Category: the right way to do it

In December 2024, the Order of the Arrow (OA) released its 2025-2027 business plan. This is OA’s latest drop in a reform plan where it falsely claims it will abandon 110 years of cultural theft. Its new vision is to be a retention tool for high school-aged youth.

OA’s plan is improper. It is not ending cultural theft. Also, its new direction prolongs Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) 115-year-old failed experiment at retaining high schoolers.

It is time to pivot to a positive, rational vision. Guided by Move Forward: Save Scouting, BSA would address its retention problem with improved programs. This makes OA’s new direction obsolete. BSA should repurpose OA’s beneficial elements and leave behind its racist legacy.

OA’s inadequate plan: papering over the babysitting regime

OA’s latest proposal papers over BSA’s failed approach to older-youth engagement.

For 115 years, BSA has maintained a weird belief that it can retain high-school youth by saddling them with babysitting chores while spreading a false narrative about leadership development.

BSA knows its babysitting regime is a failure. That’s why it uses shiny objects to distract older youth from their babysitting chores. These shiny objects are high adventure, camp staff, and OA. While high adventure and staff are valuable opportunities, once done, the high schooler returns to babysitting chores.

Despite 115 years of this experiment–the babysitting regime and shiny objects–BSA has never addressed the “older boy youth problem”. Older youth remain infantilized, and their retention is as poor as always.

OA’s plan is to sustain BSA’s failed babysitting regime. We need a better approach.

OA still cannot be trusted

OA’s trustworthiness deficits are unresolved. It remains unwilling to genuinely reform or move away from key aspects of its racist legacy.

First, I need to clarify the two parts of OA’s tribal mockery:

• Ceremonies: This refers to the pretendian parodies OA uses for its core rites, like the call-out ceremony seen at camporees and summer camps.
• AIA: This is “American Indian Activities”, allegedly authentic employment of tribal culture. Rarely done under tribal supervision, it’s usually cultural theft.

Secret tribal agreements

Starting January 1, 2026, OA’s American Indian Activities (AIA) must occur under supervision of a Native American tribe. However, OA permits undisclosed tribal agreements that nobody will verify.¹ This wink to cultural thieves aligns with OA’s longstanding problems with secrecy.

Once you’re in OA long enough, you’ll hear of local fairy tales about some mysterious Native American who “blessed” a lodge’s cultural theft many decades ago. As you ask for specifics, you typically find Canadian girlfriends: “I wish you could meet my Canadian girlfriend, But you can’t because she is in Canada.”²

Given OA’s 110 years of open cultural theft and dishonesty about its intent to change (see the rest of this article), there’s no reason to believe that OA at its word. Secret agreements cannot be distinguished from endemic Canadian-girlfriend fairy tales.

Taking 4 years to rewrite children’s fantasy fiction (ceremonies)

Still unaddressed is the worst part of OA’s tribal mockery, the ceremonies. This includes the ceremony that most Scouts aged 10 and up eventually see–the call out–and ceremonies only viewed by insiders, such as those relating to Ordeal, Brotherhood, and Vigil.

These ceremonies are just children’s fantasy fiction. They are based on a fake legend. Their inauthenticity, combined with how they so tackily steal Native American culture, renders these ceremonies open mockery of tribes. (Did you know OA founder E. Urner Goodman regretted that the ceremonies’ lies filled the minds of youth, displacing accurate history of tribes?)

Allegedly, OA is rewriting these ceremonies to remove the mockery of tribes. But this lacks credibility.

First, this rewriting started in fall 2021. As of press time, the rewriting has been going on for 3.5 years. Allegedly, they will be released in July 2025. That’s almost four years!

It does not take 4 years to revise children’s fantasy fiction! In my spare time, I could define new themes in a few evenings and churn out revised scripts in three more weeks. One month! But OA needs 48 months?

Even worse, around two years ago, a group led by the founder of OA’s elangomat system offered the OA national committee fully revised ceremonies that have no cultural theft. OA’s response? Pound sand.

OA, where’s these theft-free ceremonies? You have nothing to show after 3.5 years?

This isn’t adding up.

Still recommending cultural theft in costumes

The United States pivoted to tribal self-determination in the 1950s through the 1970s. Part of this involves respect, allowing tribes to own their own customs.

Many decades after the pivot, OA still recommends mocking tribes with cultural theft. For example, when acting out its phony legend, OA wants actors’ pretendian antics to be done in “American Indian attire”, recommending that by putting it first in a list! The first-in-a-list status is not couched beyond weak “should” language, mere recommendations that lodges may freely ignore.

This language could have been updated years ago. That it’s still present and prominent in 2025 speaks volumes.

Truck-sized hole: keep all the stolen, parody names!

Even worse are the names. OA’s divisions corresponding to councils and districts–lodges and chapters–nearly always mock tribes by using names that are thieved from Native American dialects or that are made-up, indigenous-ish parodies of tribal culture.

Per OA’s National AIA Transition Plan and Timeline, “[t]here are no changes required to lodge or chapter names, totems“!

This. Is. Huge!

Let’s explore the power of names:

• “A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.” -Henry David Thoreau³
• “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” -Dale Carnegie⁴
• “Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.” -W. H. Auden⁵
• “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” -Confucius⁶
• “Your name is your brand, and your brand is your reputation. Protect it wisely.” -Richard Branson

Your name is your essence, your brand. Your name defines you in crucial ways.

When an organization’s name evokes a theme, that theme is tied to the organization.

Nearly all lodge names use or approximate Native American names or reference Native American concepts. OA’s own names cements its theme, a continued commitment to Native American parody and tribal mockery!

How many of these lodges sought permission from the tribe who really owns the name? Considering OA’s 110-year-old habit of stealing Native American culture for its own profit, it’s unlikely we’ll find many.

An example: Onerahtokha Lodge

In fall 2024, a new lodge was formed in Virginia, Onerahtokha Lodge. Onerahtokha is a Mohawk word⁷, meaning the time of budding. Contemporarily, it refers to the month April⁸. It’s also used as a name.⁹

Did this lodge get permission to use this name? Unlikely. Again, given OA’s pattern, it’s reasonable to assume the word is stolen. Onerahtokha Lodge has never advanced a case that it sought permission.

