FireStone

It's kind of hard to believe, but even though it's only October I'm already getting questions/comments about the Pinewood Derby in my Den. I'm mostly trying to put off most of the Den discussion until we're closer to the event in January, but I would be interested in some opinions so I can thoughtfully address some parent concerns when the time comes. So what I've had brought to my attention so far are these comments: Dads build the cars, it's not fair. Mr. Smith clearly built his son's winning car, you should not allow that. Can we do smaller trophies so everyone gets one? I let my son build his car last year and he came in last, so this year I'm not letting that happen. Let's have all the kids build the cars at a Den meeting and hand them in, so we know scouts made all the cars. Scouts should make their cars 100% themselves, parents should only watch. Ok, so first and foremost I have serious concerns about the general opinion of the derby among my den parents. If someone is responding their scout's loss last year by pledging to build the car themselves this year, I'm kind of sad for the state of things in my den. Now on to trying to build an improved opinion and approach to the derby... Let's get one of these items out of the way quickly. Participation trophies. Not happening. That's a Pack policy, and one I agree with. The comments about dads building the cars, and the accusation that Mr. Smith made his son's car. First, I don't know that he did. I know his son is pretty handy, involved in STEM groups/activities outside of scouting, so it's not unreasonable for me to think that he had a lot of involvement in building his car. I don't expect any scout to build a car 100% from start to finish. It's supposed to be a collaborative project with parents. The paint job was (in my opinion) clearly done by the scout. The shape of the car was pretty basic, so who can say if a kid or parent made it. Just because it won I'm not going to assume that it was overly parent-made. What do you say to that parent making that accusation? The suggestion to build the cars at a Den meeting isn't unreasonable, coming from the same concern that dads build the cars and wanting to have more scout hands-on involvement. Although I struggle with that one because I worry that making this a group activity takes away the intent of the derby to begin with, a fun project for a scout and parent to do together. I guess overall I'm struggling with the balance between scout-built and parent-built, and how to express that to the den parents. And it seems really hard to put that into any sort of rules or regulations. Especially when I'm being asked in some cases to go outside of Pack rules and institute our own specific den rules. Or to lobby the Pack to change rules. Any suggestions for how to handle these questions/comments I'm getting?

Horrible. Just horrible. Praying for those scouts.

Neckerchief slides have been a hot topic in my pack. Lots of parents and leaders have expressed frustration with the ever-changing uniform each and every year of cub scouts. Cub scouts should have a universal neckerchief slide for all ranks. Some folks think we should have a universal neckerchief for the whole Pack, and I don't disagree. Until they do that, and in light of this recall which means I have to tell all of my den parents to return those slides, we're going with a DIY solution. I'm bringing paracord to the next den meeting and we'll make our own. It's bad enough that we have to buy new stuff every year, with pretty frequent price increases (seems like not all that long ago slides were just $2). Now we're paying those rising prices for cheap (unsafe) merchandise.

We had a good turnout at our recruitment night, but still a lot of siblings in attendance who aren't joining. I spoke to a family of 4 kids, all scouting age, and only the 1 boy was joining, his 3 older sisters were not. One of our Den Leaders with a daughter told me she doesn't want to join. We did have a lot of interest among girls for the Lions program, and a few Tigers. But it doesn't look like families who already had boys in the Pack are getting their daughters to sign up so easily. So while I'm encouraged by the overall numbers, I suspect it's still a lot of mixed reactions and interest levels on a local basis.

Reading this thread up to this point and not knowing whether your sone would be staying with this troop, I was kind of wondering how that would work out. In all unfortunate likelihood this SM would have made life more difficult for him going forward. Sad that it came to this but in these kinds of situations there often is no other way forward. Glad to hear your son is happy to continue scouting elsewhere.

That sounds about right to me. Girls are in Cub Scouts now. Troops can't invite Packs/Dens that are open to girls to Troop functions and then say "No girls allowed."

We charge $85, which covers the usual stuff and we give each scout Boys' Life, a neckerchief, and handbook. We do charge for activities and trips throughout the year. Usually $15 per person for camping trips, B&G, $10 or less for other activities. End of year picnic is free for all scouts and families.

