JMHawkins

When I hear/read stories of Eagle Scout candidates not being able to tie a bowline, I don't look on it as a failure of the Scout - I look on it as a failure of the unit (whether its the adult leaders, or the PLC, or a combination of both) in not providing opportunities to use the skills in other contexts.

Tonight was our District Roundtable, and at the end of the meeting, a Boy Scout from one of the local troops made a brief presentation about a project that, well, details are unimportant. What is important is that it was a terrible presentation. The scout was disorganized, unimpressive, and frankly unprepared. I don't want to pile on to the poor kid, but it was bad.

Okay, so it was a teenage Boy Scout presenting to a bunch of adult scout leaders, what do you expect? Only he wasn't just a Boy Scout, he was an Eagle Scout. OA too. He's from a troop that's known for pumping out lots of 14 year old Eagles.

Now I don't know how good his outdoor skills are, but his communication skills are poor, and overall he gave the impression of your average, ordinary, High School kid. He didn't show the poise, confidence and general competence I would expect of someone with an Eagle dangling from his pocket and a white sash across his chest. Those are supposed to be marks of exceptional achievement. He didn't live up to the decorations on his uniform.

I don't blame him. The adults in his Eagle Mill troop let him down. This kid thinks he's accomplished something significant, but I sure don't see it. Neither did the other committee member there with me - we talked about it on the ride home. I have to say I left that Roundtable dissapointed.

Sorry, I know I'm ranting here, but it just makes me sad to see this. It robs the kids in that troop of a real chance to develop themselves by telling them they've achieved great things when they haven't, and it cheapend the recongition that other kids get when they really do excell.

We're looking at alternate fundraisers and I came across Pizza Cards. If you havent' seen them, there are a few websites that offer them - scouts sell "buy one pizza, get a second one free" punch cards for $10. The buyer can use the cards up to 20 times over the next year at a local pizza parlor.

They seem to be decent values for the people who buy them and the unit keeps a fairly high percentage of the money. Is there a catch? Has anyone else done these, and what were your experiences? Would you recommend it for other units?

Thanks,

Yah, I just don't get da notion that people think older boys won't work with younger fellows.

They'll work with them, they just don't want to be doing the same thing as the younger boys. By "same thing" I don't mean going on the same backpacking trip, I mean doing the exact same things while on (and planning for) the trip.

Looking back, the 6th graders were learning how to make camp, the 8th graders were teaching the 6th graders how to make camp, and the 10th graders were teaching the 8th graders how to teach the 6th graders. Everybody was learning new stuff and engaging their brains in different ways, even though we were all trying to get camp set up before it got dark.

Course, it can only work that way if it's boy led. If the adults are doing all the leading, there's nothing for the older kids to do.

I'm sorry if I"m stating the obvious, but I'm sure you realize that you don't need to achieve Gold in every standard to rate overall Gold. If you make Gold in most areas and Silver or Bronze on others, you'll make overall Gold.

Oh sure, I just think there should be appropriate Silver and Gold levels for us to aspire to. Since Bronze is "at least 19 boys or one more than last year" maybe Silver could be "at least 29 boys or 5% more than last year" and Gold "39 or 10%".

Or, maybe Gold could be "helped establish a new Pack in the community." We're not looking to split, though the incoming kindergarten class at the local elementary is HUGE.

I applaud the change away from self-set goals. Setting some clear guidelines for units to meet will make the award much more meaningful.

Looking over the Pack criteria, it all seems reasonable and if we applied it to the last year our pack would've earned Gold. However, I'm not really happy with #3 Buidling Scouting. We're already a fairly large pack (over 40 boys) and we don't really want to grow any bigger. Full Pack events like PWD, our Overnight, and B&G are a little crowded right now as it is. Our goal is to maintain our pack size, but we are not being aggressive about growing it. To earn beyond the Bronze level, we would need to grow to a size that would start detracting from the program.

But that's just one nit. Overall I like the criteria and the weighting of the point system. Retention, advancement and outdoor activities are all highly weighted, while shuffling paperwork is of minor importance. It's a good direction.

Regardless of requirement "toughness" - the best way to keep 16 & 17 yr olds in the program is to keep out 10 - 12 year olds. Boy Scouts has kept lowering the age level at the bottom end but not the top.

I don't care what they are doing, but being 17 and in a program that contains 10, 11 and 12 year olds can be frustrating.