The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe would be the only Mohawk people¹⁰ that meets OA’s standard for a Mohawk tribe that a lodge may work with.¹¹ I have asked this tribe’s public relations staff for a comment. As of press time, they have only acknowledged my inquiry and shared that I am one of several asking them, but they did not provide evidence of collaboration. (I do not blame them! Several Native Americans and their allies have cautioned me that tribes may have little desire to work with an organization defined by a century of cultural theft. If the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe responds, I’ll update this article.)

I also note that the historic territory of the Mohawk people appears to be well north of this lodge. Altogether, we have no basis to dispute that this lodge did the normal OA thing, stealing the culture of a distant tribe.

Here’s what’s jarring: National knew about this!¹² OA’s Eastern Region Merger Team, part of the national organization, guided this lodge’s formation. Certainly OA’s national representatives would have been aware of OA’s prevailing guidance, released in December 2023, of “For OA lodges using or planning to use American Indian traditions—but not yet engaging with local tribal leadership—the national OA committee expects them to establish these relationships before proceeding with existing or new programs.”¹³ It’s hard to see how stealing a word from a distant tribe–the reasonable assumption we have no way to rebut–meets the spirit of this guidance.

Onerahtokha Lodge, if I am wrong, if you gained permission from a tribe to use this word, you’re invited to show the receipts. I’ll happily celebrate that here.

For more fun, look at one of this lodge’s chapter names: “Shawanogi”. A Shawnee word meaning “Southerners”, Westerners corrupted it to “Shawnee”, which became the tribe name.¹⁴ Did this lodge get permission from the Shawnee Tribe to use its word?¹⁵

OA is not stopping cultural theft

Let’s recap:

• OA lodges and chapters will keep naming themselves with stolen or spoofed Native American words.
• OA’s four-year timeline to rewrite its children’s fantasy fiction is absurd.
• OA allows secret tribal agreements that nobody can verify.

With these, OA makes clear that it wishes to perpetuate its cultural thievery.

OA unravels without its cultural theft

OA has to cling to cultural theft. Without it, OA makes no sense.

OA is a hodgepodge of unrelated activities–camp promotions, redface cosplay, camp service, and social time–which is gated by an extensive camping requirement and a popularity contest. This dos not feed into a rational raison d’etre.

Without no rational reason to exist, OA has to use a different uniting theme. That’s the point of its children’s fantasy fiction, that fake legend that OA is dragging its feet on revising.

OA needs people to take its children’s fantasy fiction seriously. Doing so legitimizes OA’s woo-woo, its false religion. OA emboldens its woo-woo with a phony, Western riff on animist spirituality colored by noble-savage tropes. That is the main point of OA’s 110 years of cultural theft.

Without mass personal investment in OA’s woo-woo, the incoherence is no longer masked. Everyone sees that the emperor has no clothes, and OA unravels.

Let’s return to a core premise at the top: An activity infested with woo-woo, which lacks coherency and is gated by a popularity contest, um, that’s how we’re going to retain high schoolers?

A better plan: abolish OA, repurpose some of it

Instead of papering over BSA’s poor program design, we need to move beyond it. This means redesigning our main programs so that they are relevant to middle schoolers, high schoolers, and young adults. Once that is done, OA’s new mission is obsolete.

Also, per above and per my prior update, OA is unrepentant, refusing to move past its shameful legacy.

OA has one morally straight path forward: abolishment. We can salvage OA’s useful parts towards proper ends in line with Move Forward: Save Scouting. This means:

1. End all Native American-themed programming in BSA. OA’s Native American-themed programming is cultural theft, for OA’s profit.¹⁶ Going forward, BSA respects tribal ownership of their own customs and rejects the white-savior trope that tribes depend on, benefit from, or are expected to appreciate outsiders employing their culture. Those interested in exploration of Native American culture, beyond the Indian Lore merit badge (which is the product of a good collaboration!), must pivot to “morally straight”: Collaborate directly with tribes or participate in powwows, on your own. (Note: When conducted in collaboration with tribes, council or unit activities are fine. So are episodic national activities that support other programs. But formal, enduring national activities that use Native American culture must end.)
2. Discontinue OA’s camp promotions. These were always dumb, just dispassionate youth going through the paces. I did them as a kid, and I’ve seen them as an adult. They have no value.
3. Transition all local, section, and national OA events, training programs, and officers to Venturing. OA’s events are oriented towards high schoolers. They will be continued under Venturing, led by Venturing Officers Associations. In some cases, they will be new-to-Venturing events. For example, I suspect OA’s section conclaves will transition to Venturing territory events. In other cases, their strengths will be merged with existing programs, especially on the council level. High-school-aged OA officers will find new homes on council, territory, and national VOAs.
4. Transition all young-adult officers and members to a new Rovers program. They will have ground-level opportunities to kickstart a new Scouting opportunity for post-high-school through age 25.
5. Transition camp service to a new society. This new society will be freed of cultural theft and OA’s woo woo. It will be open access, no longer gated by a popularity contest. The society may or may not be formal or governed on a national level; it could just be a brand that local and national-high-adventure service activities run under.

Ironically, creating a new service society fulfills the original goal of Order of the Arrow:

[OA’s] purpose, as a Local Council activity, was to single out, from various Troops, outstanding campers with the service spirit, and bring them into a fellowship to improve and further camping.

William D. Murray¹⁷, The History of the Boy Scouts of America, Boy Scouts of America, 1937, p. 386 (emphasis added)

With these changes, OA will make the ultimate gift to the movement, realizing its original goal while helping assure Scouting’s future.

