SeattlePioneer

My guess is that this problem was made worse by the plague of divorce and single mother families, and having two lesbians raising a boy is not going to improve things either.

Doesn't sound like a MSW to me. Not AT ALL.

Hello woodsrunner, I didn't say ignore a problem. But I do say don't let it block a boy from earning Tenderfoot for three years! If you want to address physical fitness, FINE! I might start with a weekly pull up contest at troop meetings, with each boys results posted each week on a chart. Do a run around thew block and time boys in how long it takes. There are lots of things you can do about it. Blocking a boy from Tenderfoot is a lousy method, and if they still can't do one after three years I'd say it's a lousy, ineffective method too!

I think it's true that there is no attractive face for Scouting. Suppose John Glenn had been the public face of Scouting in the 1970s, Or Jim Whittaker who was an Eagle Scout and the first American to summit Mt Everest. Who would you suggest as the public face for Scouting today?

I take it that the Den Leader had issues with his earlier pack but has done a satisfactory job in his current pack. Did the boy do acceptably well in his Tiger Cub year? If so, I'd be inclined to ignore the issue, keep the Den Leader and let the boy advance with his den. Don't make a problem where one doesn't exist is the approach I'd use. If the Den Leader's behavior has been an issue or the boy is clearly in a Wolf Den, then you have another issue to consider.

> Perhaps you haven't noticed: men and women are different. Men and women both do crafts --- but usually they are different crafts. And what I said was that women today are STILL doing the same cutesy craft stuff that drove me out of Cub Scouts decades ago. That's not being critical of women, who are doing what they can do. It's more a criticism for the absence of men and the kinds of skills and interests they bring to the table. For the 4th year in a row I've been involved with helping with my district Cub Scout day camp. At our last meeting we had a dozen female volunteers turn out and two men --- myself and another man I recruited from my pack. Without the women I doubt there would be a day camp. But the men make some very important contributions, in my experience. And of course women usually don't even recognize what they don't bring to the table. I again note that isn't the fault of women. What is needed is more men involved in Cub Scout programs, in my experience. So please don't give me this "blaming all women" hackneyed complaint. You merely demonstrate that like most women, you don't understand the issue.

The usual reason for wandering attention is a program that is dragging or doing stuff that is not interesting for your audience. You may need to change activities more often, or you may need activities intrinsically more interesting. I see program leaders violating these rules all the time, and you can see when boys begin to provide their own entertainment.

> Sorry, you are wrong in my opinion. Liberals are never going to be happy with Scouting. You seem to think that giving chartered organizations the freedom to appoint homosexuals to leadership positions will make liberals happy. It wont, of course. They will simply demand that chartered organizations have to appoint homosexuals whether they like it or not. If that caused Catholic churches to throw out Scouting, that would be a highly desirable additional bonus. It's pointless to pander to liberals.

> It does depend on how the Scoutmaster and others interpret things. I like Calico Penn's interpretation! I just don't see the Tenderfoot pull up requirement being all that important. The idea to me is getting boys started in Scouting, not presenting them with a huge road block. As I said earlier--- work more physical fitness stuff into your troop program --- regular tug 'o wars, Patrol Pullup contests and such. That's the ticket! So if I'm a slack Scoutmaster (my Scoutmastering days were thirty years ago) Sue me! [Not that shyster reaching for his word processor, though!]

I started rebuilding my pack five years ago when it had one boy. I was the male Tiger Cub Den Leader, then happened to recruit another male adult Tiger Cub Den Leader the next year. Five years on, ALL the Den Leaders have been men. The wimmen are the Committee Chair and other Committee positions. Perhaps my being a man gave other men "permission" to be Den Leaders?

The biggest issue for me as a District Membership Chair is the need to do a much better job of recruiting from Latino, Asian and African American populations. In my district, there are a number of schools that are 60% Latino and 10% white. Whites are a minority in a lot of schools. Yet all our Cub Packs are English speaking, and few make much of an effort to crack those minority communities. I'm working on it, but I have only very small successes so far. Our Council Scout Executive is very good on this issue, and has been a lot of help to me. The Field Director has been of no help and doesn't think much if anything can be done. My current goal as District Membership Chair is to identify methods our English speaking Cub Packs can use to recruit and retain more Latino families. I'm using the Cub Pack I work with as a laboratory to identify those methods. I will be trying out additional methods during the fall recruiting campaign. Latinos are my target because there are so many of them in my district.

The units I get involved with are failing or struggling. Some I've been able to coax back into success, others have failed. I'm primarily a district volunteer --- Membership Chair and unit Commissioner and Cub Scout Roundtable Commssioner + a pack treasurer right now. I do what I can to help out when I see a problem with which I think I can help. Unfortunately, that takes skills and experience, and few people are interested in stepping in to help a distressed unit. As a District Membership Chair since 2004, it's been very frustrating to call around to Pack leaders to find out about recruiting plans and to discover major problems with units. On several occasions I e-mailed the DE and the District Commissioner, but usually nothing was done because there were no people interested in helping sort out problems. I've seen Unit Commissioners who had no other job watch units fail, unable or unwilling to do much that would be of help. I don't think there are any rules for such things. What we really need are more skilled adult leaders interested in Scouting enough to participate meaningfully on a district level. Unfortunately, most districts are way short of such people.

