madmike

I cant help but wonder, why the main website for the BOY Scouts of America usualluy tends to have a picture of a girl on its intro site? see for yourself at...www.scouting.org Currently there is a pic of a female sea scout, last week they have a picture of a female Venture Scout??? Maybe part of whats wrong with scouting is they have forgotten who the target group is? Boys????????

I am a new Cub Scout Leader, so I have no experience with WB, but I have to say judging from seeing some pics of WB on Scout websites and from stories, that the skits and songs part seem to be extremely dated IMO. But even when I went to OCS (officer candidate School - Army) we had to sing dumb songs and such, so maybe there is some sort of hidden leadership quality in that type of activity that I am missing..

there are also a lot of adult leaders who could work to get out of their 3XL Shirt and be a better example for the kids

10-4, that makes sense. Thanks for your service.

"I would end ANY thought of a kindergarten Cub Scout." co-signed. Cub Scouts is already to watered down as it is

this is going to sound negative, but I assure you I dont intend it that way. But why have you had (or choose) to be the SM for 25 years? Seems like another adult leader would want a crack at it?(This message has been edited by madmike)

From my experience with scouting when i was "a kid"...... the thing that kept me coming to meetings, wasnt the uniform, the eagle rank(even though I did attain it), it was the things we did as a troop, We had a really good set of Adult leaders who kept us doing challenging things on our weekend outings, those alone kept kids coming back week after week. I think boys can put up with some of the trivial issues like the cooking merit badges, and leatherwork class, if they know they are going to do some "fun/cool" stuff. We went on a wild cave trip my 1st year in scouting, did lots of rapelling inside the cave, got very very dirty, and then i was hooked. So I guess what I am trying to say is that the reason for the decline in scouting might not be scouting itself but the program being provided at certain troops might not be appealing, you can still fit in the BSA curriculum and challenge your kids along the way. There are not many groups set up where you can hike 15 miles into the back country of the App. Train one weekend, whitewater raft the next. We had an adult who owned a large amount of land, he had built in a large shooting area in an embankment, we had a "rifle & shotgun" weekend, where we literally had a "blast" but a lot of parents might have a hissy about their son being around fire arms these days, so i dont even know if that allowable these days.. Mike BSA Troop 750

www.scoutingboard.com originally set this up for my sons cub scout pack, but it never caught on with the other adults, so i switched the format recently..

feel like I am piling on...... but i was glad to see them finally update the pants for the Boy Scouts this year.

Well finally got my oldest son to the cub scouts age, we are having the "adults" meeting Friday, Looking forward to serving in some sort of active leadership role. Its been a long time since I got my Eagle Scout back in 1991, but I have long awaited the day when i could share my good experiences with my sons. Glad I found this forum, it will be nice to have a place to discuss scouting.