Yeah, what I remember of the old troop is that the 6th and 7th graders were the patrol members (not many 5th graders, I don't remember if Webelos didn't cross over in 5th grade then or if the troop just picked them up later - I dropped out of Cubs before my Arrow of Light and then rejoined as a Boy Scout in 6th grade). 8th and 9th graders were the PLs, and 10th+ graders were the "old kids" who basically had their own patrol (led by the SPL). The "regular" patrols were pretty much on their own (under their PLs) and the older boys didn't interact directly with the patrol members that much - they worked through the PLs, who in turn worked extensively with the younger boys. I think that kept the age overlap reasonable.

Like Beavah said, done right Scouting gives boys lots of opportunities to develop the traits of a good man.

The other things is, done right, maybe nobody notices! If a kid can play the trumpet without making listeners cringe, you know it's because of the practice and training. If he's a decent, honorable kid, where did that come from? Lots of places probably, but ultimately good character is something you develop while doing other stuff. A good scouting program tries to maximize the (relatively safe) opportunities for developing it. But I don't think you can take any decent man and point with total confidence to what made him that way, and you can't take a boy and lay out a study plan guaranteed to turn him onto a good man. All you can do is maximize the opportunities.

If the positions of responsibility are such that a 12-13 year old can do them, then they aren't going to be a challenge for a 15-17 year old. And in all likelihood, in order to stay age appropriate, things are goin' to be strongly "adult guided."

Thanks Beavah, for putting your finger on something that's been bugging me. In the old troop that I belonged to, the idea of making First Class in a year would've been laughed at. First class was a two-year journey for most kids, and all our PLs were at least 14. We also tended to keep boys in their leadership positions for a year at least. Things were up for a vote of course, but the adult leaders encouraged us boys to stick with a position longer than seems to be typical today. We didn't churn through the different positions, checking off requirements. We - get this - assumed the purpose of holding a POR was to do the stuff that needed doing in order for the troop to run. It wasn't to check a box on your Eagle trail. The idea that a PL should run for another position after leading his patrol through one Snow Camp or 50-miler wouldn't have been well received. The guy just learned what he was doing - he ought to spend another year doing it before going on to something else.

I think 16 was the youngest Eagle we had.

Maybe our advancement was too slow, could be, but I worry that today it's too fast and the emphaisis is on advancing rather than experiencing. That might be the real difference between Band and Scouts. Band (and sports) don't really have the concept of advancement - your age determines which squads you're eligible for and your skill level determines if you have a spot on them. It's all about the experience for Band and sports, nobody gets confused on that.

Being in a band requires a significant time commitment because you need to practice to be proficient enough for anyone to want to listen to you play. This requires a certain dedication to the effort and helping kids develop the ability to dedicate themselves to mastering something is very valuable.

What is it that scouting requires kids to master? It's not a specific skill like playing a tuba, or throwing a curveball. It's a whole set of social skills, an outlook on life, and a set of values that make for a good man. You can't sit and study those skills the way you can scales on a tuba. We can't devise a set of drills for the kids to run every day that will develop the character traits Scouting is all about. The skills we're about really have to be developed in a different way, they're not things kids can master through drills and focused repetition. They have to be mastered in the context of kids living out their lives. Fingering the keys on a clarinet is something I do when I'm playing a clarinet - being trustworthy, loyal, etc. is stuff I do all the time (at least I'm supposed to...).

So a good scout program doesn't require the focused dedication that a good baseball or music program requires from the kids. Of course that doesn't address the issue Engineer61 raised, which is the higher perceived value dedicated programs have. For that, I dunno, I guess the real question we need parents asking themselves is "would I rather have my son be an accomplished musician or an honorable man?" Of course the two aren't exclusive, but then being in Scouts and Band shouldn't be either. If the band leader (or the baseball coach) demands so much of the kid that they are exclusive, parents who drop scouts aren't asking the right question, or are getting the wrong answer.

Assuming the local scout program is delivering on what scouting is all about anyway.

Tough situation - it is the COR's job to either handle these sorts of issues or else deputize the CC (and the rest of the Committee) to handle them. Not wanting to get involved and not allowing anyone else to handle a bad situation isn't okay. Is there a committee member who has a good working relationship with the COR who could present this for you? The CC should be that person, but no guarantees. Is the COR just confrontation-averse? You said they don't want to look bad for giving somene the boot, they need to realize they can look bad for far worse reasons too. He didn't want to hear the details about the DL, maybe you (or the CC) can call him again and acknowledge that he doesn't want to hear details and that you won't read him the list. Instead of discussing the behavior, see if you can discuss the reaction parents will have if they discover the behavior, and how badly that will reflect on the pack and the CO.

But if he just doesn't want to do his job, then yes, get the EO and the District folks involved. But first, double-check with yourself that the behavior is bad enough to warrant potentially blowing up the pack.