Heh, heh! BSA 24 should spice things up on these discussion boards! I agree with him that the habits and character of people are enormously important. But changing those things is often very difficult to do. Scouting helps to shape the habits and character of the next generation in positive ways, and can even help improve the habits and character of parents if they participate in Scouting. Scouting has helped improve my own habits and character as an adult.

Hello Eagledad, I agree that there is both a goodly degree of variability in uniforming and good reason for that variability. While I don't care much for mandatory uniforming, if it works for BSA24's unit and the families in it, they are welcome to it. I notice that on a different thread I've also clashed with BSA24's idea on advancement. He favors uncompromising advancement standards while I tend to be more concerned about boys finding ways to be successful and adapting advancement standards somewhat to the ability of boys. These are typical examples of the variability among Scout units. They result from the values and experience of leaders and the environment of the unit. Different units have different personalities because of these kinds of things. Personally, I generally consider that to be a good thing.

Hello woodsrunner, > You obviously missed my post on page 3 of this thread. You should read it. Just out of curiosity, how many pullups can you do?

I had all the knot applications for Pack leadership positions at our Cub Scout Roundtable a week ago. I spread them out and explained them and encouraged people to take applications for positions they occupied and also for other adult leaders in thweir packs who might be interested. Quite a few were picked up. I was just like a Honey Bee, except I was giving out pollen instead of collecting it.

Hello Woodesrunner, We seemed destined to disagree:

Interesting question. At a minimum, they should be sleeping in separate tents. Beyond that, I don't know of any BSA rule that would prevent them from participating in a camping trip. Why they would be invited to participate in a Troop camping trip is a better question. Were they perhaps putting on a 1st Aid program for the troop on the camping trip? Why were they there?

> Frankly, I think the Scout has more sense than the Scoutmaster who is being discussed. If a kid was making an effort, I'd find a way to pass him long before three years went by on this issue. However, I had another issue when I was SM: I had a boy who was petrified of the water. He didn't want to come near to the edge of the pool, let alone get in it. He therefore couldn't pass the Second Class (or whatever it was) swimming requirement and he was delayed, perhaps three years, because of it. (This was thirty years ago). I remember the last Troop swim I did as SM --- this boy popped up beside me in the pool with a big grin, swimming like a fish. He's finally decided he was going to learn to swim and he did. I was very proud of that young man's accomplishment. Frankly, I'd ask for a BOR for these boys and see if the Troop Committee backs up the SM on this issue. If they do, I'd appeal the decision to the District Advancement Committee and see what they say. I respect woodsrunner for getting an opinion from the Council Advancement Chair, although I'm rather surprised at the answer he got. Your own district or council advancement chair might have a different view. In addition to that, I'd be encouraging the parents to work with their boys every day on practicing the pull up. They should be making their best effort on this in any case. Are these boys notably overweight?

I's say you should look for a person who will help do the things you aren't good at doing. Usually it's not too tough to find yourself an Assistant Committee Chair who can held do a relatively limited variety of things. No reason that couldn't be your long term replacement either, in my view. Can you identify a person or two who would be good at helping you with that kind of thing?

IF BSA leaders decide they wish to change policies BECAUSE IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO, I have no objection. That's the only good reason for doing so, in my opinion. The cringing cowardice of CEOs on the National Board (should that exist), would not be a good reason.

Hello BSA, Personally, I don't regard it as my job to require that boys and adults wear the uniform. That's the easy and slack method to use. My job is to encourage boys and adults to wear the uniform with pride because it's something they choose to do. As I noted earlier, my personal contributions to this are to wear the uniform myself to set the example, and to provide boys and registered leaders with a neckerchief and slide. By wearing the neckerchief and slide they are considered to be in uniform --- beyond that they decide for themselves. Personally I'm not an admirer of youth sports teams, which tend to use force and power rather than personal motivation to get people to follow their rules. I prefer to cultivate personal pride and self motivation instead of force to gain compliance. But you are welcome to your methods if they work for you and your unit. (This message has been edited by seattlepioneer)

Because the fears are reasonable.

> Please don't visit my Cub Pack. I'm sure you would be a very unhappy camper with your attitude. Personally, I wear a complete uniform. But it's in a low income area and Cub Scouts and Scouters tend to assemble a uniform as best they can. I start out every new Cub Scout by awarding them a neckerchief cut from a colorful thrift store bed sheet, the same that I wear myself. The slide is cut from a tree branch with a hole drilled through it. Boys are "in uniform" for our purposes when they are wearing as much of the uniform as they have. Sorry, but your point of view is too narrow. What may work fine for you would be inappropriate for others. You do realize that there is NO requirement that Scouts or Scouters wear a uniform at all?

> Mightn't it be irresponsible and negligent to let a person like that participate in a dive? When a young person is killed like that, you have to suppose that the lawyers will be spending whatever time is necessary to extract as much money as possible from all concerned. My brother was killed in 1962 at age 15 in a snow avalanche while climbing on a Seattle Mountaineers climb. No lawsuit then, but judged by the facts as related in a report by the American Aline Club's review of the incident in "Accidents in North American Mountaineering," it was caused by the poor judgement of the climb leader. No lawsuit then. I wouldn't count on that today.