Footnotes

1. Per OA’s National AIA Transition Plan and Timeline, agreements are fully managed by councils. Nobody outside of councils reviews the agreements. Councils simply check a box on a form each year to signify whether an agreement exists. ↩︎
2. This is a line from “My Girlfriend, Who Lives in Canada“, a song from the Avenue Q musical. ↩︎
3. https://www.thoreau-online.org/a-week-on-the-concord-and-merrimack-rivers-page137.html ↩︎
4. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1398947-remember-that-a-person-s-name-is-to-that-person-the ↩︎
5. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9503096-proper-names-are-poetry-in-the-raw-like-all-poetry ↩︎
6. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/106313-the-beginning-of-wisdom-is-to-call-things-by-their ↩︎
7. https://x.com/chiefswood/status/1247508092373340160 ↩︎
8. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/mohawklanguageresource/chapter/days-months/ ↩︎
9. https://www.concordia.ca/cunews/offices/advancement/2021/04/19/onerahtokha-karlie-marquis-named-executive-director-of-mohawk-council-of-kahnawake.html ↩︎
10. Several groups who identify as Mohawk. The only USA federal- or state-recognized Mohawk tribe is the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe. ↩︎
11. “American Indian Activities in the Order of the Arrow at 2024 NOAC“, Order of the Arrow, December 22, 2023. It mentions “574 federally recognized tribes/Indian nations across the United States” as who “lodges should seek approval from…to use [tribal culture] and ensure that our members understand their proper context.” While later documents expanded allowed tribes to include state-recognized tribes, it appears that the federally recognized Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe is the only Mohawk tribe in the USA. ↩︎
12. Ibid. That announcement was created by the national organization and sent shockwaves through OA, so it’s reasonable to assume that it was well known. Someone acting in good faith would have sought permission from a tribe before using that tribe’s word for a lodge name. As no agreement with any tribe has been publicly conveyed by this lodge, and given OA’s 110 years of theft, it’s quite likely this was simply more cultural theft. ↩︎
13. Ibid. ↩︎
14. Oren F. Morton, A History of Pendleton County, West Virginia, 1910, p. 15 ↩︎
15. The other three chapter names are fine. One is a portmanteau of the names of counties it encompasses. The other two are named after local rivers. While those local rivers use Native American names, this is a great case of “nothing is perfectly black and white.” It is generally acceptable to use local place names that are not not in dispute. ↩︎
16. There are notable exceptions, like local collaboration with Florida’s Seminole tribe, but these are rare. Nearly all of BSA’s employment of tribal customs is inauthentic or for BSA’s own profit, divorced from a relationship with or benefit to tribes. ↩︎
17. Mr. Murray was a charter member of BSA’s National Executive Board. When he wrote this book, he was its chairman. ↩︎

I am announcing a bold and positive vision the future of Boy Scouts of America: Move Forward: Save Scouting.

Why this matters

Scouting is at a tipping point. Without significant changes, BSA’s long-term decline may lead to its collapse within a decade.

Scouting once sold itself. With the right changes—pivots toward adventure, morality, efficiency, and relevance—BSA can once again become the organization that families choose with confidence.

Move Forward: My personal pivot

Since 2022, I have dedicated my time to understanding the key issues facing Scouting. Before advocating for solutions, I focused on identifying the obstacles—the “nos”—that hinder progress.

Through this process, I’ve built strong relationships across the Scouting community. I deeply appreciate the insights and support of those who have contributed. I will continue to honor your confidentiality!

Now, it’s time to pivot to the “yesses”: Move Forward: Save Scouting

I still have some “nos” to express. I intend for further “nos” to support the positive, bold vision.

What if national does not pivot?

Today, the national organization is not pivoting. It is dithering over silly bureaucratic matters and engaging in magical thinking. This will not save Scouting.

Apologies for the organization won’t save the movement. Bold, rapid change will. We need pivots. We need to break glass. We need bold, decisive action.

The time to act is now.

Move Forward: Save Scouting

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Move Forward: Save Scouting is an evolving initiative. This is just the first version. As new insights emerge, updates will follow.

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Boy Scouts of America (BSA) extensively promotes leadership development. On its home page, BSA’s “value of Scouting” statement concludes with “prepar[ing] youth for a lifetime of leadership.”¹

While BSA instills valuable qualities in youth, an obsolete program design means few Scouts gain authentic leadership experience.

The Eagle Scout rank illustrates this. Nearly everyone who earns this rank does so while in the Scouts BSA program.² Optimized for the developmental stage of middle schoolers, Scouts BSA does not emphasize leadership skills. Even the Eagle project³, while valuable, emphasizes administration and management.⁴ It doesn’t require key aspects of real leadership, like motivating a team over the long haul or driving a vision to completion beyond managing a checklist.⁵

We can fix this by recognizing what leadership is—and is not—and by improving BSA’s programs to offer more leadership development.

What leadership is

Leadership has three essentials:

1. Defining a vision for change.
2. Gaining voluntary buy-in to this vision.
3. Fostering progress toward that vision with willing followers.

Importantly, these parts happen in a “mutual influence process independent of any formal role or hierarchical structure” (emphasis added).⁶

What leadership isn’t

Widespread misunderstandings cause us to label unrelated matters as “leadership”. This creates confusion and undermines leadership development.

BSA’s patrol method is not leadership

As implemented in Scouts BSA, the patrol method is a hierarchical structure used by youth to operate a troop. Appropriate for middle-schoolers’ developmental stage, it helps develop aptitudes for teamwork, organization, responsibility, and more among young Scouts.

However, as a prescriptive system that features formal roles and lines of authority and emphasizes procedure, compliance, and supervision, the patrol method rests on administration and management.

I do not mean to say that the patrol method is devoid of leadership! Nothing is perfectly black and white. But with its emphasis clear, the patrol method’s strengths are in management and administration, not leadership.

Positive character attributes are not leadership

A common mistake is to equate leadership with positive character traits. The idea is that demonstrating these traits is leadership.

While good leaders embody these traits, simply having them does not make one a leader.

In a few social-media forums for adult leaders, I asked for people to share concepts they associate with leadership. All responses were great positive-character attributes:

These are positive character traits we’d want in anyone. Scouting does a great job of helping youth with these!

But we need to be careful about how we relate these traits to leadership. When we suggest exclusivity–that these are associated with leadership–what does that say about expectations of people in other roles? Incompetent administrators, unaccountable managers, immoral followers, unempathetic friends. That’s OK because they aren’t leaders?

Someone exhibiting these traits is showing good character! While that is to be celebrated, it is not related to whether that person is a leader.

Babysitting is not leadership

Roughly 90% of BSA’s high schoolers remain in BSA’s middle-school program, Scouts BSA, mainly to supervise middle schoolers. This amounts to babysitting, and it is routinely confused with leadership. High schoolers’ babysitting chores include administrative chores, supervision, instruction, and make-work.

