Lisabob

If you put him in any of those positions you mention, and given his background as described here, I would recommend that you have a written understanding of what the position entails, and what the consequences of not actually doing it might be. A lot of times, the positions you listed are "pass through" positions where nothing much is expected or accomplished. They don't have to be that way though, if everybody involved has clear ideas of what needs to be done. In my son's troop I really dislike seeing kids who get to Life and Eagle on the basis of having been troop librarian and historian a couple of times - and nothing more strenuous - because they are weak positions in his troop. But that's weakness in the troop's program, as much as it is the fault of those kids.

Call up the other fellow. Talk with him about planning a transition for a year from now. That gives you both time to work together to ensure that it goes well for both the pack and the troop, and it gives you both an "end in sight" to look forward to. If I understood your post correctly, this other dad has a son just joining boy scouts now. It probably wouldn't be the best thing for the brand-new parent to become the leader, even if he is a former scout and current cub master. As you know, the SM job is not the easiest in the world; encourage him to take the role of "parent" for a while so that he, and his son, can adjust to the troop before taking a leadership role. Of course, if you really don't want to do this job then you need to explain to your son that you are stepping aside for everybody's sake. Someone who is miserable as SM won't help the troop and will inevitably bring stress home to the family. It isn't an easy job. If that's the situation then maybe you and your son can find a different way for the two of you to spend some special dad-son time together, doing something you both enjoy.

Federal government currently offers subsidies for a number of individual-level investments in solar, wind, and geothermal, in the form of tax breaks for people who do these things. Some states do, too. The catch in almost all of these I've seen so far (and I admit it isn't a field I follow in great detail) is that you have to front most or all of the money yourself, and then you get a tax rebate later. There are also a bunch of regs on where/how/when you can install or build the structures. For example, in NY, you could only get the rebate the first time you installed any such devices. So if you wanted to do a smaller trial run, decided you liked it, it worked well, and consequently you wanted to add to your collection of solar panels (or whatever), you would only get the rebate the first time. This is a disincentive for people to expand their use of existing technology. Only people with significant financial resources and who are located in the right place at the right time are going to take advantage of these rebates. From a pollution control standpoint, we probably would have been better served to take the money we spent on "cash for clunkers" and used it to provide more and better incentives for people to use renewable energy sources, instead.

OK you want specific examples. While none of these are things I came to the forum specifically looking for/asking about, here are several specific ways in which I have benefited from other people's discussions on the forum. I learned about box oven cooking from this forum. I shared what I read here with my son, who then introduced this method of cooking to his patrol mates. They used it in a troop cooking contest and did really well (I can't recall whether they won, but I remember he had a very big grin, and that there was no leftover pie.) I learned about the national jambo from this forum. Since my son's troop has not sent people to the previous couple of jambos, and because communication in my council is sometimes spotty, I would probably never have given it much thought, if I hadn't read about other people's experiences here. I also wouldn't have known about it far enough in advance to budget for it (even with my son doing fundraising). Because of many of you, my son is going to jambo next summer. I changed the way I think about merit badges as a result of the many conversations on this forum. While my son's troop, by and large, still focuses on having boys earn most badges individually, our first exposure to MBs was in a group setting. There are a couple of adults working with advancement in the troop who favor MB classes and MB universities, and I didn't know any better so I signed my son up for those. My son's early MB experiences in those settings weren't great. After reading a lot of comments here, he and I have talked about that and he agrees that it is better to avoid most of the big MB university programs now. (Also, I've backed way, way off on signing him up for stuff. ) We learned about NYLT from this forum. Again, my son's troop has not participated in this. When my son was elected SPL last year, we decided together that he ought to do NYLT, on the strength of your collective input over the last few years. It has been one of the very best boy scouting experiences he's had so far, and the SM keeps commenting on how good a job my son is doing as SPL (based on a lot of things he learned at NYLT!). I've asked a lot of questions here, and received a lot of input and advice, for which I am grateful. Many of the questions I've asked have been a direct result of something someone else wrote, that I would never have thought about, or known about, otherwise. I've also learned just as much from simply browsing other people's posts, and a lot of the value in this forum (for me) is in discovering the broad range of possibilities that exist in scouting.

