Good luck to in finding a new home. I have seen the adult led troops - they feel like Cub Scouts instead of Boy Scouts.
I can not wait to return to Boy Scouts with my younger son - I miss the boy led chaos part of it.
Along with a hefty dose of bigotry and hatred. Don’t forget that part.
BSA just took a major step forward against bigotry and hatred, it was in the media and everything.
To the OP, it sounds like you’re well rid of that “Troop”. It seems to me they’ll fold once they are under the minimum size. That may be now, what with only 2 adults and 2 scouts.
Not in my experience as a Scout, beginning when I was a Cub Scout at eight, continuing through my teen years as a full-fledged Scout.
My experience with The American Girl Scouts in London was pretty much the same, except instead of camping it was arts and crafts. 
The one camping trip I organized, the girls bitched and moaned because after I warned them not to pack more than they could carry, I refused to carry their overpacked gear.
I remember helping my Mom teach her troop of cubbies [including my brother] firepit cooking in our back yard back in 1968. She was aggressive about getting certain practical skills for when they went to camp. We had one of the green boy scout tents and practiced setting it up. [honest, it had the BSA stamped on it and everything! I was still using it for camping up until about 1994 when I bought a nylon tent, poor Greeny couldn’t be patched any more, all the gromit spots were whipped :(] we did rock ring and dugout fires, we practiced friction firemaking mainly firebows using bootlaces and found materials.
I do sort of regret mrAru never ended up with time to work with boy sprouts, it is a lot of work but can be seriously fun. My dad when he retired from the army worked with BSA - he did camp inspections [we have more than a lifetime supply ofcamp mugs!] and was part of the regional council - his favorite thing of a summer was going to one of the major jamborees. He was at the one in Virginia when they more or less were washed out - he said that the army loaded up sleeping bags in deuces and hauled them to a commercial laundry by the load. Heck of a way to spend the BSA Diamond Jubilee!:eek:
I was in Camp Fire Girls and mostly enjoyed it, when the girls got to pick out the activities. Having the adults pick out the activities was much less fun, but at least the adults tried to take the girls’ interests into account when I was in the group.
Things were different for my daughter, because the adult leaders were always giving lessons on Being A Clown and Juggling. That’s what the adults were interested in, and they apparently thought that the girls and boys (it was a mixed sex group) should show proper appreciation. The kids got bored with clowning and juggling after a couple of meetings where they were expected to just be an audience for a couple of adults who were really, really bad at both clowning and juggling. I tried to volunteer to run a couple of meetings with a different theme, and was shut out. My suggestions of camping trips were met with disapproval, and I was told that neither of them were qualified to do camping trips. So I went to the Official Camping Workshop and got certified, and then the adults started picking on my daughter, making her feel unwelcome. Since my daughter wasn’t getting any fun out of the group, and the adults were running things for their own pleasure, I asked Lisa if she wanted to stay with this group, find another one, or just give it up as a bad job. She chose to give it up, and she and I did projects together after that. Nothing fancy, just things like going to the zoo and museum, or craft projects, or cooking.
Get over it, pal. You’re assuming that whatever the old farts in Irving decide for or against gay scouts or scoutmasters has anything to do with what individual troops and boys believe.
That kind of thing never, and I mean never came up when I was in Scouts from any official source. It didn’t come up among us boys either, other than the more or less pervasive low-grade homophobia that was rampant among suburban boys between the ages of about 11-15 in the mid-1980s, Boy Scouts or not.
That kind of thing wasn’t ever an issue- nobody mentioned it at all.
I doubt these days it’s much different, except that attitudes have changed.
That’s not the Citizens Militia badge?
The problem with these kind of ‘troops’ (and the scare quotes are appropriate, I agree), is that if they have no qualms about running the program, they probably have no problem with ‘paper youth’ - ie, just reupping the youth that were in the program whether or not they’re paying dues, going to meeting, or have even put on a scout uniform in the past 3 years.
A good commissioner staff should notice this and say something well before recharter, but plenty of commissioner staffs are overworked and it’s an uncomfortable conversation to have: “So, you haven’t had more than 3 people at a meeting this year, but you’re rechartering with 15? How does that work?”
This reminds me of the Troops I was in. The first one was great in that the adults really encouraged us to advance: I had been with them for a couple of years and was working toward First Class when the Scoutmaster retired and no replacement could be found. So that Troop was absorbed into the other Troop in town, one which placed emphasis on having fun rather than advancement. Never did make First Class.
That one has black helicopters.
Yes, a step forward. A major step would allow gay scoutmasters and atheists to participate. But, I digress. As **bump **pointed out, however, when I was a scout there was no problem on the street level being an atheist (or presumably gay). No one cared.
The OP suffers from a misunderstanding of Scouting. Clearly, the OP is an old-school, 20th Century Scout.
21st Century Scouting involves scouting the internet for cool scout gear, and that is all.
Followup
Since doing it there way before I became SM didn’t work.
And not supporting my recruitment efforts while I was SM because that’s not how they did it.
And doing it their way after I was fired as SM didn’t work.
I’m sure you will all be shocked that at the end of this year they are going to disband because of lack of scouts.
Hope the kids find a good new troop, one which tells the parents to take a hike - on a trail far from the one the Scouts use.
My father was a veteran scout, and founded the second troop I was a member of. I never got a break, which was good for me.
My first troop had a pack associated with it, same sponsor, same number, and used scouts to help the den mothers. Recruiting was not a problem.
Shocked, no, saddened, yes. Scouting, for all it’s faults, is still the best youth development program in the country when done right.
I hope all the youth find another troop rather than leaving the program.
I’d be curious to find out what impact the chartering organization for troops has upon a troop and their policies/practices.
I realize that for the most part, the chartering organization doesn’t dictate to the troop, but I do wonder if the sorts of people who would find out about and go to a church-chartered troop would be different than the ones who’d find out and go to a troop chartered by a volunteer fire department (my old one), or a VFW post, or something like that.
Ours was chartered by the local VFD, and had a pretty non-sectarian bent to it, along with a somewhat hardcore civic-mindedness. For whatever reason, the troop’s adult leadership was composed primarily of dads who’d been former military NCOs as well.
As a result, we were a LOT more about the independent leadership and service aspects of Scouting, and a lot less concerned with the character side of things; one of the funniest things was that the VFD had professional firefighters who staffed the fire station that our Scout Hut was attached to, and the entire troop, boys and men, all looked forward to each month’s new Playboy issue that the firefighters would leave in the bathrooms. No real concern that “OMG! 11 year old boys are seeing Playboy!”. But you tended to get your ass chewed if you didn’t fulfill your commitments or otherwise not pull your weight.
I was in a troop sort of like that when I was a kid in the 60s. The camp-outs were a disaster, with no order or sense, or any guidance as to what should be brought along: on the Winter Jamboree, they picked a weekend when a serious cold front was moving in. We ended up in tents at -20 to -30F. Several kids got frostbite because these lamebrains didn’t have the sense to cancel the outing. At the periodic meetings, all we did was roll up newspapers to be used as fireplace logs. I lasted about a year and then quit.
In some places of the country (like, say, Minnesota) that would be normal camping weather :):eek:
My troop had a weekend camping trip that got below zero, but we also came prepared for it, and while it was quite cold, it was also one of my favorite camping trips.