Often, older Scouts’ babysitting chores are under the color of “senior” troop positions of responsibility. These roles, too, are divorced from leadership, as they have little to do with visions, voluntary buy-in, or willing followership.

Administration or management talent is not leadership

Some claim that honing administrative or managerial ability produces leadership skill. That, too, is wrong.

A person can be an effective leader while lacking managerial or administrative skills. History and modern examples abound of effective leaders who needed skilled managers and administrators around them because the leaders lacked those gifts.

Management and administration are valuable in their own right. They can enhance a leader’s effectiveness. But they are not leadership. Leadership can exist without management or administration, and mastery of these does not make someone a leader.

BSA’s patrol method is leadership with training wheels

A bicycle’s training wheels are a transitional support. You’re not really “riding a bike” until the training wheels come off.

The same applies to the patrol method. Like training wheels, the patrol method is transitional support to ease future leadership development. You’re not engaged in leadership until after the patrol method’s training wheels come off.

The patrol method is appropriate for middle schoolers’ developmental stage. Its structured environment helps Scouts grasp how to manage systems and exercise authority.

However, once youth are in high school, they are in a different developmental phase. They have marked changes in several developmental factors relevant to leadership, such as abstract thinking, emotional regulation, managing peer influence, navigating relationships, and more. They are ready for authentic leadership experiences, so high school is the right time to rip off the patrol method’s training wheels.

This is where Venturing shines. Venturing crews operate with fewer formalities and less structure. Crews can shape their own organizational models, and older Scouts can lead peers rather than supervise younger children.

Leading one’s peers to accomplish bigger, more adventurous goals is a real challenge. This is more engaging and rewarding than herding younger Scouts.

Research shows that excessive reliance on training wheels can hinder learning to ride a bike.⁷ Holding high schoolers back in the patrol method–keeping the middle-school training wheels on–obstructs leadership training!

How to fix this

The path to genuine leadership development within BSA is straightforward, but it requires moving beyond obsolete practices and leaving behind mistaken beliefs.

Most importantly, we must set side two myths about the babysitting regime.

Babysitting regime myth 1: It’s essential to the troop program

A pervasive myth is that the babysitting regime was Robert Baden-Powell’s vision or that he saw it as essential to the patrol method or to the troop program.

That is false.

In the decade following his 1907 Brownsea Island experiment, Robert Baden-Powell wrote many letters citing major developmental differences between older and younger Scouts and reviewed several schemes to improve Scouting for older Scouts. This culminated in 1918 when Baden-Powell recommended a separate section for an age band roughly corresponding to today’s high schoolers. More detail is in the Baden-Powell got it section of Scouts BSA: a middle-school program unsuitable for high schoolers. (Ernest Thompson Seton, one of BSA’s founders, also got it!)

All of BSA’s international peer Scouting organizations have since realized Baden-Powell’s vision. None have babysitting regimes, instead providing separate, age-appropriate programming to age brands roughly equivalent to our high schoolers⁸:

It just takes cursory inspection of the UK Scouts section (again, only ages 11-14) to see a program that thrives without a babysitting regime. BSA, by contrast, is still stuck on an obsolete design from a century ago.

Babysitting regime myth 2: It retains high schoolers

High schoolers have competition for their time and interest–other activities, romantic relationships, desire for more self-direction, increased academic load, and more. If serving high schoolers is important to BSA, it is crucial for BSA to value being attractive to high schoolers.

From day 1, both UK and BSA Scouting programs observed that high schoolers found little appeal in the middle-school program. For them, it was repetitious, more of the same stuff optimized for their younger selves. This is called the “older boy youth problem”, which has been a problem for BSA since its founding.

For 115 years, BSA has engaged in many iterations of the same experiment, theorizing that the “older youth problem” can be addressed with the babysitting regime. That is, older youth will stick around if we give them the “reins” of a middle-school program.

Despite 115 years of trying, the babysitting regime never worked. Retention of high schoolers today remains as poor as always.

Start using words accurately

We must stop using “leadership” for orthogonal matters.

Stop using “leadership” to describe BSA’s implementation of the patrol method. It is not leadership.

Stop using “leadership” to describe generic, positive character attributes. They are not leadership.

Stop using “leadership” to describe administration or management. Neither are leadership.

Stop using “leadership” to describe babysitting chores. Supervision is not leadership.

Only use leadership to describe a visionary, voluntary, mutual influence process separate from formal roles or hierarchy.

Accept where leadership is not emphasized

Younger children and early adolescents are typically not ready for significant leadership development.¹⁰ That is normal.

They can still learn skills, confidence, and many other positive-character traits. This is valuable!

The patrol method works well for middle schoolers as a structured approach to growth and character development. Mastering the patrol method can help that person do better at leadership development.

Begin to value high schoolers

BSA must finally align itself with its peer Scouting organizations worldwide, the USA educational system, and virtually all major youth-serving USA organizations, end the babysitting regime, and provide older youth with genuinely age-appropriate programs.

BSA should move all high schoolers into Venturing. This already exists, is high quality, and is designed around the life stage that high schoolers are in. Venturing is tragically underused.

I want to acknowledge that some troops cluster older Scouts, allowing them a degree of independence. While this is a few paces in the right direction, it’s nowhere near enough. These arrangements generally maintain a strong expectation of participation in the babysitting regime. When that new crop of 5th graders crosses over in the spring, we know who’s going to be tapped to–sigh–yet again repeat the annual cycle of teaching Tenderfoot skills.

I also want to acknowledge that BSA has other opportunities that appeal to high schoolers trapped in the middle-school program, like high adventure and camp staff. These are not a solution to the babysitting regime. While valuable, these opportunities are feasible for few high schoolers. Also, once the opportunity is done, the high schooler just returns to the babysitting regime. (Some would add Order of the Arrow to this list. Neck deep in racism, OA is a stain on Scouting and must be abolished.)

Transition from units to groups with sections

To avoid fragmentation, BSA should also adopt a group and section model, which many of our international peers use.

In this model, all units at a given location–say a pack, troop, and crew at one church–would be merged into one group with sections for each former unit. The group has one committee, one pool of adult leaders, and one pool of equipment.

The group’s key-three adult leaders would be a group program leader (position name TBD), Committee Chair, and Chartered Organization Representative. Each section would still have its own program lead (Cubmaster, Scoutmaster, Advisor, etc.).