For a long while, we've had some issues with the way scouts' merit badge experiences work in our district (and council). There is a central list of MB counselors, by district and for the council. Leaders can get a printed list so that the SM can help a scout find a registered MB counselor. That's the good news. The bad news is, the list is really outdated and wrong, as often as it is right. For a while there was a district list and a council list that didn't seem to match. Everybody knew it was a problem. Recently, the district staff is taking a hard look at how to improve this experience for scouts. THey're trying to cull out the names of MBCs who have died, moved, or are no longer registered. That's a good step. They're also pushing district wide merit badge opportunities, for MBs where there are few counselors. Veterinary Medicine and Rail Roading are two specific ones that were mentioned. I wonder what people think about that idea? In some regards, I can understand it. For example, there's evidently only 1 registered RR counselor in the whole state (I'm told), and that counselor would like to do some kind of program in coordination with a state RR museum. Would hardly make sense for him to do this with each individual scout. But I also kind of wonder whether we have it backward. If the problem is a paucity or counselors, is holding district events so that kids have access to counselors the solution? Or is recruiting more counselors the solution? Having raised this question, I was told that it has become increasingly difficult to recruit counselors for many unusual badges. What's the collective wisdom of the forum?

This is a little bit off track, but maybe it will help the Webelos leader in this thread too. eghiglie, who leads the boys in saying these at the start of your meetings? If the adults are leading it, that gives the boys cover to not really learn it. I know that most boys don't really know the oath & law by memory when they first cross over into my son's troop. But the SPL leads the troop in reciting the oath & law every meeting. We require boys to recite these in all of their BORs. (Inability to do so would be a discussion point in the BOR - though not necessarily a trigger for denying advancement.) It features in some way in most of the openings for courts of honor, too. It doesn't take long for the new boys to memorize it, if they are repeating it so often.

Oh sure, there are a lot of examples. I'll just give two though. Until I started reading these boards, I had no idea that not everybody did webelos-scout transition in the same way. Reading the different approaches that people here have taken helped me to help local packs and troops recognize the options available to them. It also helped me provide better advice to a few individual families who had questions about what they should do for their sons. I've also passed along a BUNCH of skill and cooking ideas to my son, so that he can share them with his patrol and troop. He has been PL and now SPL, but his experience is limited to what he knows from his own troop. Fresh ideas (or "new to them" ideas) that pop up here have helped him broaden his troop's experiences. THANKS, everybody.

Not to mention that in some states it is still legal for auto insurance companies to use your credit rating to determine what they charge you - result being that people who struggle financially to begin with, also have to pay more for insurance. Huh.

pack, I would respond that it isn't a question of a child's ethnicity or race any more, as much as of their economic class. Poor kids - white, black, latino, asian, whatever- are more likely to have parents who either cannot or do not intervene effectively on their behalf. Maybe because they don't feel confident in doing so, or because they lack the educational background to do it well, or because they're working 3 jobs, all part time, to pay the rent and put food on the table and can't take time off to go to the school during the work day. Or (more cynical) maybe because the schools know the parents of poor kids won't be the ones to sue the school over policy matters- because they can't afford to hire lawyers. Poor kids of all racial backgrounds get the short end of the stick as a result.

It all depends on how it is done. Some employers use the "independent contractor" loop hole to employ people full time without actually having to treat them as full time employees. Some break up the work into different types/categories, and define "full time" to include only people who have x hours in a particular category. Some (Walmart, but plenty of others too) just stop one hour short of whatever full time is. I don't see how we can maintain such a system, and still compete with other countries. This system does nothing to encourage employee loyalty and dedication. It also strongly encourages uninsured people to put off treatment. That, too, is a moral hazard.

One thing to consider is whether forcing this family to stay with the pack might result in them dropping out, instead. Sometimes people are just done with cub scouting. Parents get burned out, boys get bored, they're ready to move on. If that is the case here and assuming that the boy meets the joining requirements for boy scouts, let him go. If you hold him back to meet an artificial deadline (and late winter/early spring crossover time is an artificial deadline, even if it is typical in your area) then you may lose him to scouting all together. And Christmas is a long ways away. Some of those activity pins can be earned pretty quickly. Hold the same standard for this boy as for all the others when it comes to AoL, but that's really all you can (or should, IMO) do.

Send your DE to merit badge counselor training. That hasn't been the rule for at least a decade and I think, longer.

THere is, indeed, "school law" or "education law." Ask anybody who works in school settings and they'll tell you all about it. Common sense is sometimes lacking. Parents need to know that they should stand up for their kids when common sense unexpectedly vanishes. Some of the idiotic things my child has been told, warned about, or threatened with in a school setting would just make you choke. I've had my share of meetings with principals and others that begin with "Do you mean to tell me that it is really the school's policy to..." and went on from there. Sometimes it is actually kind of fun to see the squirming that occurs when administrators are confronted with idiotic decisions made by their underlings. My take on most school issues is that the kids whose parents don't know how to advocate for them, or whose parents aren't involved enough to care, are the kids who get shafted by "the system."

Yup! Gee I wish that individual would visit around here. People all think term limits will save them. Instead, all you get is more morons, quicker.