""Hmmm, I don't accept that. I will not accept that from my boss. I will not allow my job to run my life."

Must be nice to be independently wealthy. Most of us can't afford to be fired for insubordination"

I can certainly sympathize. But I think there are a couple of different levels of accepting petty tyrant behavior from you boss. On the one hand, there's "Well, the boss is a jerk and he's wrong, but he signs the paychecks and I need mine. So I'll grit my teeth and do what he says until I can find another job." That's a pretty grown up response.

On the other hand, there's another level of accepting behavior, saying "He's the boss so he must be right and that must be the way to run the show. If I ever get promoted to his position, I'm going to treat my subordinates exactly the same way and if they give me any lip I'll fire their butts." That's not so good.

NOTE: I am not making any claim about which level of acceptance Engineer61 is avocating. Frankly, I think this thread has moved beyond his son's homework/scouting conflict, since I'm pretty sure Engineer has made up his mind how he's going to handle the orignal situation.

But others watching the thread might still be pondering things. Our sons will certainly encounter "my way or the highway" bosses in their lives, and it's a good idea for us to teach them how to deal with such people as best we can. At the very least we should teach them that such behavior is wrong and not to be condoned. It certainly shouldn't be emulated.

'But the first thing I thought of is "Why is the Den Chief wearing a Webelos hat, Webelos neckerchief and Blue tabs,..'

Ha, actually my first thought was "why is the Cubmaster wearing a Webelos hat..."

I second Twocubdad's advice, get involved and help out the committee for a while - a few months or even a whole year - and give them the benefit of the doubt that they're being responsible and reasonable with their finances. After you've established your own credibility with the committee as someone interested in helping the pack and familiar with how it works, asking in a non-confrontational manner about the reserve shouldn't cause any trouble. Unless of course there's something wrong, but I think you can be patient in this case and observe for a while before reaching a conclusion. You'll get to know the people a little better and have a better idea of what their motivations are. If you go in right now with guns blazing, trying to stir up a bunch of other parents, you could easily come off as a random trouble-maker.

$30 dues are really low, and if the fees for the other activities seem reasonable as well, then you're not getting ripped off. That's why I think you can be patient - it doesn't sound like you've got a lot of your own money at risk here.

The big question that comes to my mind is, who's the Charter Organzation? Technically, they really have the money, not the pack. Perhaps it is money they donated to the pack and it's being reserved for something particular?

At any rate, I do suggest holding off on any confrontational approach - assume good will and good intentions until you have evidence of something else. A large reserve isn't evidence of chicanery, though you're right it's something worth understanding.

I wish our Pack had that problem...

Well, I certainly haven't been trying to insult Engineer, but I guess we just don't see eye to eye on this subject.

But, the thread, like quite a few things in scouting, has given me more insight into my releationship with my own son, so I still count it as time well spent.

"I think it is a little bit lame, just as I think the "good manners" belt loop is lame. Not that I am opposed to good manners, but that I am sad to see we apparently need a belt loop in order to promote manners."

Yeah, it is a little odd, but then again, looking both ways before crossing the street and not playing with matches are part of the Wolf Badge requirement. I think the advantage of these "well, duh" awards is that it manufactures an opportunity to talk about important things with the kids. And maybe works as a reminder for parents. Going through the Wolf Badge with my son, I realized he didn't know what gas smelled like. I should have made sure he knew that without a cub scout award to guide me, but it was nice to have the reminder.

"So you're saying that it's perfecting fine to raise the next village idiot, as long as he went Scouting?!?!? "

I could respond that you're saying it's okay to raise the next Bernie Madoff, as long as he got his homework turned in on time.

Of course that's not what either of us are saying, but we're just not on the same wavelength with this conversation. You're probably a bit surprised there's any disagreement with your homework-first position. I hope you will take the time to understand the disagreement rather than caricature it. It's ultimately your decision, you are the one responsible for raising your son, and you have to make the call here. But you asked for feedback, so you're getting it.

Our duty to our sons is not to raise them to be good students, it's to raise them to be good men.

"Huh? Really?

So you're saying that it's perfecting fine to raise the next village idiot, as long as he went Scouting?!?!? "

Engineer, I don't think you're seeing past the "School is priority one" bit. Would it be acceptible for your son to get an A by cheating? Of course not. Not the same thing, you say. Okay, different question: If his classmate was struggling with the class and your son had agreed to help, then the Friday assignment landed, would you want your son to still take the time to help, or say "sorry, you're on your own bub. I gotta focus on my own grade first"?

