but by what I do. Our patrol leaders had been giving copies of their
menus for campouts to their moms to buy the food. I recently took the whole
patrol I advise grocery shopping before a campout. We brought their food
money, they found what they needed (with helpful hints) and bought it.
Nobody had told them they should do this before, and it is a real pain
herding 6-8 12-13-14 year olds through a grocery store, but they learned,
and do better planning now. We have the Senior Patrol leader eat when
camping with the adult leaders. We cook, he has to help do dishes. We
reward a boy who takes on a tough job, teach him some cooking tricks he
won't learn from the other boys, and make kp a more acceptable task to the
other boys by example.
These tricks work. As the kids rise to our expectations, they find that they
can exceed their own. This pays off. In 1991, we were in an accident in Key
West while visiting the scout Seabase. The older boys got the younger out of
the van, called the emergency services. and took care of an injured Assistant
Scoutmaster, allowing myself and the Ranger to tend to the injured parties in
the other vehichle and direct trafic around a gasoline pool in the road. In
1994, I injured a leg while backpacking in New Mexico. Scouts picked up
my pack and carried it, in addition to their own 50-55 pound loads, and
helped me to a staffed campsite. You can't teach that kind of responsibility,
but you can develop it by setting demanding standards and then showing the
kids that they are capable of meeting them.