From what was posted, we can't tell here if the boy has "gone deeper" or not. If the business about sitting, standing and kneeling was just a flip answer then certainly, somebody ought to have a quiet conversation with the boy and ask him to give it more thought than he has. On the other hand, he may have given it quite a lot of thought. Maybe his answer, itself, was a bit flippant, but the sentiment beneath it could be honest. Teens are particularly bad at accepting empty ritual as a substitute for deep meaning. They want to know why. Telling them to curb their impertinence isn't likely going to go over well. That's the context in which I read this kid's answers. (though I may be reading too much into this boy's intent - impossible to tell from a distance, and second/third hand reports. But I know kids like him, who ask similarly tough questions and want real answers.) Kicking him out or stopping his advancement because he dislikes the seemingly meaningless and man-made trappings of a particular form of organized religion does a dis-service to the boy, to the whole notion of religion, and (in my view) to scouting.

Actually I think this scout's thought process is pretty interesting. The scout clearly doesn't identify with the ritualized practices of his (former) church. He apparently finds those practices to be devoid of meaning. He has certainly identified the lack of deep spiritual content. So now, he's questioning what the nature of his religious beliefs are. If all he has been taught so far is that you sit and then stand and then kneel, if that's all he's getting from attending services, then it is not hard to see why he is questioning the value in that. Having grown up in a religious tradition where a lot of that occurs, and having gotten into some trouble for questioning (why do we do this?) things a little too often, I have some sympathy for his perspective. Empty rituals are boring and alienating. What kind of higher power could be seriously believed to require such nonsense. One hopes that he will be able to develop a different understanding of religion, separate from the mechanistic practices that some (many?) churches employ. The fact that he's looking for deeper meaning is something to be supported, even though it is evident that he hasn't found it yet.

There is (was?) a district in my council that does (did?) a big one every year. The entire community attends. Last I heard they were charging something like $10/ticket. I'm not sure whether they're still doing it. I remember that they were getting leaned on by someone at council for a while, and they may have discontinued it. But it was a big event and, I guess, a big money maker too.

~ rolling my eyes again~ Yes I know, this is a tangent... but... I wish people would stop tossing around the word socialism every time some European country comes up. Read Marx. Read Lenin. Read Trotsky. Read Hegel. Read Mao. Read Stalin. Read Castro. Brent, whatever you mean by "socialism" is certainly not what ANY of them meant by it. At most, some European countries could be called "social democracies." Big, big, BIG, difference. All countries (US included) have some sort of social policy. That does not make them socialists. Bill Frist - former Republican Senate Majority Leader - has been doing a tour of the country with Howard Dean, talking about health care reform. One point Frist makes to his own die-hard ideological brethren, is that hot-button words like "socialism" do more to feed anxiety and irrational fear, than to contribute to honest debate. He has flat-out said, stop using the word socialism. (He also said people ought to stop the disingenuous hype about "death panels" too) I don't agree with Frist on a lot of policy matters, but I sure agree with him on that. OK - back to Obama and the Nobel committee.

eghiglie writes about a boy he recently talked to: "I find it hard to believe in God, because a good God would not invent confusing services where all you do is sit, stand or kneel. So I stopped going to church. My parents don't either" See and this is what I think a lot of kids view as not believing in a higher power/being an atheist. In fact, it would probably be more fair to argue that this boy does not have faith in the nature of organized religion - or at least, in that particular version of organized religion. Then, having rejected the only outward expression of religion that they have ever experienced - though not internalized - they (prematurely and perhaps, incorrectly) conclude that the entire idea of some kind of deity must also be rejected. Maybe I'm all wrong on this but I see that as a distinction that relatively few teens are ready to make.

I stand corrected. Thanks, Neal.

Gee, thanks there, Calico. I'm always so pleased to be called an ignorant worm and sworn at, on a scouting forum. By the way, don't blame the poor Norwegians. This Nobel prize is a Swedish thing.

Well. And here I always thought I was a pretty *left* wing crybaby. I voted for Obama. I like Obama. I think he's a darn good president (so far). I still don't see what he's done to merit a Nobel peace prize. My guess is that he might be a little surprised, too.

Wait, so you are abandoning your concern about the cooking? A lot of those 1st aid skills dovetail. You wouldn't necessarily want to teach or practice them in isolation on 36 separate occasions. One more time...I'm not a huge fan of FCFY but I don't know if your line of argument in this thread is really an effective one, Beavah.

My apologies to all who expected to read about silver thread or the new lining on special scout socks or something. I really don't know how this post ended up in this forum. Obviously I goofed somehow. Mods? Hello? A little help?

Note that Ebersol wasn't characterising Obama as delusional and out of touch, but rather the USOC. Whether he was right or not about the USOC is clearly a debatable matter.