Friday 18 January 2008

Active National verse Personal Beliefs

According to national in order to a meet requirement that has a active participation item involved with it, the below conditions and nothing else have to be meet. These conditions are according to the guidelines the Boy Scouts of America has in the Advancement Committee Procedures and Guidelines Manual. Here are the conditions:
  • Scout will be considered "active" in his unit if he is
    • Registered in his unit (registration fees are current)
    • Not dismmsed from his unit fir disciplinary reasons
    • Engaged by his unit leadership on a regular basis (Informed of unit activities through Scoutmaster conferene or personal contact and by using various other mean
I Have only one problem with this definition for being activity is that it does not require the scout to even show up to a regular meeting or activity and he still can be considered "active" when doing time for various purposes. I have to question whether this is faithfully carrying out his leadership position responsibilities but since I do not have the authority to alter requirements, I can not have a say about this whole business of leadership.

My opinion is that this is just doing the bare minimum in order to get by, which to me isn't allows the best decision to make. I am not saying that the requirement should change because if it changed from these concrete items to something less concrete, it would be hard to create a standard for everyone in the Troop.

Yes I personally expect more from the rest of the adult and youth leaders in the Troop but will only push the subject so far before either (A) recruiting another person to the position and making the current person step down to a position that is better suited for him/her or (B) giving up and not worrying about it because I have more important things to worry about.

In every organization their are going to be those who will barely do anything and their will be those who are willing to do everything in order to ensure success. I hope that you are one of those people who if you had to leave you would be missed because of the work you do for that organization.

Yours in Scouting
Mark W
Junior Assistant Scoutmaster
Troop 1616

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