While each section must provide age-appropriate programming, cross-section coordination is encouraged to facilitate logistical needs and promote collaboration.

Reassess BSA’s implementation of the patrol method

Program improvements for high schoolers also provide opportunities for major improvements to the middle-school program.

We should reassess BSA’s interpretation of the patrol method. BSA’s model is not Baden-Powell’s model!

BSA’s model often reduces the Patrol Leaders (PL) to an intermediary between the troop’s youth and the Senior Patrol Leader (SPL). Typically, PLs just implement concrete orders of the SPL.¹¹

We should adjust the patrol method to allow more genuine leadership for the middle schoolers who are ready.

The UK Scouting Association can be an inspiration. In Robert Baden-Powell’s Brownsea Island experiment, there was no SPL. In the UK Scouts section today (ages 11-14), the SPL role is optional, often unused.¹²

In that style, each patrol leader takes initiative in coordinating activities or collaborating with other patrol leaders. For example, a troop of 30 Scouts might be split into four patrols that operate semi-independently. Each Patrol Leader coordinates activities and even inter-patrol competitions or service projects, with adult leaders mentoring. An SPL, if present, is often just the most senior Patrol Leader, mainly coordinating between patrols.

This offers more authentic leadership-development opportunity for middle-schoolers while still providing appropriate structure and age-appropriate programming.

Create Guides position of responsibility

Serving younger cohorts is valuable for those who are willing and able.

When I was a Den Leader, Cameron was my Den Chief for over three years. A high schooler, he did a fantastic job helping me with the den. I appreciated him so much.

As a youth soccer coach, I take a collection from parents so that I can pay talented older youth to help train the team. Paul, Malcolm, Ellie, Andrea, Merrick, and Ben have all been highly appreciated, providing valuable training to the team members.

Replacing Den Chief, Troop Guide, and Junior Assistant Scoutmaster will be a new Guide role.

The Guide is a new position of responsibility, where a youth member, in any program, serves a younger program by mentoring youth to success or assisting adults. The younger youth do not report to or take orders from a Guide. Instead, the Guide builds up younger youth in the style of servant leadership¹³.

The Guide may manage activities episodically, when requested by an adult leader, such as supervising a hike when the patrol leader lacks that capability.

Attachment to the babysitting regime will be strong, so guardrails are needed. The Guide role may not displace age-appropriate programming. Also, the Guide role must be voluntary. A Scout must never be coerced into a Guide role, and no unit may be coerced into supplying Guides to any other unit.

For example, it would be inappropriate to have a Venturing crew that has all its members be Guides for a troop and has no significant program beyond its members’ service to that troop. That is perpetuation of the babysitting regime.

Strengthen First Class and Eagle Scout ranks, abolish paper Eagles

Moving all high schoolers into an age-appropriate program is an opportunity to strengthen the rank system.

Today’s Eagle Scout rank is diminished by being the last rank in a woodcraft-centric, middle-school badge progression. It is possible to earn Eagle Scout at a young age–as young as 12 years old¹⁴–leading to a “paper Eagle” problem. Also, the 17-year-old senior earning Eagle Scout depends on steps that youth took starting in 5th grade. That is absurd.

We aren’t shooting high enough, and we aren’t doing it right. Eagle Scout should be strengthened as the terminal of a rank program one starts in high school. It should signify distinctive life skills, character development, and true leadership experience that sets the recipient apart from high-school peers.

We can also strengthen the First Class rank. Today, it’s diminished, lost as an intermediate badge in BSA’s middle-school badge program.

Becoming the terminal rank of the Scouts BSA program, we can strengthen First Class to meet Robert Baden-Powell’s original vision, where it signified when the Scout “really get[s] the value of the Scout training” and is “ground[ed] in the qualities, mental, moral, and physical, that go to make a good useful man.”¹⁵

A strengthened First Class rank will emphasize:

• Mastery. Instead of being busywork one knocks out rapidly, the Trail to First Class is a series of steps that we take with a decided interest in mastery.
• Adventure. Trail to First Class becomes a prescription for adventure. Instead of the requirements being “random things I have to do at the next campout”, they induce and enhance adventures. This can be helped with a three-year rolling suggested itinerary for troops.
• Authentic. With a three-year path to First Class, we reduce advancement pressure, opening more opportunity for an authentic Scouting experience.

The new pace of advancement will help Scouts BSA be more comfortable for Scouts who are today uninterested in advancement. For some, an increase focus on adventure provides such Scouts more room to find meaningful experiences. For others, recasting advancement as a prescription for adventure makes it so that earning advancement feels more like a natural outcome of active participation.

With this, First Class also becomes a distinction worthy of celebration.

