The suggestion of Lion in place of Webelos has a good deal of merit. I've heard the "We Blow" comments and snickers, and they do the program no service. And yes, since I'm in Illinois I get the comments about the ear of corn for an emblem too.
I suspect that what really needs to happen is to divorce Webelos from Cub Scouts, change the name, add a kindergarten program for Cub Scouting and turn the re-named Webelos into an independent program between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. But that's a whole lot of issues beyond the scope of the original post.
We've got career people, or at least long-term people, who are not commissioned and probably won't be. Some attention to the long-term development of support staff is likely to be in everyone's best interest.
The world is not ready for mandatory online anything. Improving the usefulness of Internet Advancement is an excellent idea; requiring it willy-nilly is not in touch with the realities faced by many volunteers.
Lowering the age minimum for Venturing would create problems with the already wide span of ages in the program. Somehow mixing college youth and pre-teens just doesn't make sense.
There might also be issues with just how young can we go with coeducational programming and not run afoul of the GSUSA charter. And serious issues with how such a change could impact Boy Scouting.
When we limit our ability to serve the public via Internet unless done with one preferred browser and one platform, we project an image of lacking technical sophistication. This isn't exactly what we want for our brand.
The original poster does not state the requirement accurately. The minimum is 14 years of age and completion of eighth grade, OR 15 years of age regardless.
I would strongly oppose a reduction of this minimum in any respect; Venturing is a high-school and young adult program. Dropping the requirements to include a lot of middle-schoolers loses our target audience and overlaps too greatly with the existing Boy Scout program.
Local usage here favors red for both Venturing and pre-LFL Exploring, the former being the successor to the latter. A published clarification would be wonderful.
It depends on which statistics one chooses to accept -- but even accepting tom.hulcy's figures we still cannot ignore nearly one-fourth of our potential audience as we do our web development.
The only place I use the technically inferior MSIE is at work for the BSA.
It seems that the redesign the original poster suggests has in fact already occurred, and the perceived issue is more one of local implementation. The training on offer is cutting-edge leadership and management training, delivered using the patrol method that is at the very heart of Boy Scouting . . . and the patrol method is nothing if not fraternal in character. The current administrative guide prescribes minimum staff turnover, and the grandfathering of old-course graduates for new-course staff without taking the new course has gradually phased out. Wood Badge is not broken, when done by the book, and doesn't need fixing.
This one's actually a rather good proposal, as long as a Scout can earn it one time only for a single non-standard discipline. With some oversight by council advancement committees in approving requirements up front, it could go a long way toward broadening the program while keeping the number of merit badges manageable.
Apples and oranges. The Order of the Arrow is a program tied to Boy Scouting, not Venturing. We don't elect male Venturers to the OA as Venturers, either. Neither do we nominate and elect adults of either sex based on their service in Venturing crews. (Or Cub Scout packs.) Exactly why is it in any sense a good idea to move the OA away from its Boy Scouting focus?
Disk sports are worthwhile, but we have a Sports merit badge plus Athletics, Golf, Snow Sports, Water Sports. There's no pressing need to fragment sports further.
I enjoy both disc golf and ultimate, although I'm a bit long in the tooth for the latter. But I see no benefit to splitting off a separate merit badge here; we have a Sports badge.
I suspect the vote total here won't measure the sentiment very accurately. Is a No vote saying No to beads for NYLT staff? Or should one vote Yes to rescind the policy from the syllabus?
It might be tricky to compile the list of approved organizations/honors, but the idea of a broader knot similar to the religious knots and the community organization knot is an improvement.
One of our council's longest-standing reservations is for a church-sponsored camp for middle-school and high-school age girls, traditionally the week after our Boy Scout camp closes for the season. It works just fine.
I would take this a half-step further, and create a Games merit badge. In addition to the excellent ideas set forth for the video games proposal, we should remember that games are a window to diverse cultures (some board games go back over a thousand years), a form of sport for the mind instead of the body (two "games", chess and contract bridge, are recognized by the International Olympic Committee as sports; two others, draughts and go, are at the step below), and exactly the kind of lifelong activity that we have traditionally encouraged with many of the merit badges throughout our history.
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