Lisabob

Here's a start: ask the registered adults in the unit if they can name their current UC. Here's another thought: find out if the UC has gone through any of the training (reasonably current training, that is, not 20 years ago) for the key positions of the unit(s) they serve. Hard to imagine someone being a UC for a cub pack, and not having done any cub leader specific training, for example. And a third metric: Ask the key adult leader(s) (SM, CC, CM, Crew Adviser) when was the last time they asked their UC for input on a problem or info about some aspect of their program, and whether or not the UC had a helpful response. Units that have good working relationships with a UC that is doing the job well, should be far more likely to turn to their UC with the occasional question, problem, or issue. Units where UC service is inconsistent, shoddy, or absent, will simply go elsewhere when they need a sounding board or when they need serious help. By the way: I'm a currently unregistered scouter. "Scouter without portfolio!" I've thought plenty of times about volunteering as a UC, even went to commissioner college a couple years back. But you know, I don't want to be a UC for umpteen units. I'd like to do it for just one because honestly, that's what I have time to do. And since that's apparently not an option (they all get loaded down, around here), I have ended up not doing it at all. Seems like a flaw in the system, to me.

But the answer to that, Beavah, is not to strip public workers of their bargaining rights. Maybe the answer is (in part) to change the basic system the entire country depends on for health insurance and retirement savings (raise the social security retirement age again, put more means tests in place, or go the other route and have universal health care so that people don't have to worry about it so much when they retire or lose their job or their employer goes bankrupt,etc. ), but it isn't to exclude one particular group of workers from having the right to negotiate with their employers. By the way I don't have the time to dig out the data right now, but I don't think your claim about no state's public employee pension program being solvent is accurate. I seem to recall that there are some that are, although the majority are not. I'll find a few minutes over the upcoming weekend to see if I can track down the data, though.

Let's say that you work for a company and you have a contract that promises you x% of your healthcare will be paid by the company upon your retirement, as long as you work for the company for 20 years or longer. Or that you'll get a pension of $zzz/month, based on your longevity and earnings with that company during your career. So you do your part of the bargain. You work for that company for however long, passing up other opportunities that might have resulted in different short-term gains. You do this because you have a deal with the company and you plan your retirement strategies around it. Let's say you retire at age 65, having worked 40 years for that one company (I know, who does that any more these days? But let's just say you did.) Now, a few years after that, the company decides no longer to honor its commitment to you, and leaves you high and dry with no more pension, or no more input into your insurance, or no more whatever else was promised to you all those years. You are up the creek, with very few realistic options. I suppose that you can re-enter the workforce (good luck) and try to get a job in your former field again. Or maybe you can be a greeter at Wal Mart for minimum wage. THat assumes you are healthy enough to work at all, of course, and old age eventually catches up with everybody. But the company made you all those promises and you made personal and financial decisions and sacrifices to hold up your end of the bargain all along the way, and now they've pulled the rug out from under you. That is BAD NEWS, unless you also won the lottery along the way. On the other hand, let's say a politician breaks his or her campaign promises. That can be pretty bad news too, but most of the time there is a short- to medium-term solution, and that's to vote the bum out of office if you feel they strayed too far from their promise. Elect someone else who just might abide by their promises. With breech of contract though, you can't get back the time or the lost opportunities that have passed you by, and that's why it is such a problem.

I counsel some of the citizenship MBs and one of them requires a certain number of volunteer hours, plus attendance at some civic meetings. These are not as arduous as the 90 day/13 week requirements in the family, personal fitness, and personal management badges, but they do take a little bit of time and planning. I had one scout who contacted me to work on the citizenship in community badge about 4 months before his 18th birthday. No problem, I said, let's meet. He never set up a meeting with me until about 2 weeks before his birthday. No problem still. We met. He hadn't attended any of the civic meetings and he hadn't done the volunteer hours required. Now time is short, but still, ok, it can be squeezed in. We found some appropriate meetings and some places he could do his volunteer hours. I warned him that he needed to get these done and contact me ASAP because I would be out of town just before his birthday. A couple of days before his birthday we met again. He still hadn't completed some of the meeting and service hour requirements. Unfortunately I was going to be out of town over the weekend and really, truly, away from most forms of long distance communication. He would turn 18 before I was back in town. He had the temerity to be annoyed! Not wanting to see him give up when he was that close, I offered to help him contact a friend, another MB counselor, who was going to be in town and so would able to sign off on the last requirements before the boy turned 18. To the best of my knowledge, the boy did not follow through and so didn't earn Eagle. I didn't mind working with him and I hope he learned a thing or two from completing most of the citizenship in community requirements. BUT, his last-minute scrambling did impose some inconveniences on me, and on the back-up MB counselor, who was cooling his heels all weekend waiting for that boy to call him and get the last sign-offs taken care of. So I guess, if a boy is beyond the timeline and wants to do a partial, that's fine. I'd be happy to take on a boy who goes into the badge knowing he can't finish it but still wants to learn most of the material. I'm also fine with working with a boy for whom time is tight, but there's still a chance (however small) of completing the requirements. But don't expect me to be at a boy's beck and call, hovering by my phone or computer waiting for him to get done moments before the clock strikes twelve and he turns into a pumpkin. That's just not respectful of other people's lives.