1. www.scouting.org, Boy Scouts of America. ↩︎
2. I estimate that over 90% of high schoolers in BSA remain in Scouts BSA, the middle-school program. Even for those who are involved in BSA’s high-school program, Venturing, while Eagle Scout may be competed in Venturing, it appears common for Venturers seeking Eagle to dual-register in the middle-school program and complete Eagle there. ↩︎
3. Simply calling it a “project” distances the Eagle project from leadership. Project management is grounded in management and administration, not leadership. In “The Leap from Project Manager to CEO Is Hard — But Not Impossible” (Harvard Business Review, November 8, 2023), Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez uses the “Gantt ceiling” to illustrate how successful project managers must also develop leadership capability–again, a different domain than project management–to be a contender for a leadership role. ↩︎
4. To wit, the Eagle Scout Service Project Workbook–a requirement to do an Eagle project–is a detailed, 32-page form. ↩︎
5. The Guide to Advancement purports to define leadership expectations for Eagle projects in section 9.0.2.4 (p. 67), titled “Give Leadership to Others …”. In fact, this section of Guide declines to clarify any leadership expectations! Instead, the authors reveal widespread confusion between management and leadership, evident by prohibitions on the use of management concerns to evaluate leadership. For example, an Eagle project’s success may not hinge on the number of people managed, total hours worked, or whether project participants met a performance standard. While these “nos” have value, BSA declines to clearly state what leadership means. ↩︎
6. D. Scott DeRue, Susan J. Ashford, “Who Will Lead and Who Will Follow? A Social Process of Leadership Identity Construction in Organizations“, Academy of Management, October 2010. ↩︎
7. Various studies are cited and summarized in the Limitations section of Wikipedia’s Training wheels article. ↩︎
8. These age bands do not line up exactly; the correlation is approximate. There are historical or societal reasons why they may not, such as differences in how secondary education is construed. ↩︎
9. While Denmark and Germany combine high school and early adulthood into one program–they lack a green band–that is not recommended for BSA. The broader point is that at roughly USA high-school ages, the Scout graduates from the middle-school program. ↩︎
10. I used “often” because, anecdotally, some later middle schoolers (ages 13-14) are surprisingly ready for leadership development. ↩︎
11. Some counter that BSA’s patrol method should empower patrol leaders. In practice, hierarchical structures often reduce patrol leaders to carrying out orders. Also, youth naturally gravitate to simpler, more black-and-white solutions, thus leaning toward administration rather than genuine leadership. ↩︎
12. While there is an option for an SPL in the UK’s Scouts section, there’s mixed used of the role. Often, the role is not used. When it is, the role is reserved for an older Scouts section member–13 or 14–or it’s occupied by an Explorer section member (14-18) who’s voluntarily in a Youth Leadership Scheme (around a tenth of Explorers do that scheme). ↩︎
13. Conventional notions of leadership describe an informal change process that affects institutions or systems. Servant leadership is still an informal change process, but instead of affecting an institution or system, the end result is development or enablement of a person. ↩︎
14. The critical path to get Eagle is 18 months: 1 month (Second Class requirement 7a) + 1 month (First Class requirement 8a) + 4 months (Star requirements 1 and 5) + 6 months (Life requirements 1 and 4) + 6 months (Eagle Scout requirements 1 and 4). Someone who joins a troop at age 10.5 can complete Eagle Scout not long after a 12th birthday. ↩︎
15. Robert Baden-Powell, “B.-P.’s Outlook: First-class Scout”, The Scouter, February 1914. ↩︎

Dear Circle Ten Council Executive Board,

Today, you learned you’ll soon search for a new Scout Executive (SE). I urge you to approach this with the best interests of our Scouts and the Scouting movement at heart. This means you should go outside of the national organization’s hand-picked pool of bureaucrats.

Robert Baden-Powell once exclaimed, “WE ARE A MOVEMENT, NOT AN ORGANISATION.”¹ He went on with, “in working through love for the [youth], loyalty to the Movement, and comradeship one with another — that is, through the SPIRIT OF SCOUTING — we are on the right line.”²

I ask you to heed Baden-Powell’s wisdom while you select our next SE. Put the movement, the sprit of Scouting, and service to youth above all else. At every step in selecting a new Scout Executive, ask yourself, “How does my choice benefit our Scouts, our families, and our unit-level leaders?”

Choosing the right leader will require you to overcome constraints in BSA’s selection system. Per its rules, the national organization provides councils a hand-picked slate of SE candidates. This approach is more about control than serving the movement: it allows the national office to inject its problematic culture on our council, and it protects the careers of long-tenured bureaucrats in the commissioned-professional system.

History shows that you are unlikely to find a leader from such a limited pool. The commissioned-professional system has a track record of driving away strong leaders. This is evident in decades of internally sourced Chief Scout Executives (national CEOs) who have been proven ineffective or incompetent.

For the good of Circle Ten Council, you must break this pattern. I strongly encourage you to consider candidates outside of BSA’s curated pool. This is allowed!³ I encourage you to review this with other councils that bucked the system.

You may notice I have deliberately addressed you in the second person throughout this letter. This is intentional, because each of you—individually—shares responsibility for this decision. One of the most important duties of any board of directors is to select and oversee the organization’s chief executive. Not only is this common sense, but BSA’s own regulations underscore it.⁴

Your responsibility is both collective and individual. It falls to each executive board member, not just a select few, to be personally invested in the search for our next Scout Executive. Please stay informed and engaged at every step. Specifically, ask yourselves:

• Am I fully aware of how the selection process is being conducted?
• Do I know what the selection committee is doing at each stage?
• Do I know who the candidates are and what criteria are being used to evaluate them?
• Which finalist has the strongest track record of serving our Scouts, our families, and our unit-level leaders?

Each of you should be asking these questions—and insisting on clear answers.

In closing, I urge every member of the Executive Board to take this responsibility to heart. Do not simply defer to tradition or internal pressure. Make the choice that truly benefits those we serve. Above all, remember that your ultimate loyalty must be to the youth, families, and unit-level volunteers, and the spirit of the Scouting movement itself.

Sincerely,

Aren Cambre

1. “B.-P.’s Outlook: The Hang of the Thing”, The Scouter, July 1921. ↩︎
2. Ibid. ↩︎
3. Rules and Regulations of the Boy Scouts of America, May 2024, p. 17. The second sentence of the Local Council Scout Executive and/or Chief Executive Officer section describes how a council may “hire a candidate who would not otherwise be eligible for the position”. In this case, “not otherwise be eligible” mainly means someone who is not a commissioned professional. ↩︎
4. Ibid. Per the last sentence of the Local Council Scout Executive and/or Chief Executive Officer section, the “council Scout executive or chief executive officer shall serve at the pleasure of the local council’s executive board”. ↩︎

If your Scout unit puts its events in Scoutbook Plus’s calendar, you can subscribe to these events in most calendar products!

It’s just two steps.

Step 1: Copy the calendar-feed URL

1. Go to your unit’s Scoutbook Plus’s calendar (login required).
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
3. Find the calendar you want to subscribe to, then click the copy icon on the right ().

Step 2: Subscribe to that URL with your calendar

Generally, you’ll need to locate in your calendar product where you can paste an iCal-feed URL. Below is specific guidance for Outlook.com, Google Calendar, and iPhone.

Google Calendar

1. On your computer, open Google Calendar.
2. On the left, next to Other calendars, click the +, then click From URL.
3. In the From URL field, paste the URL you copied in step 1.
4. Click Add calendar.

Outlook.com

1. On your computer, open Outlook.com.
2. On the left, click the calendar icon ().
3. Click Add calendar.
4. Click Subscribe from web.
5. In the field that shows on the right, paste the URL you copied in step 1.
6. Click Import.

iPhone

(I don’t use the iPhone’s calendar. If these steps are incorrect, please leave a comment.)