College is meaningless if you go just for the sake of getting a degree. What I don't get is the mentality that college is just about the degree. Every high school kid gets it drilled into them that if they want to get into a good college they need to do more than just show up in class throughout high school. And yet when they get to college, all they do is show up for class and work towards graduation, and then wonder why they end up feeling like it was a waste. I don't think college is a waste of time or money, as long as you go there intent on doing something to better yourself and grow from the experience, in addition to getting that degree. My college had mandatory community service project time required of every freshman (I worked for Habitat for Humanity). I learned the most valuable lessons throughout my college experience outside of the classroom. And I grew as a person more than I think I would have without the college experience. Lots of so-called "experts" today want to quantify the value of a college education, put a number to it and figure out if it pays off. But their only determining factor in that seems to be the question of whether you get a job in your chosen field after college and how much that job pays. My profession (art director, graphic design) doesn't require a degree. In many job interviews I've been on, college never even came up. It's all about your portfolio, showing what you can do, not what school name is printed on your diploma. But who I am, the person I became after those years away from home and in college, the connections I made and the path my life took afterward, that was all heavily driven by just being in college, going through that experience and growing from it. Somehow this particular discussion about the value of college often comes down to putting the blame on the schools, that they don't prepare kids for jobs, they are somehow failing their students. I don't agree with that. College is an opportunity. It's up to every college student to decide what to do with that opportunity, and just like every other educational step in the lives of students before college, nothing is guaranteed at the end just because you showed up. This belief that colleges are failing students is entirely turned around. It's the students failing themselves, or maybe the parents failing their kids, if those students go to college thinking they're entitled to (or guaranteed) something at the end of it just because they showed up to class and passed the tests, or that the benchmark for a worthwhile college experience only goes as far as some perceived dollar value of that degree.

Exactly what programs are now being tailored specifically to the needs of girls? I've only been seeing an increased promotion of the availability of traditionally boy-favored programs aimed at bringing in more girls. Like inviting more girls to participate in STEM programs, for example. But they're not changing those programs to focus on girls. Is something different happening in your neck of the woods?

I came up in the generation that was tasked similarly to today's cub scout, having to change neckerchiefs and hats every year. And I have none of them in my box of old Scouting stuff, because I think at some point they held little sentimental meaning to me. Change stuff this often and it holds little value to those who wear it. It's just a throw-away item that kids burn through in a year and move on to the next thing.

I was told at my council Scout Shop (Northern NJ) that they have 50,000 yellow Wolf neckerchiefs in stock. Now I don't know if that means 50,000 for our council (hard to believe), for the regional area, state, etc. But I guess the point was that there are still a lot of yellow ones around.

My gut feeling on this so far has been that we're moving to something that more closely resembles UK scouting. So going fully coed is part of that, and I suspect it has always been the BSA plan. But to make the move a bit easier to swallow, they are doing this transitional separated troops/packs/dens thing. I don't have a crystal ball, but my expectation of the future of the BSA is we're fully coed within a decade.

We just had our sign-up night and got 14 new Scouts, of which I believe 4 were girls. 2 Lions, 1 Wolf, and 1 Webelos. I expect we'll get a few more in the coming weeks (people take home the information and sometimes sign up later). Last year we signed up 5 new Scouts total, so definitely a nice increase over last year.

If exhausting the existing supply of yellow neckerchiefs is the criteria for rolling out the red ones, current Wolf scouts could possibly be Eagle Scouts by the time the red ones are made available.

I've discovered the value of a truly good Den Chief recently. Like I had no idea I had a really good one and only found out when I heard about how little some of the other Den Chiefs contribute to the other Dens in my Pack. A good Den Chief (or two) can be a lifesaver, I'd imagine even more so in a struggling Den where the adults need a lot of help.