It is true that a person can be an ASM and still be pretty hands off in terms of working with their own son. And it is true that some spouses don't understand the "Al Bundy" approach (love that, Eagle92!). It is also true that some SONS don't understand that approach, and that parental involvement will SEEM, to the boy, to suck the air and space out of the room no matter how much you try to stay (or even succeed at staying) in the background. Even just the perception that "mom" or "dad" are sticking their fingers in the pie can change the experience for some kids, and not always in a good way, in the big picture. So for that reason, and especially since your wife is asking you to step back too, I'm with those who say you can give your son a wonderful gift by letting the troop be his, and his alone, for a time. As has also been noted, there are many ways for you to serve scouting without necessarily being registered with your son's troop.

I've never heard of a "batch" of Eagle scouts - which raises some concern here. Eagle projects are designed and led by an individual scout, not a batch of Eagle candidates. While there should be multiple people volunteering to assist the scout with his project, there is no such thing as one project counting for a whole group of potential Eagle scouts. Overall, I agree with the suggestion that a sit-down meeting is in order. This should include the scout whose project this is, the person from your company who agreed to the project, whoever at your company ends up supervising/reimbursing pieces of the project, and the scout's SM. Ask to see the scout's Eagle Project workbook in advance of that meeting, and read it carefully so that you understand what the project that was approved by all parties actually is supposed to be. Then at the meeting, hammer out any niggling details that seem to be causing a problem. It is possible that some of the things you are concerned about are legit, and you just didn't know the details of the agreement about the project. (on the other hand, several things smell a little funny here, to me)

Probably nobody knows you and your son as well as your wife does. We on this board certainly don't. I'd say, heed her advice, at least for the first 6 months or so. Let your son find his place in what will be his troop, his experience.

The "uneducable?" Who, exactly, are they? I have had the unpleasant experience of trying to teach people who did not want to learn. I've worked with people who had so many problems/issues going on in the rest of their lives that they weren't able to focus on school. I've dealt with a few who had mental health issues or drug addiction issues that kept them from learning at that point in time. But in all my years of teaching, I've come across so few students who I thought were truly unable to learn that I can literally count them on one hand, and I can remember clearly each one. This is not to say that people all have the same aptitudes - they don't. But really, the "uneducable?" Have we strayed over into that "elites" thread?

Oak Tree has a good point, but here's the problem I see with that line of thinking. While it is true that most of the time, units with disengaged COs can probably handle most problems on their own, every once in a while something occurs where the CO is actually going to have to be involved - or at least, be aware of the problem (scandal, meltdown, financial crisis, serious complaints, etc.). If that's the first time the CO puts your names and faces together in their mind, then you have a real problem. You have to have some kind of relationship, even if it is only a vaguely positive warm & fuzzy feeling (maybe along the lines of "oh yes, we sponsor a scout unit - nope, don't know the leaders very well, but they report in occasionally and seem like they're on the up and up"). Without that base relationship or generally positive awareness, the CO is much more likely to just dump the unit, or take unnecessarily harsh steps, when a problem arises. Better to lay some groundwork in advance, really. Having said all that - maybe the advice to people who post here should be two-pronged: long term, build your CO relationship; short term, do X to address the immediate problem.

