SeattlePioneer

1) Have a quality program 2) Ask parents to do a simple activity, such as bringing food to a den or pack activity. 3) Those that actually DO #2 when asked are your potential leaders. Ask them to do other tasks, and invite them to come to Pack Committee Meetings. 4. It takes time and experience for people to grow into supporting the Cub Scout program in many cases. People gradually develope friends within the pack and a commitment to the program. 5) Not everyone is interested or capable of being an effective leader, and most of those people need to be developed as leaders gradually over time.

< >> Well, that's an effective strategy to close down at least a third of the Cub Packs in our district. And since Cub packs often go through up and down cycles, probably another third would close in a few years as well. The other third have a strong enough program and leaders to continue --- usually because they are in upper income and upper education level areas. So that formula would help make Scouting even more of an isolated, elite activity than it already is.

I find it amusing that in the wake of the Paris shootings the ideas of a lot of dead white European men were revived and put on display last week after being reviled and riduculed for half a century. And what happened to multiculturalism last week? It wasn't much on display, was it? Instead, what was trumpeted by the educated elites was that it was freedom of the press whether you and your cultural group happened to like it or not. And what about the arson, murders, looting and mayhem in the wake of the Ferguson, Ms decision? How is that any different than the Paris shootings? It's all a part of political groups deciding they are free to ignore the law and act on their own rules to promote their political agenda. The chickens are coming home to roost on multiculturalism. Liberals find that ideology very attractive until they find groups targeting them and their ideas, instead of them targeting other groups to harass and initimidate.

My suggestion would be to go to the school during lunch. Have flyers inviting boys to an attractive activity, and list your upcoming camping trips and activities. I usually find that the most effective strategy is to look for boys as individuals rather than in groups, and to ask boys if they are interested in hiking and camping. Pitch those boys hard! If boys will give you their name aand phone number, I'd keep inviting them top meetings and activities until you are sure they aren't interested. And the best time to do this by far is in the spring, when your spring and summer activities are on the horizon. Recruiting new Boy Scouts outside of Cub Scouts is tough.

Sounds like you made a reasonable decision. Perhaps this will cause other parents to step forward and start making needed contributions. If not, is there another troop in your area which you son might be interested in joining?

<> Frankly, I find this kind of application of currently fashionable morality to a person living 1200 years ago to be ludicrous. It makes as much sense as attacking Christians as ritual cannibals for eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. But as long as the ideologues in the Paris demonstration yesterday are celebrating "freedom of expression," lets consider that the attackers were just exercising THEIR freedom of expression by attacking a publication with deliberately obnoxious and offensive views, They gas Charlie Hebdo a thumbs down, negative review. Let's keep in mind that liberal protesters of the Ferguson, Missouri incident have felt justified in engaging in murder, arson, looting, rioting assault and mayhem in general --- often described as "peaceful protest," which is anything BUT peaceful. Liberal activists these days are fond of shouting "no justice, no peace." And that means, "if you don;t give us what we want, we'll PUNISH society by any means we think appropriate to make you wish you had." With THAT and similar things as the standard for "free expression" these days how can you blame the Parid attackers for having their own views on the freedom of expression issue?

<United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. >> Please notice that the first amendment doesn't guarantee "freedom of expression." And even the first amendment applied only to the Federal government. Unfortunately, the First amendment has been corrupted and rewritten by Federal judges drunk with their own power and arrogance. Look at the murder, arson, looting and mayhem justified after the Ferguson, Mo decision as "freedom of expression." If you want a broad definition of "freedom of expression", look no further than the protest by the Moslem shooters in Paris last week. No doubt the guy who shot the two police officers in New York thought in terms of HIS right to "free expression" too. The "journalists" in Paris who delighted in crude caricatures of those they didn't like were no doubt surprised when they got bad reviews from those people last week. You want "freedom of expression"? You got in in Paris last week, with the police shootings in New York and the Ferguson, Missouri riots and mayhem.

While not its avowed purpose, I would imagine that the beascout.org website could be used to locate other packs in your area and send them an e-mail about borrowing a PWD track from them. If they are wide awake enough to have personalized their PIN on the map, you can send an e-mail to them directly. What is you zip code ---- I'd be interested in seeing what packs might be in your area.

<> Frankly, I think that quotation is too pompous to have much use among us mere mortals.

Excellent idea! Sounds like a terrific program. I think I'd get a big air horn to use if anyone dares use more than their alotted time...

