I heard somewhere that a Unit Commissioner read the new Guide to Advancement and said: ’Council and National expect us to set requirements for being active and if they eventually find them too strict OR too lax they will step in and start setting them.’
Sounded like a clinker to me.
A clinker is a lump of waste that can build up in a coal furnace or forge and put the fire out. It seems a fitting description of the innuendo, rumor, and disinformation that we sometimes hear repeated in Scouting. You may remember Darrin McGavin as the old man doing battle with the furnace in ‘A Christmas Story’ shouting (among other things) “It’s a Clinker!”.
I re-read the section in the Guide to Advancement and couldn’t figure out how this commissioner made such a leap of logic. What I read is a process that incorporates reasonable standards for being active if they exist but in no way demands them. It even goes beyond that and requires that we must consider things other than unit based standards in evaluating ‘active’.
So I checked in with a member of the National Advancement Team who worked on the Guide to Advancement. Here’s his reply:
‘You are right on target. We simply attempted to address the fact that many units already have numeric standards for ‘active’. No one is now expected to set standards if they don’t have them. This kind of misinterpretation is exactly what we want to avoid. Please correct whoever said it before they spread that particular rumor around any further.’
We can all debunk these clinkers by consulting the widely available BSA references and applying some common sense.
I am wary anytime I hear someone say that Council or National has done something or is about to do something. Some folks like to impress others by appearing to be on the inside or ahead of the curve. Sometimes this desire causes them to come up with suppositions that have no basis in fact. Folks who are on the inside or ahead of the curve seldom go around spouting off and trying to impress others.
JAN 28 - Reading that last paragraph a day later it sounds mean spirited and judgmental. I can be guilty of the same thing I am accusing others of and quite possibly have been so with this very post! So I would like to rethink it a bit:
I am wary anytime I hear someone say that Council or National has done something or is about to do something. We all like to be on the inside or ahead of the curve. Sometimes we can be guilty of stretching our own opinions and giving them the air of officialdom – the final test of veracity is whether or not what we are saying is aligned with policy written in black and white. While we can wrangle over interpretations in the end there needs to be a definitive answer. My goal is to seek out definitive answers to what have been some very debatable questions. and hopefully save us all some angst.
I think in this case we have a definitive answer.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
“’Council and National expect us to set requirements”
Who is us?
As this was a Unit Commissioner speaking, who was he refering to? Who is us? Unit Commissioners? District Committee Chairs? Council Advancement Committee Members? Who in the world is us?
A pretty good example of the problem. Us is the members of a Patrol. Think about that for a minute. Us is the Patrol Leaders and the SPL on the PLC. I have never been in a Troop or seen a Troop where the Scouts in a Patrol just suddenly decided to have “requirements for being active”. Now, I’m sure that it’s happened, but I’ve never seen it. Why? Because the Scouts usually “get it”
If it’s not a requirement of the Scouting program, then don’t bring it up around the Scouts. DO NOT make adult recommendations about what to do. Let them figure it out.
So, somewhere out there in Scouting land, maybe southern Idaho there is a Troop with a Patrol run by an OCD Patrol Leader and a group of guys that obsess over every rule and guideline. Their uniforms are ironed crisp at every meeting. Every Scout knows his first aid and bowline inside and out. Their patrol has a set of bylaws approved by the Idaho State Commission on Bylaws. They are probably all going to grow up to be lawyers. This Patrol might want to have some very specific rules about attendance and other such stuff.
Ok, I think that there might be one, maybe two or three Patrols like that in the whole USA. That’s about it. The rest of our Patrols, no way. They do everything at the last minute and they take care of their buds, even if they don’t show up to every single meeting or attend every singe campout in a year. They help each other out, teach each other stuff and go camping and stuff. They mostly look like a Patrol of boys.
Forget about making a bunch of rules you don’t need and train, teach and preach the Scout Oath, Scout Law, “Lead, Train and Inspire Scouts to First Class” and Patrols. Focus, focus, focus on the very essentials.
My experience (YMMV) is that folks that get bound up in this kind of stuff often miss the most important stuff.
I have a cousin (second, third, fourth or something like that). He deals in stuff. Junk. Antiques. Treasures. He buys and sells. He makes a very good living at it. He is not wealthy, but fulfilled and happy. He told me that a lot of the people he sees in his business just don’t get it. They are not really in business. They just collect stuff. They fill up fancy stores with neatly arranged stuff but it never sells. Why? They charge too much. They want a giant markup on every single item. So people walk in and stroll around their beautiful store, but never buy anything.
He buys and sells the same stuff, but he sells lots of stuff at true market rates. He doesn’t try to sell a $100.00 piece, that he bought for $90.00, for $1000.00. He sells it for $100.00. Then he sells a 99 more, thereby reaping $1000.00. He’s been in business for more than 30 years. Most people in his business, he says, rarely last 5 years.
The point? Focus, focus, focus on the essentials. Don’t make stuff up. Don’t invent new, un-needed stuff. Focus.
On Tuesday a visiting Webelos parent asked about how his son could participate in both baseball and Scouts. With practices and weekend games, it is easy to miss a lot of meetings and outings, and another troop had explained their attendance requirements.
I was happy to explain that Scouts did not have to be first in his son’s schedule and that it was BSA policy. There would be no obstacles to him advancing at his own pace. If he showed up in baseball pants and a uniform shirt, we’ve seen that.
This isn’t a new practice for our troop, I gave an example of a Scout who called me to explain he’d be busy with the robotics team for the next ten weeks. I thanked him for calling and told him to have a good time.