Perhaps were split on this issue, but I dont think school work should overwhelm a kids life to the extent it precludes extra-curricular activities, and if it does, parents should be proactive about it. Since Engineer didnt mention any other activities (band, baseball, etc.) I assume the campout was the only activity outside of the classroom that contributed to the assignment being late. Keeping an eye on what lessons our kids are learning and how Scouting fits, what went on here? I see two possibilities.

First, maybe the teacher made a perfectly reasonable assignment and the student, through poor time management, didnt get it done. Middle school is probably the first time that kids start to really hit time management challenges, so this could easily be the case. Proper time management for a reasonable homework assignment should have left enough time for the campout. Perhaps thats what he needs to work on, since its a very critical skill learning good time management skills now will pay huge dividends for the rest of his life, including the rest of his academic career. High School was pathetically easy for me (straight As without effort) and I didnt develop good time management skills until I was in college. There it was a serious struggle, I nearly flunked out my first year. I figured it out and did okay, but I wish Id learned those skills sooner. Rather than just enforcing absolute priorities, should you coach him in how to be more efficient so that he has time for scouting? While there are consequences in life for not getting the top priority done, there are usually also consequences for not getting priorities 2 and 3 done as well. The Power Company doesnt care that rent was priority 1, they still expect you to pay their bill too. If the carrot of going on a camping trip helps motivate him to focus on completing his schoolwork in a timely manner, hell be learning more than just whats on the teachers lesson plan.

The other option of course is that the assignment was not reasonable. This too could easily be the case, since there is a nationwide epidemic of teachers with their own time-management problems assigning unreasonable amounts of homework to make up for what they dont fit into class. The story as initially related here was an assignment given on Friday due on Tuesday that couldnt be finished without working the weekend on it, and this was described as typical for the class. If any manager (interestingly, Im in engineering too) working for me made a habit of loading his team up with weekend work, he would either improve his own organizational skills so that he wasnt abusing his team, or he would find another job. Ive always made this clear to people working for me emergencies and poor planning are usually the only legitimate reasons for extra work, and an abundance of either is not a good reflection on the guy in charge. If this is the case, the kid could benefit from better examples of leadership, hopefully coming from his scouting experiences. Remember, our kids arent just learning Readin, writin, and rithmatic in school, theyre also learning about social organization. If your school district is dysfunction and your scout troop isnt, the troop is a valuable part of the kids education too.

In either case, I really hope Engineer all of us - will look for ways to help our kids carve out time for things they enjoy. Consider this: if a kid really likes scouting, and school becomes the thing that keeps him from going scouting, he will sour on school. If that happens, it puts all the good grades hes ever gotten at risk.

"The attitude that you can break your commitments and obligations to others whenever it's necessary to advance yourself is not what we want to teach. Even in small things.

Gettin' good grades is advancing yourself. There's nothing wrong with it, eh? It should be encouraged. Just not as a "highest priority." "

I'm with Beavah here. Now, there may be more to this particular story, but frankly Beavah's right about the general idea. Putting your academic advancement above all other obligations is selfish. Middle school kids maybe need a little coaching on the difference between a real obligation and just something they'd rather do instead of homework, and maybe the camping trip was or wasn't an obligation, but if it was, going on it was the choice I'd have wanted my son to make.

There's another subject involved here too. Without knowing the details of the assignment I can't say, but it seems like a lousy thing for the teacher to do, dumping lots of work on kids over the weekend. Engineer says it's "expected" but that doesn't make it right. In addition to his academic subjects, there's another lesson every kid needs to learn at some point, and that's how to deal with an authority figure making unreasonable demands.

Oddly enough, last week my son had a conference with his teacher. He'd been struggling with his writing assignments, taking far longer than he should have to get them done, and getting really discouraged. He'd always been a kid who liked, really liked, school, but was starting to not like it. His teacher gave him some ideas to help with the writing assignments, but wanted my son to set a limit on the time he spent writing. If he didn't get it done, oh well. "Your homework is important, but so is playing catch outside with your dad."

Smart teacher - he realized that "finish at all costs" was causing burnout and the long-term consequences of a kid learning to dislike school because of the pressure were far, far worse than not getting every last assignment turned in on time.

There's more to life than homework. A kid will do much better in life getting a B in 7th grade but enjoying school than getting an A and hating it.

Thanks for all the replies.