1. Go to Settings > Calendar > Calendar Accounts > Add Account > Other
2. Tap Add Subscribed Calendar.
3. In the field that shows, paste the URL you copied in step 1.
4. Tap Next. (I don’t know what the next steps are, but you’ll likely see one last screen where you confirm the calendar.)

Editorial prerogative on BSA IT

I recommend maximizing use of BSA’s IT systems for advancement, calendar, and more. Third-party products should only be used as a last resort.

BSA’s technology is continually getting better. The more use BSA’s products get, the more demand there will be for improvements.

Several BSA councils have huge endowments.

Reflecting this site’s insistence that all of BSA must serve the base, this analysis measures endowment size by its impact on each council’s youth member:

Hey, National Executive Board (NEB)! It’s time to use the Konami code: unlock your superpowers!

Your composition has changed: You’re smaller, and some of the old guard departed. You can be quite effective!

You’ve got to save Scouting from its #1 existential threat: A culturally rotted, poorly performing national organization, that sees itself as its own customer, which is winning a decades-long war of attrition against the base.

To do this, you’ve got to use the Konami code and make some bold decisions uncharacteristic of past NEBs.

(Technical note: Some things I speak to might be delegated to other bodies, like the National Executive Committee. Because of BSA’s precarious state and decades of BSA’s failures to correct itself, I feel it’s important for the NEB to set some expectations directly.)

Two key measures of NEB effectiveness

In 2023, the NEB approved a five-point plan to start turning BSA around. This plan has a lot of great things. But it doesn’t directly address two issues and a method that I find so foundational, that without them, it’s unclear if this turnaround can succeed.

The two issues: Ending bigotry and driving away those with bad ideas.

The method: Providing uncharacteristically clear direction to the national bureaucracy.

Priority 1: Ending bigotry

The NEB must make a shot across the bow and finally end BSA’s rampant bigotry, killing harmful policies concerning girls, gays, and God. The NEB’s history of piecemeal, reluctant steps, sometimes requiring chiding from its own leader, are unacceptable, insufficient.

Remaining bigoty includes BSA’s misogynist-appeasing, separate-but-equal regime for girls, which also slaps the transgender community, and BSA’s bigotry towards atheists and agnostics, a perversion of James E. West’s original intent¹.

The action plan is simple:

• Delete the coed ban. Replace it with nothing, allowing all units to have self-determination on gender.
• Delete BSA’s ban of atheists and agnostics, which slaps the Jesus of the bible. Yes, this means the NEB countermands its own 2018 affirmation of religious bigotry. This happened before, such as the 2013 partial reversion of a 2012 affirmation of bigotry.

Priority 2: Running off poor performers or those with bad ideas

This sounds cynical, but it’s crucial.

National has a lot of great people who are genuinely committed to Scouting’s success. But these dedicated folks are overwhelmed by 1. many gold-looper volunteers and professionals with bad ideas or who perform poorly and 2. by program committees that moat themselves off from the base, create little or no value, do things the base does not want, and exist mainly to affirm the elite-ness of their members.

The NEB must take concrete steps to affirm that this culture will change.

Ending bigoted policies–my prior point–is a big part of this.

The other part is to affirm a culture of accountability for the national organization. Our fundamental accountability measure for all national roles or committees must be, “What value do you produce for families, Scouts, and unit-level volunteers?” If we can’t find a straightforward, net-positive answer to that question, then we must have a time-boxed proposal to get there. If neither can happen, then we abolish the committee or role or seek the net positive by replacing those in the role or committee.

This will set new expectations. For example, BSA’s lack of a public apology for or public repudiation of its 2023 war on Cub Scout camping shows this is considered acceptable conduct for its bureaucrats. With a new expectation of producing value for the base, wars against the membership will, for the first time, be considered unacceptable conduct, initiating correction to seek the net positive.

This also stops throwback reactionaries from morally bankrupting BSA. Allowing them to use BSA as a tool in their culture wars was always harmful to the base. If we’re serious about putting an end to gold-loopers’ attacks on the base, then we’ve neutered the throwback reactionaries!

This will cause some to feel uncomfortable. It will induce departures. Those preferring an environment of unaccountability or of tolerating uselessness will leave.

Lesson learned from the United Methodist Church

If we make poor performers or those with bad ideas feel uncomfortable, we’ll get departures. That may cause some disruptions. But it’s necessary. The United Methodist Church (UMC) just showed us why.

The UMC had bigoted, anti-LGBTQ+ policies for decades. Naively, many in the UMC believed that we could reform those policies while appeasing our bigots. We tried this for decades and failed. Not only did this naivete delay reform, the bigots kept jabbing the knife deeper.

It wasn’t until the 2020-2024 mass exodus of bigots that the UMC could finally reform. And it finally did so last week, repealing bigoted policies.

The BSA is in a similar position. We’ve wasted decades coddling poor performers and those with bad ideas. This appeasement has brought us to our knees. If we want a viable BSA, the appeasement must end. But we may have to shrink to grow.

You may counter with, “But wait, [group x] and [group y] already fled. Isn’t that enough?” No. Their culture remains firmly in place. National continues to not give an inch on its performance problems or its bigotry. More departures are needed to right this, and these departures can be encouraged by the NEB setting clear and appropriate expectations.

Let’s talk about departures: Who cares? Really, who cares? Some people at national need to find a different way to serve humanity. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out! In my campaign to put sunlight on the national organization’s manifold sins, I have come across so many good, caring, competent, rational people who could be shoo-ins for vacated roles. The easiest part is abolishing or refilling vacated roles! (Related: To succeed at re-filling roles, national has to stop using gold loops as a reward to long-term loyalty. Instead, national must seek competent innovators from all levels of tenure.)

This will pivot the NEB from being a board of bystanders

The NEB has two key jobs:

• Appoint and supervise CEOs.
• Set corporate strategy.

Instead of doing those jobs well, or at all, prior NEBs were mainly boards of bystanders.

Kowtowing to the bureaucracy

Evidence comes with decades of terrible CEO appointments.