Unfortunately, I think BSA places WAT too much of a burden on volunteers. And it keeps getting WORSE. They think they can keep dumping on volunteers by making more and more things compeulsory and more and more complex. This year I applied my own method to simplifying rechartering. After receiving the rechartering package I recharted only the leaders whose YPT were up to date and were needed for recharting. I recharted three boys who had sold enough popcorn to qualify for our pack's free membership. Then I turned in the recharter --- a week after receiving it --- the first in the COUNCIL to do so. When I get additional youth or adults to renew their memberships, I send in a check to the DE and they reactivate those memberships. Easy peasy!

Unfortunately, I think that would be lost on Tiger Cubs.

<> There is properly a BIG difference between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. I have no objection to stringent competition at the Boy Scout level, just as I have a lot of objections to stringent competition at the Tiger Cub and Cub Scout level. Low stakes comptition gives every boy opportunities and incentives to learn how to be motivated by competition. That's best done by low stakes competition at the Tiger Cub and Cub Scout level, in my opinion and experience. Carefully observe the kind of competition boys organize for themselves. At the Cub Scout level, that's very simple, with an emphasis on competing and then competing additional times to win or lose right away. Better to have fifty opportunities to win or lose rather than one at that age!

I know it's tough. I'm eight years into reviving a Cub Pack that was down to a single boy. You can't do EVERYTHING, which is what your opening post seems to suggest. So what DO you want to do? If you want t5o organize an excellent PWD that's easy to do, I have posts in the Cub Scout forum that describes how to do that. Let me know and I'll find one for you. Or perhaps you want to provide a quality Tiger Cub Program. If so, I've described ideas I've used in my Tiger Cub program if you look in this forum, or ask and I'll find them for you, and talk about what you can do and how to do it. I've been doing the Tiger Cub program the past eight years. Your Cubmaster should be organizing the PWD, and perhaps you should be helping with a Den program. Doing one job will make things a lot easier.to start with.

Personally, I consider the desire to have sharp kinds of competition in Tiger Cubs and Cub Scouts to be mistaken and that it involves injecting adult values into what should be kids games. Boys do want competition, and they want to be able to win and will accept losing. But they don't need sharp competition that aims to produce one winner and a bunch of losers. When I do Cub Scout competitions, there is LOTS of competition, but it's low stakes competition where boys may win one minute, lose the next minute and be ready to try again the minute after that. In a Pinewood Derby, that means that boys all make their cars at the same time, the day of the race. Families provide what tools they have for pack use and any boy can use any tool, and any boy can get help from any adult in making ntheir car. After an hour or so building their cars, boys choose who they want to race against and put their own cars on the race track. After each heat, they boy who won that heat gets a sticker to put on their car or PWD Driver's License. Then they find someone else to race with right away. We may run 2-3 heats per minute, so boys get to race their brains out until they get tired of it. Last year boys had the chance to make their own PWD trophies, which also allowed them to use the trophy to display their car. The trophies the boy made were awarded to them after they won one race, and then they could put additional stickers on their trophy if they wished. A year later, most boys can still tell you how many stickers they won. But no effort was made to recognize the boy with the most stickers. In my view, that's age appropriate competition. Save the sharper kinds of competition for Boy Scouts, or perhaps Webelos. But lets keep competition low key for younger Cub Scouts.

Here in Washington State marijuana has been legalized by an initiative. I'm expecting that liberal Scouters will soon be promoting a Marijuana Merit Badge....

Personally, I would avoid such questioning if possible. My aim is to provide an environment in a Scout unit that is congenial and welcoming to believers. Scouts are welcome and encouraged to be believers. But I'd avoid interrograting boys about their beliefs if the aim was to flush out a boy who was not a believer. About the only time I'd make a point of acting was if a boy piped up in a Scout activity to announce he was an atheist. In fact, I had a Cub Scout who did that a couple of years ago! Since he didn't repeat that after making that announcement once, I had no need to pursue it even then. I had a District Chair interrogate me about my religious beliefs once: DC "Do you believe in Godd" Me "Yes" DC "Are you a church member?" ME: "No" DC "Would you like tyo become a member of my church?" ME "No" That was five or six years ago. Nothing since then.

The concern of the Scoutmaster over lost cards is reasonable. That also implies that they will be accessable enough so that the MB cards can be signed off. If that system isn;t working in practice, I'd be inclined to have the parent take it up with the Scoutmaster, Committee Chair and Troop Committee as necessary. I would think that even with such a system, a Scoutmaster should be willing to trust a Scout who is taking an interest in completing advancement requirements. If the boy loses a card after being trusted with it, tough! So I'd say it would be appropriate for a parent to take an interest in resolving this issue with the Scoutmaster, Committee Chair and Troop Committee.