About private schools, I doubt that the Headmaster at our school would have refused a stack of flyers (especially after the generous popcorn purchase he made when he saw my son manning the table outside the grocery store), but from the replies it sounds like he may be an exception. Perhaps the local district/pack just stopped trying after too many rejections. But I'd encourage folks to keep trying - a polite phone call each year, even if they said no last year, you never know, you might get a yes. Getting their kids (and families) interacting with other families is a good recruiting tool for the schools too, and in this economy they might be glad to have a little free publicity. Might be something to suggest if you get a cool reception. Scratching each other's backs and all that.

gwd_scouter, your comment about everyone wanting a piece of the CMs time makes a lot of sense. I was very aware of that myself - I knew he was probably the guy who could answer my questions, but I also knew he was pretty busy and didn't want to add to his burden which is why I was chasing down other uniformed leaders. And why I think a "Welcome Wagon" is a good idea - it's a way for a proactive CM to avoid at least a little bit of the chaos. You could make the person in charge of making new parents feel welcome also the person in charge of recruiting new parents into pack volunteer positions. Just, y'konw, to make double use of their time and all that...

GKlose, the idea of spring recruiting sure seems like a good one to me. Of course, it would only make sense for a pack running a 12-month program. I don't know yet how extensive our Pack's summer program is (the Troop they are a feeder for has a very active summer schedule though, so I'm hopeful). For what it's worth, a couple of popular summer day camps in our neck of the woods won't be running next year due to the economy. If that sort of thing is happening in your town too, it might be a good opportunity to get more kids into Cubs as their families look for other options for summer activities. I think I'll mention that to our CM. Summer really is made for Scouting, isn't it?

Well, winter is too if you have good raingear (it's 35 degrees and sprinkling as I write this, just east of Seattle).

About the popcorn, yeah, I'm not questioning the need for it, just the timing. We survivied, and now that it's over, I _am_ looking forward to eating the popcorn...

Hi folks. Im a former cub and boy scout, now a parent starting to ease back into scouting. My son is 7 and just joined a Cub pack. Now that weve got a couple of pack meetings under our belt, I thought Id write down some thoughts that might be useful and help with other recruiting efforst. Consider these the observations of a new parent (I was a Cub Scout myself, but that was a long, long, long where do the years go?... time ago). All offered in the spirit of constructive criticism most of you probably already know all this already, but I bet a few packs could profit from the experience.

1 When youre recruiting, dont forget to send flyers to private schools in the area. Our son goes to a small private school and there were no flyers or any other recruiting information sent to that school. My wife saw a sign announcing the pack meeting tacked to a stick on a street corner, otherwise we would not have known about the pack. She told some other families at the school, and now nearly half the first and second grade boys in the school are new scouts! Okay, so its only 2 boys out of 5, but still, a 40% recruiting rate is pretty good. (and the other boys are now hearing all about what the two that joined are doing, so maybe there will eventually be more.).

2 The first pack meeting we went to had a couple of problems that nearly caused us to not join. First, the meeting was mostly the boys sitting down while the pack leaders talked to the parents about stuff. Not fun. The twenty minute popcorn pep-talk was particularly un-fun (more on that in a bit). Now, the Pack leaders realized this and the second Pack meeting was a huge improvement the boys were immediately (after opening ceremonies) engaged in activities and having fun while one of the leaders got the parents together off to the side to talk about parent things. I really liked this, and thought it worked well. If you have at least three adult leaders in the Pack, you ought to be able to run a breakout session for the parents without making the boys sit through it. Be especially aware of this when you're recruiting.

3 The second thing that went wrong at the first pack meeting was that there werent any Pack leaders helping us new parents figure out what was going on or what we needed to do. Wed been given registration forms, which I had filled out (with a check!) but it felt like we were a complete afterthought. I had to chase down a couple of people in uniform to even hand in the registration and dues. If I hadnt been a scout myself and didnt already know about the program, I might have given up and walked away. Id strongly suggest during recruiting season to have a Welcome Wagon with at least one adult leader proactively engaging new families during their first couple of pack meetings. Make them feel welcome and that youre excited to have them in the Pack. Otherwise it might end up the only new parents in the pack being pushy people like me telling you how to run things.

4 Popcorn sales. Okay, I know its important for the finances, but is it really a good idea to hit new families with popcorn sales immediately? We got our order forms at the first pack meeting I attended - Yikes. Id guess popcorn sales are really low on the list of things most families enjoy about scouting. If I were designing the program, Id try to get as much distance between recruiting and fundraising as possible. Sell the families on the benefits of the program before you ask them to donate their time raising money. I feel a little sheepish here because I expect the collective wisdom and experience of Scouting has probably already hashed this issue over and someone is going to give me a link to the explanation of why its this way, but I figured I should mention it anyway cause the timing bugged both of us new families.

Ill close with a big thank you to everyone who puts their time and effort into Scouting. It was a fantastic program for me as a kid, and Im looking forward to my son enjoying it too.