It's very unfortunate that his response was to hold firm on his unreasonable policy. And his policy, while having only good intentions, is indeed unreasonable. You mentioned that your son was at camp for a week, where there would be plenty of opportunity to have a conference. And your son attended Ordeal weekend recently, where as someone mentioned would be tough to hold a SM conference at but still it shows your son is active and attends events beyond the weekly troop meeting. He's doing what the SM wants, to have older scouts active on trips. It just happens that the one opportunity the SM is giving your son to have the conference is one of the seemingly few times that he can't make it. That's entirely unreasonable.

Correcting the records with documented evidence doesn't mean the evidence is the record. Like it or not, if National says Scoutbook is the official record, that's what it is.

I thought the exact same thing. As soon as I read that definition of "lawnmower parent" my first thought was, "Dear God we made this happen..." I agree with the association of PWD to lawnmower parenting, but I also think it's not quite for the reason you describe. It has nothing to do with the tools available to a Scout or the artistic qualities of the car. We've all seen plenty of beautiful adult-crafted cars flop on the track come race day. And likewise I know Scouts with access to workshops that pro craftsmen would be jealous of, and they certainly aren't guaranteed to have a winning car just because of that access. There's also a very popular YouTube video where a former NASA engineer builds a lightning-fast car with simple hand-tools, minimal time, and weight duct-taped on top. It's definitely not about the tools or access to materials to make a work of art. Whether we're talking about PWD cars or water bottles, to me the issue is the same. Lawnmower parents make the choice to solve the problem instead of teaching how to do it. It's the old "give a man a fish" thing. And it's all about choice. For some reason, the trend these days is to choose to do the work instead of choosing to teach kids how to do it. I think we did kind of pioneer the "choose to do it yourself instead of teaching your kid how to do it" thing with the PWD. That goes back decades, long before any modern parenting trend. But I think it has always been about parents choosing to do instead of teach, and not at all about access to tools.

The handbook is documentation. The official record (a scout's National office record) is going to be their Scoutbook record. Or so I'm told.

I could be wrong about this, but the word in my council is that we are going to be required to use Scoutbook. It is supposed to become the official record for all scouts. So if we wanted to hypothetically use something else on our own, we'd still have to port that data over to Scoutbook for official records.

Kind of makes sense, right? If ScoutBook is supposed to be come the official record for every scout, units shouldn't be paying to use it.

I'm impressed that so many units even know how many girls they're getting already. I have no idea. I know of 2 girls joining because they're daughters of other leaders. Beyond that, I have no clue. And I'm the Pack Recruitment Chair, so I hope I'd be one of those in-the-know folks. We haven't done our recruitment night yet. We're promoting it, been doing so all summer, but until next month I won't have any clue if we'll have just those 2 girls or if we'll have 20.

My understanding is that Scout Spirit discussions are supposed to happen in the SM conference or the BoR. Meaning it's a conversation with adults, and adults making the determination that the Scout adequately shows Scout Spirit. By this unit's method, other Scouts make that determination. Seems contradictory to the intent of the BSA advancement method.

Were those people ever really trans/gay/bi? What about the people who are LGBTQ their entire lives? That's a long time to stick with a so-called "trend". What about the people who are gay and want to be straight but can't be? They seek encouragement and normalization of heterosexuality but can't make it work. They try therapy, and it fails. How is it possible that someone can be convinced to become gay but then not be able to go back to being straight? What about the people who suffer severely for being LGBTQ? Socially, in their family, regionally living in a place that is not welcoming of LGBTQ folks, etc? Why would they choose that? Why would they prefer to live like that, even if the Internet hypothetically validates something that isn't truly what they are? I just don't buy the "the Internet said it's ok so I'll be LGBTQ" thing. Think about what that really means for the people who are LGBTQ for life. Who marry LGBTQ. I don't know about anyone else, but I know that my feelings about my own gender and sexual orientation could not be swayed at all what-so-ever by any amount of Internet browsing. If someone can marry someone of the same sex, in my mind that's not a whim, a trend, anything even remotely like that.

Could be true. I had a poor Cub experience as a kid (lame Pack, never camped, hardly any activities, poor leadership) vs. my Boy Scout experience which was phenomenal. Super active, camped monthly, exceptional leadership, lots of trips and activities. Maybe when I move up to a troop with my son I'll feel differently about this.