Leaderboard

I think it's easy to get way too carried away with awards. While some things in cub scouting may take some perserverence, nothing is hard. It is no more difficult for a 10 year old to earn AOL than it is for a six year old to earn Tiger because it's an age appropriate progression and the skills are easily attainable by the particular age. This seems to be reaching for ways to make certain groups of kids seem more worthy than another. Cubs simply isn't built that way.

Locally, our Scouts participated in a number of Veterana' Day programs or recognitions. One of them was at our local county government center where Scouts acted as honor guards for Vets being recognized from each of the services, including Coast Guard. They even note the Space Force, though not sure that is ever going to be large in the short term. For our area, we actually have Vandenburg fairly close, ust up the coast. Anway, at the event we had one Gold Star family recognized, and we had two WWII Vets, one 98, and one 102. We have a photo of one of my own unit scouts shaking hand

BSA provides you a ton of literature on how to execute the plan. Volunteers are the people and fundraisers provide the money, not that you need much. I guess you ignore that whole A Scout is Trustworthy thing, right? Why bother even doing anything? Just click on the little boxes and go buy awards to hand out.

Yes, this is true, though I have not seen where it says that scouts need to earn their Whittling Chip to be awarded AOL. I agree that AOL can be a lot of work, and it should be, they are 5th graders. My issue with treating it as a BIG DEAL is that you get the same award if you have been in Cub Scouts for six months or for six years. We have scouts who have attended every meeting, since Lions, for six years. We have other scouts that joined Cub Scouts late in 4th grade (too late to earn Webelos rank), and will most likely earn AOL by March. It is fine that they get the "5th grade rank" whi

For Cub Scout standards, yes. Unless the organization, i.e., the BSA, provides provides resources to execute the plan, such as people or money, they are quite literally just providing words on a page.