So.... Does anyonwe attend the Roundtables of neighboring districts or councils? If so, why? My district Cub Scout Roundtable program collapsed a year ago. I'm thinking about starting to visit the program of neighboring districts to see what they are up to.

< >> Easier said than done, in my experience. I haven't seen a mass marketing method that's effective. What I've seen work are efforts that involve personally contacting and inviting boys and parents to an exciting activity, part of which is a warm invitation to joing the pack. Even at that it USUALLY takes additional attendance at den or pack meetings before a family joins up. No doubt things are easier in some middle class areas, where you can ring a bell and a bunch of people show up and wave money, anxious to join.But in the working class areas I work in, it's usually tough. And despite my efforts, appealing to the large Hispanic community in the area has been something I've tried to do effectively, but with little to show for results.

Around here, we have one neighboring council about thirty miles south and another thirty miles north. From time to time I check out the programs being offered by these neighboring council to see if there are things offered that would be useful to me. I see the council to the north will be having their University of Scouting day in January. It looks like they might have some interesting classes, so I printed out their class offerings and I'll look them over to see if I want to attend. That might include program offering by neighboring districts, too. Our district had its Cub Scout Rountable fail a year ago for example. Anyone else have luck with these kinds of options?

<<5. We completed the Tiger Cub den activity making leaf rubbings, and the leaf rubbings were then used as part of a Holiday/Christmas greeting or thank you card. Since I find that few Tiger Cubs have much real drawing ability, I supply printouts of Cub Scout and Tiger cub images and holiday art that boys can cut out, arrange and glue onto a piece of 8x11 colored paper folded into a card. Of course they can make their own artwork if they wish to do so. >> I used this project to make my own Christmas and Thank You cards this year. Experience with that taught me that cards made from an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper folded in half were rather awkward and difficult to mail. So I tried using a plain piece of stationery card stock with the envelope designed for it. That worked better. As I think about it. folding an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper into quarters might work well too. So I'll continue to experiment with this until I find the method that produces the best end result, and plan to use that next year. One of the advantages of repeating the same level den program year after year is that you can refine and improve your program, which makes for higher quality results.

Personally, I think the biggest summer camp challenge is for boys to learn how to live together. It's one thing ( and a difficult enough challenge) to live together as a patrol for a weekend outing. It's a good deal more of a challenge to live together for a week. Things that can be ignored for a weekend often must come to a head and be resolved in a week long camp. Personally, I find merit badges to often be so poorly done that they would be better eliminated, or at least greatly reduced in number to those that could be presented competently.

< No popcorn ever leaves the troop stores till it is paid for in full. This leaves the burden on the parents.>> Hey! You need to recognize that with the popcorn sale, you are running a business. A business is a way or coordinating a variety of services in order to deliver a product or service, hopefully at a profit. With the popcorn sale, the families are your sales staff. Few businesses require their sales staff to pay up front for the products they sell, although some do. But even if the Scout unit gets burned once in a while by people who fail to deliver on the promises they make, you have to keep in mind the bigger picture of making your sale attractive to those who participate in it. Our council allows units to deposit checks received for popcorn sales, and they take responsibility for collecting on bad checks or eating the loss if they can't. As I understand it, if people call the council to complain that they paid for popcorn that was never delivered, the council will fill those order whether or not they can identify whether the sale was made or what unit might have made it. It's not unusual for businesses to have bad debts of one kind or another. Businesses routinely extend credit in various ways because it pays to do so even though you have some risk of losses. That's the way this situation should be viewed, in my opinion. Nothing wrong with making reasonable efforts to collect on this debt --- even calling the cops to see what they might be able to do. But don;t maim your entire sales model by refusing to extend credit to families unless you are sure that that is a bad idea. One defaulter probably doesn't justify that kind of action, I would suggest. If it's happening frequently, that's another story.

<< The BSA is the non-profit equivalent of McDonalds. The way it charters units, the control it wields over programming, advancement and volunteer policies, the way it controls the official supply line, is no different than the way McDonalds franchises it's stores. >> Actually, BSA exercises very little control over program, advancement and volunteer policies. Units can decide for themselves whether they want to participate in BSA advancement at all, and can use their own standards for awading badges if they wish, or create awards of their own. Registration of a few adults is required, but after that additional adults can do most things in a unit. The "way it charters units" is that pretty much any group of adults can be a "chartered organization."