Seattle: I know when not to push my luck! (and we do require our students to take 2 science classes, including a lab, and a reasonably high level college math course to graduate, no matter which major a student selects.)(This message has been edited by lisabob)

Ha, if I were to suggest that a certain demographic were more likely to get them wrong than the rest, I'd probably be in hot water! Although I think the notion that students who travel from out of state to attend school (any school, not just that low-level mechanic's school in IN that SSScout mentions...) are probably more likely to be up on the news. After all, they actively sought out a new location so they must be paying attention to events beyond their home town, or else they'd have stayed home. So I tried a version of this in my Euro politics class yesterday, ripping names & events from the headlines. Let's just say they wouldn't have gotten the "A" for the day on the basis of the results! We're going to try again though, not that they've got fair warning. It was sort of fun though, and they were game to give it another try. Here were the three terms I used yesterday: Jacques Chirac Marine Le Pen Lampedusa

Yep. If this person won't bother to do this, then let their leadership registration lapse. Either they really don't care all that much, or they've chosen a really dumb hill to make a stand on, and who knows what their next stand will be. Either way, not a great start to being an ASM.

Contact your district training chair (or just contact your DE and find out who this person is). Ask them if they would do an in-person YPT if it becomes necessary. Now, I have to ask: is this person really illiterate? While I can imagine some scenarios where a person would have a legitimate reason for not being able to do an online class, the literacy rate in the US is about 99% so I would be kind of surprised to find that it is actually a literacy issue here.

Well I do seem to have mis-read you. My apologies for that.

Well since I teach political science I'd like to think a majority in my classes would get it! But it could be a fun experiment, as long as it is done in a way that isn't offensive to any particular group of students. (Hey I went to a big 10 school in Indiana too - probably a different one though, and if I'm guessing right, you guys manage to steal that old oaken bucket from us just about every year! Indiana, oh Indiana...)

Mr. Boyce writes: "Collective bargaining" is the equivalent of top drawer CEO's pointing to "what the other guys got" when they demand a huge salary. PHWPHWA! (that's the sound of my coffee hitting the screen) Thanks for the good laugh, Mr. Boyce. When I return to the table to negotiate our next contract, I will remember that. In the case of my union, we are looking for a 2% raise for roughly 600 members, the total cost of which (for 600 people!) would be less than the cost of the ordinary salaries of just 2 of the administrative guys sitting across the table from us. But yeah, sure, we're all just greedy unionists looking to fleece the taxpayers once again, aren't we. Go right ahead and keep on believing that.

Just to be clear, I love my job, I intend to keep my job, and I'm arrogant enough to feel quite comfortable saying in public that I think I'm good at my job. I wasn't trying to cry crocodile tears in any of my previous posts. I just don't understand why many people who are currently attacking teacher unions automatically assume that all union members are making buckets of money and living so far beyond the standards of everybody else. The only reasonable answer I can come up with is that many people are not familiar with the reality on the ground that many teachers (at whatever level) face. Hey, we're trying to stay in the middle class, too, you know? (And by the way I keep hearing about the fabulous pensions we union members all enjoy. Just so you know, not all unions have pensions and in MI, defined pension plans for new university instructors were ended in the mid-90s. Only people who were already in the system at that point got to keep them. The rest of us have 403b's that are no different than the 401k anybody can open up. Woo hoo.)

The way to "clean up" what one perceives to be a mess of a contract is to negotiate different terms the next time around (or, in cases of exigency, to ask for a voluntary re-opening of the current contract - which the unions have all agreed to do in this case, by accepting the demands for wage and benefits give-backs). It is not to remove the right to negotiate at all.

I always have fun with my American Gov't students (mostly freshmen) when we talk about who should be making policy decisions and what the role of the "ordinary" citizen should be in that process. Many of them make the argument that only people who know what they're talking about should be involved in making policy decisions - in other words, the "elite." Then they tend to proceed to bashing the current "elite." And typically they define "elite" to exclude themselves, and most of their fellow students, too. In a country where only about 24% of adults have college degrees, I quite enjoy pointing out to them that by virtue of being in my classroom, they're all on their way to becoming the "elite." Something to think about at their next kegger party! Kind of scary, isn't it?

You can't reorder other people's priorities for them. Keep it light. Families who want to participate, will. Those who are halfway into it may, over time, get more involved. Those who just don't want to do it, won't, no matter what you do or say anyway. And a few who would like to but have bigger issues to deal with in their lives, will be more likely to hang in there with you if they don't feel scorned, judged, or looked down upon for handling things as best they can (whether it meets your standards or not). It is one thing to offer a friendly helping hand, another for people to feel badgered when they're maybe doing the best they can to hold things together as it is.

