[philmont] Wilderness First Aid

Andre Houser wrote:
> OLS is what it is. The purpose is to acquaint the person (asm, sm)
> who has no clue with the requirements of TF through FC so that they
> can logically decide when the scouts have completed the task. It is
> NOT to make them experts, that treaining comes elsewhere.
>
> That's why the real title of the course is IOLS (Introduction to
> Outdoor Leader Skills).
> ##################
Agreed. I am not trying to start a religious war with the training
crowd <grin>. I am simply noting the obvious. BSA has now
acknowledged that being trained as a Scout leader does not mean you know
anything about going camping. That is a very very sad state of affairs.

My point is that back in the earlier days it was expected that a Scout
leader have a clue. Now we put a "trained" patch on a shoulder of
anyone with 48 hours to spare and the parents have what would be a
reasonable expectation that the leader of their kids has been trained.
Better yet we then let that leader believe that they have been trained
and they go off and get people killed. This seems to be perfectly
ok with the folks in Texas as long as those people don't get killed at
Philmont.

Problem is that this is IOLS training is the end all be all for most
leaders. They get the patch that says they are trained but that
training is not of much use. As for the value of the training
determining if a kid can past the TF-FC requirements that is even
scarier. Following that logic a kid can pass the requirements by trying
a square knot one time in a group setting and never having to be able to
do it again as there is no retesting.

That is why we have Eagle Scouts who cannot use a compass, tie a knot or
perform First Aid.

The no re-test gets far more discussion than what should have been
said. It is a BSA wide problem. . What should have been said is that
the class spent an hour on what should be a day x many subjects. Since
we don't have xx days we will roll thru this fast but please be expected
to spend far more time with your kids.

Better yet allow those with experience to audit the class so we don't
have 30 people in the group with over 1/2 having zero clue and the other
1/2 better served teaching the class. We have no such provisions in
the program.

Mark Liechty
ASM Troop 160, MC Pack 160 & 573
Eagle Class 0f 82
Lincoln, CA

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Received on Sun May 25 15:01:57 2008