An Aggravation

I became heavily involved in Scouting America (formerly Boy Scouts of America) when my son went to his current troop from his cub scout pack. I started off not knowing much, but as I started to become more involved, I started taking more training to become a better leader. I visited other troops, spent weekends away taking part in high level leadership training for scouts, and learned as much as I could to be the best that I could. Last year I was even asked to help train other adult leaders so we can all provide the best program possible for young boys and girls. The idea behind scouting is to create solid citizens and leaders out of these young individuals entrusted to us by their parents through a program that is ultimately led by scouts. We train them, we guide them, and the ultimate goal is to give them the tools to lead their own scout troop. They should be making the decisions, doing the planning, and carrying all that out. Its not easy, but it can be done as I’ve witnessed through troops other than my son’s. His, as I’ve come to find out through my training, is the opposite of what it should be. Rather than scout led, its leader led. So let me get to my aggravation then.

Every year, our council has an awards dinner for adult leaders who stand out, go above and beyond, and encourage and promote scouting to youth in the area. This year my wife is getting an award for starting a girl’s troop within Scouting America which in my mind is fantastic. During an evening conversation while dinner was cooking, she read me the list of everyone else getting awards that night. As she read the names, I heard a number that are leaders in my son’s troop. While I respect them as adults and humans, I don’t think that they are necessarily deserving of these awards that they will receive. Call my biased, but I have seen a number of different troops and how they run, and the one my son is in currently does not do the scouting program justice. This isn’t to say that they don’t do a good job of providing a good program for the scouts, they do, but it is lacking in many ways that I think could be improved upon to help create more robust young leaders as they work towards their Eagle. As I mentioned above, it is not scout led, but leader led.

I guess that my aggravation stems from the award night being brought up some months ago at a committee meeting and one of the leaders commenting that they haven’t paid attention to them in a while and that maybe they should nominate some people to receive awards. Knowing who these gentlemen are, I have a gut feeling that many of them nominated each other for these awards. They may feel that their fellow adult leaders are deserving, but they have also not gone out and experienced what good leaders are like. In my mind, many of those nominated from my son’s troop are not up to the standard that I would consider giving them an award for. Did I nominate anyone? No, I slacked, I didn’t think about it, I passed the opportunity by to nominate someone I thought really deserved it. Its too late, but it doesn’t stop the aggravation that welled up inside of me. I’ve gotten past it to be honest, but there is still a tiny part that irks me. So now I get to decide how I react at the awards ceremony when they get these awards.

It would be completely wrong to say anything to them in person or even for that matter to single them out in any way (hence why I am not putting any names or even positions in here). Further, to someone, they are obviously deserving of these awards and I wouldn’t want to take away from their moment. However, and that’s a big however, it doesn’t mean I have to clap for them at the ceremony, does it? If I disagree with something, must I clap along with everyone else or is it justifiable to sit there with my hands in my lap and just smile? I think that it’s perfectly ok to sit without clapping, after all, I have never been one to go along with the crowd just because. And so, with my standards in my heart, and in line with my feelings on this matter, I will go and clap for my wife when she receives her award and fold my hands nicely in my lap when these other gentlemen receive theirs. What would you do in this situation? How would you react? Further, am I being too callous? Perhaps I am, but the last bit I’ll write about this today is this: I have tried to change how my son’s troop runs. I have offered to take over, I have offered to try different methods. At the end of the day, my offers were rebuffed and my efforts stymied. I do get scouts involved in more high adventure trips and if that’s the least I can do to get them to lead more, then that’s what I’ll do.