I am a supporter of more independence for the boys, hands down. On the other hand, I think Eamonn is right and these changes are going to be simply cosmetic in most cases, for most troops. The only troops I've ever heard of where patrols actually meet & camp alone, are troops some of you have written about here on the board. Some troops have more active patrol structures than others and some give the patrols considerably more leeway than others, but again, I know of none who send a patrol off by themselves for a weekend. There are always adults in the background, even if it is rather distantly in the background. So while I share everyone's sentiment here that it is a shame national is getting rid of this, at the same time, I think it will have darn little impact on the way things work out there in the real world for the overwhelming majority of troops. For the troops that it does impact (1 in a 1000?), I guess there is some question about just how close do those adults really need to be? 300 feet? 500 feet? 1000 feet? Within a mile or two? At base camp, with the boys off on their own at sub camp? I see a lot of room for interpretation here. And I think it would be a shame to stop supporting scouting because of this change that doesn't actually impact most troops, too - seems like a cop out to me (sorry Kahuna).

Huh? Seattle, I simply do not understand where you are coming from on that one. NCLB was the single biggest expansion of federal government involvement in k-12 education in decades so it is probably not surprising that people talk a lot about it. And while I think NCLB is deeply and fundamentally flawed (largely because the way it is set up, it can't possibly ever deliver what it promises), I don't have a problem with holding schools - particularly chronically failing schools - accountable. I just don't think NCLB does an adequate job of this and I also don't think that we, as a society, are willing to fund the kinds of reforms that would make it more viable.

Same here, CA, and that was just for mentioning the idea - not actually advocating for it. But you know, those cribs are mighty dangerous. Saw a news report just yesterday about the number of crib injuries each year (most, apparently, from the kid trying to climb out and falling). So I'm kind of thinking that we should also wrap the kids in a nice thick layer of bubble wrap, just in case.

In some locales, there are a fair number of adults who would willingly lend a hand, but who won't agree to go through with (or can't pass) the background check. For that reason, a simpler form of the variety Seattle is describing might be an easier place to start. From past posts, I seem to remember this was an issue that basementdweller mentioned for his pack, but I could be wrong about that.

OGE - why is it like this in Detroit? I can't really answer that in short form and I'm not sure I could adequately answer it in longer form either, to be honest. Too many factors. A few causes: *Long-term decline in state population, particularly in Detroit, leads to a reduced tax base *Higher than average unemployment (has been around 12-16% for the last 6 years in MI, and regularly tops 20% in Detroit, specifically) *Historical over-reliance on one industry (auto), leading to severe structural budget & policy problems at the state level *White flight and middle class flight out of Detroit since the 1950s *Screwed up state budget priorities for a LONG time *Lower taxes in MI today than in the Reagan era, leaving a state with fewer resources to spread around *In the 1990s, a new school funding scheme that doesn't rely on local property taxes, and that would seem to have leveled the playing field between richer and poorer districts, but in actuality hamstrung everybody and put education funds at the disposal of state politicians for redirection elsewhere *Severe term limits at the state level, leading to a fresh crop of "what's in it for me" short-term-gain politicians every 4-6 years, just about when the "old" ones were starting to figure out how to do their jobs. *Chronic mismanagement, corruption, and fraud in the Detroit system *Structural poverty concentrated in our inner cities, with all the attendant social problems that make education much more difficult *new federal education mandates that come with a lot of strings, but no money, attached *policy changes at the federal level that push more and more costs and services back onto the states, thus exacerbating state budget challenges and forcing states to raid whatever funds they can find, including slashing education funding *an extreme anti-tax attitude among the public where people care more about the extra $3.50/week in their pockets than about whether their state has a functional public education (or public health) system And on, and on. Frankly, the Detroit school system is a mess and I'm not sure it can be saved in its present form. (I've said that for years, and I believe that about much of our public schooling system, not just Detroit.) But I also don't think it is right to simply blame the teachers, their union, or the kids who are stuck in these awful schools for these problems. Much too simplistic. It is probably clear from the above (in case anybody here didn't already know this) that I wasn't too happy with some Bush era ideology about reducing taxes and ending government responsibility when it comes to providing public services. I will say this for Bush,though. At one point early in his presidency he talked about the "soft bigotry of low expectations" when it comes to schooling. And I think he also got that right. There are way too many folks who just write off these kids in failed public school systems, assuming they either can't or don't want to learn. In my experience teaching a lot of the "survivors" of these school systems, that is simply not the case.