I identify with Graff from my 40+ years as a Scouting Leader (who had no Sons, but ended up with scores of them) who used the basic program as a foundation, then further developed the unit structure so the youth leadership did just about everything 'leadership' oriented; besides dealing with the parents and outside adults. At the time, I was the District Adult Leadership Training Chairman, and I figured out early that the training had as much applicability to the youth leaders as it did to the adult leaders. Somewhere in all of that, I ended up taking
Wood Badge Adult Leadership Training myself.
My job was to authorize, enable, oversee, and also to handle the admin tasks. All program planning, decisions, and execution was done by the boys, and after some time, the girls, too. Every group activity was treated as a mission, with a complete debrief afterward.
I bailed for the same reasons the LDS just recently bailed, I just got there a little sooner.
I would train one boy in each skill, then send any others wanting to know how to him. When his first task would always be to train his replacement, so he could get some free time once in awhile himself.
My own youth was as part of a 1960's High Adventure Explorer Post whose exploits made the pages of Boys' Life usually one each year (Post 18, Newark, NJ). Then and up until just a small handful of years ago, always years ahead of our times.
I decided to return to Scouting after the Marine Corps and Vietnam; after witnessing the aftermath of putting untrained, inexperienced young men into positions of combat leadership. I decided there had to be a better way to develop young leadership before the wages of first errors cost young men their lives, and that Scouting was a very convenient basis upon which to flesh out that viewpoint. I think I got that exactly right. Nothing I have ever done, or will ever do here can ever top that.
Greg