Instead of appointing competent leaders to the CEO role, past NEBs kowtowed to BSA’s bureaucracy, limiting its CEO candidate pool to former District Executives surfaced by BSA’s awful career system. Thanks to this, the NEB caused decades of harm by saddling BSA with CEOs who were visionless bureaucrats with weak leadership skills.

Roger Krone, who was appointed in 2023, broke this mold! He is the first CEO with leadership chops since Harvey L. Price, who in 1976 began to countermand his predecessor by restoring BSA’s outdoor-adventure focus.

Declining to set strategy

More evidence of poor past NEB performance comes with how it declined to set sound strategy, instead fomenting a leadership vacuum. This vacuum handed the national organization’s rudder to its moribund bureaucracy and to throwback reactionaries.

The bureaucracy’s hand on the rudder is demonstrated by how BSA’s programs, advancement system, uniforms, and more have drifted listlessly for decades, now confusing and bloated with unchecked accumulation of random ideas. Yeah, yeah, I know, a lot of responsibility for these failures nominally falls on program committees, but since they historically are puppets of or allies with the bureaucracy, the fingers point back to the bureaucracy.

Throwback reactionaries’ hand on the rudder is evidenced by BSA’s moral depravity–our bigoted flexes on gays, God, and girls–and dire fiscal conditions. While NEB declined to provide useful direction, throwback reactionaries used BSA as a tool in their culture wars. Throwback reactionaries’ bigoted flexes were so extreme, in addition to destroying much of our goodwill and 80% of our membership, we now have a $439 million white elephant that’s underwater, digging the hole deeper with staggering annual losses.

As long as bigotry and tolerance of poor performance still have the upper hand in BSA, we should expect continued brand damage:

The NEB must stand up to the moribund bureaucracy

Back to my point: If the NEB is serious about its mission, in addition to setting clear direction on ending bigotry, it will stand up to the bureaucracy, setting expectations that its lousy performance will no longer be tolerated. This starts by denying a proposal to stall elimination of the coed ban.

Some background: Reliable informants convey that the NEB is set to end the coed ban this week! But the NEB still plans to kowtow to the bureaucracy which predictably is asking for it to stall reform: A useless pilot program is proposed. Given BSA’s normal practices, this should stall reform at least another year.

BSA’s pilot programs are useless, bureaucratic stalling exercises. In recent times, all major knowledge produced by BSA’s pilot programs, if any (!), could have been predicted by a competent professional or volunteer. But recent pilot programs seem to produce so little. Examples:

• The pilot programs for allowing girls in Cub Scouts and Scouts BSA produced nothing. All outcomes could have been easily predicted from Michael Surbaugh’s “the fix was in” introduction of the separate-but-equal regime at the 2017 NAM.
• The more recent pilot program for coed Cub Scout dens is notable for the absence of significant changes in how Cub Scout packs operated.

Instead of pilot programs, we need competence.

And we should have that competence: With coed older-youth programs for 56 years, BSA has had plenty of time to figure out coed. It has had coed Cub Scouts since 2018 (sorry, rulemongers, virtually all packs flouted national and ran coed programs since 2018!). And many troops have chosen the moral high road, flouting BSA’s separate-but-equal regime for girls, instead running undercover coed operations. BSA already has all it needs to navigate full coed across every program.

But let’s suppose I am wrong? (I’m not, but let’s pretend.) BSA has unlimited phone-a-friend to other USA youth-serving organizations, nearly all of which are fully coed or permit it. We also have unlimited phone-a-friend to all of BSA’s WOSM peers, which have been fully coed for decades.

The NEB’s repudiation of the coed ban must be full, final, and immediate. The bureaucracy has no reason to stall this. If the repudiation is not full, final, and immediate, then we’re inviting bigots and some bureaucrats maintain control. Back to the proposed bureaucratic stalling tactic–the pilot program–it is an invitation for those with bad ideas to sanitize their folly by clinging to any part of the coed ban they can save. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them warp the pilot program to validate single-gender patrols. The current coed-related rules applicable to Cub Scouts or Venturing are already an overreach (I have a future article developing on this). Any post-coed-ban standards that go beyond those are almost certainly evidence of uncorrected cultural rot.

How each community navigates its coed experience must be up to that community, unencumbered by even a single vestige of the separate-but-equal regime for girls.

Conclusion

BSA is at its most fragile point in its history. Suffering a recent, catastrophic membership loss, teetering on a second bankruptcy, reeling from decades of appeasing those with bad ideas and poor performance, and with programs and services badly needing a cleaning up and realignment, it’s crucial for the NEB to take a shot across the bow.

The NEB must set clear expectations now, in a visceral way, that bigotry, bad ideas, and poor performance are no longer welcome in the national organization. It starts this by deleting all bigoted policies (the separate-but-equal regime for girls and religious bigotry) in a full, complete, and final way, which importantly includes denial of bureaucratic stalling tactics (pilot programs).

1. I have yet to write about this, but James E. West, the first Chief Scout Executive, created the original language that is behind today’s Declaration of Religious Principle (DRP). When understood through the lens of the USA’s Third Great Awakening, it’s unlikely James meant for the DRP to become a ban on atheists and agnostics or to be as in-your-face as it is today. ↩︎

I was Cubmaster of a large pack for 5 years. The biggest waste of my time, in terms of return on value, was re-recruiting departed Scouts.

What I learned:

1. I usually cannot fix the problem. The families almost always dodged the truth about why they left. (I am in Texas, where it’s culturally considered better to tell a polite lie than to share truth.) Therefore, the problems I thought I could solve were usually phony. Best way to flush time down the toilet? Solving phony problems.
2. Rarely did they come back, and when they did, it was not due to anything I did. I can only think of two comebacks associated with my pack, which peaked at 137 Scouts. One is still with the program, with my son in his troop, and the other dropped a year after returning.
3. Problems are best solved proactively. I am pretty sure most of our losses were due to two reasons: 1. Too many other activities, which is hard to solve. 2. Poor den program.

On poor den program, not supporting my Den Leaders enough may have been the #1 thing I would have changed if I had a do-over. The den leaders weren’t unsupported–they were trained, and the pack-level program supported den formation and strengthening–but I didn’t do enough commissioner-style supports of Den Leaders.

We had many awesome den leaders, and I am so thankful for them. They did so much to cause a great program and retention. I feel bad for those who may have been lost and I didn’t assure they had a compass.