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MisterH

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MisterH last won the day on July 17 2022

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    SW Florida
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    Teacher

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  1. My Cub Scouting days were back in the 1980s, with the yellow and red beads marking progress toward Wolf and Bear, and with the gold and silver arrow points for electives. While I had lots of fun, I especially loved getting a new bead or arrowhead because of the sense of progress and accomplishment it gave me. Plenty of the other boys in pack felt the same way.
  2. I'm somewhat confused with what I've been hearing regarding the new program launching later this year as pertains to Cub Scout awards like World Conservation, Outdoor Activity, Summertime Pack, etc. I understand that the Nova/Supernova awards are being discontinued at the national level, but will still be offered at the council level if the council so chooses. (Side note: I'm relocating soon to the Raleigh-Durham "Research Triangle" area, so I would HOPE that particular council keeps the STEM programs going!) I've seen presentations on the new program say that very few scouts ever pursued the awards, so the award activities were being redesigned/repurposed into rank badge electives so that more scouts will do the activities. Does this mean that the awards are being phased out entirely and being transformed into electives? Or are the award requirements becoming electives with the intention to increase the award's visibility in the hopes that more scouts will earn them? Thank you.
  3. I appreciate TWP's position; it was exactly the same situation I was in when I first tried volunteering about 7-8 years ago when I still lived in the Midwest. Even though I was a certified local teacher with years of experience teaching math to middle and high school students, I got the cold shoulder for not having any kids. The people I spoke with at the council office were very standoffish. "Why do you want to volunteer with us when you have no kids in the program?" "It's very unusual for someone in your position to volunteer; a lot of parents might have a hard time accepting you since you are single and have no kids." The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, and I never went back.
  4. Thirteen years of teaching middle school and high school has taught me that the lessons students remember best are the ones they figure out for and teach themselves. It then becomes my job to gently nudge them in the direction of figuring out the correct answer so they'll think they did it all by themselves when they find it.
  5. "Why in the modern day are we so attached to symbols and traditions from another century when we have a rich scouting history of our own to draw upon? " Among the mythology of early America are the stories about new settlers from Europe learning from the indigenous American peoples how to survive in the wilderness of North America. It shows up in the stories of "The First Thanksgiving", and in a lot of American literature set during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Since many of the skills taught in scouting involve outdoor survival, it makes sense to acknowledge the lessons learned by the people who were surviving on this land for centuries before any of our ancestors arrived. One of the overarching lessons of scouting is "There were people here before you; learn their lessons and respect their contributions to your present. There will also be people here after you; pass on the lessons you have learned to them, and do your best to leave for them the natural beauty you enjoy today." I believe that respectfully educating scouts about the history, skills, and traditions of the tribes native to their areas is an important part of that lesson.
  6. This x 100. In over a decade in education (and longer than that if you include college courses in the subject), I've seen too many different definitions of "equity" running the spectrum from common sense to neo-Marxist ivory tower claptrap. Fortunately it looks like the scouts seem to be on the "common sense" end of the spectrum. Equity becomes a practical issue whenever you have a stated goal of having everyone reach a certain minimum standard of achievement, be it earning the Wolf badge or passing the state's end-of-course Algebra 1 exam, and everyone is starting from different points in terms of skill level. In my classrooms, the challenge has been to find ways to get the stronger students to help the weaker students, while not outright drafting the stronger students as unpaid tutors and kneecapping the potential growth of the stronger students, as many teachers are often pressured to do to help the school keep its test scores up.
  7. Given what ThenNow and others have said about how many victims wrestle with the aftermath of their abuse for decades until finally talking about it, it's entirely likely that we'll never know how many children were abused in 2010-2020 until the 2030s, '40s, or even '50s. Given that long of a lag time, if I were BSA I would consider offering to have both national and the LC's to pay into a fund in perpetuity for victims of the recent past, present, and future as part of any settlement. It might show good faith about addressing the issue long term going forward, plus make it less likely for the other side to see full liquidation as the best option.
  8. Respectfully, though, isn't one of the main complaints about the Catholic Church fundamentally different than the main complaint about the BSA? The Church has the power to relocate clergy as it deems necessary, and it was using that power to quietly reassign molester priests from one parish to another. Priest molests kids at St. Anthony's church and school in Town A, bishop finds out, reassigns said priest to St. Bridget's church and school in Town B without telling St. Bridget's about the troubles at St. Anthony's. Unless I'm misunderstanding the charge, it's not like BSA national was reassigning an accused scouter from Ohio to work with instead with these kids in Nebraska. It sounded more to me like "this scouter from Ohio is bad news, if he ever applies to volunteer for another council or unit, say no, but let's keep the authorities and the press out of it." The charge of "You knew about this problem, and tried to sweep it under the rug and handle it yourself when you really should have gone to the authorities." will outrage a lot of people, but not quite to the level of "You knew this priest was molesting kids at that other school and, when he got caught, you chose not to report him or assign him to a distant monastery where he'd never work with kids again, but to assign him to work at another school--my kids' school--anyway."
  9. I've spent enough time interacting with academia over the past 20 years to notice this, too. IMO most colleges view "Eagle Scout" as just another civic-oriented extra-curricular activity, but I've met more than a few professors who dismissed the Boy Scouts as "a right-wing, paramilitary hate group", particularly prior to 2014 when the BSA started lifting their official bans on homosexuality.
  10. Also from the Prohibited Activities List: 9. Extreme or action sports and associated activities that involve an unusually high degree of risk and often involve speed, height, a high level of exertion, and specialized gear or equipment. These activities include but are not limited to • Parkour Understandable on parkour. My younger brother got into it in college back in the late 2000's. One time when I was visiting him on campus I watched him climb the outside of a building to a height of about 20 feet. Our mother would have had a heart attack had she seen it. Fortunately that was just a "phase" he went through in college, and he managed to avoid both injury and incarceration. 😁 • Tree climbing This one is curious and a little disappointing. I have a collection of older cub scout books, and demonstrating you can climb a tree to a height of 12 feet was actually a required achievement for the Wolf badge as recently as 1973 (which admittedly is almost 50 years ago now, but still...)
  11. I joined as a Wolf in the 83/84 school year. My Bear year (84/85) was the first year our pack had Tigers. We had a large and active pack at the time (60 or so kids), so it wouldn't surprise me if they started a Tiger den soon after the program launched in 82. Cheers to the memory of Pack 279 at Our Lady of Grace Catholic School in the now-defunct Calumet Council, and camping as a pack at Indiana Dunes in early March (brrrrr!) I always thought the point of Tigers and now Lions was to get the kids into Scouting before other activities could sink their claws into them.
  12. How did the BSA end up being forced to pay for both their own lawyers as well as their opponents' lawyers?
  13. I'll take that fate 100 times out of 100 if it means avoiding a Chapter 7 liquidation and the demise of the program.
  14. I'm seeing a date of December 14, 2018 on that article. Have you seen anything from this council since the Chapter 11 filing where they continue to assert this position? UPDATED: Welp, here's a link post-filing to a story about the council where I now live promising, literally, "business as usual" at the local level despite the national bankruptcy. https://www.news-press.com/story/news/2020/02/19/southwest-florida-troops-promise-business-usual-despite-boy-scouts-america-chapter-11-filing/4804994002/ So, yeah, this might be the official position of many of the local councils.
  15. Agreed. This is a problem all over. However, public school districts are notoriously difficult (and in some cases impossible) to sue over cases like this, so you don't get the attention-grabbing headlines (and case numbers and dollar amounts) like you do with Catholic dioceses or the Boy Scouts.
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