MisterH

33 minutes ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

We make earning the awards fun 😜 

Fun with a purpose.

The purpose is to experience the personal growth (and other Scouting methods) reached while pursuing the award.  The award is simply a "tangible" milestone marking the intangibles we experience along the way...

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.

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.

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.

On 9/20/2022 at 6:11 AM, SiouxRanger said:

Us adult leaders may never see that process work out in the mind of a scout who is responding to the situation in a leadership role, and the Scout will not likely understand it either, yet, the Scout acts in a leadership role and gets the job done.

I failed many times as a senior scout, but I never learned from successes.  Only failure teaches if one can bear the hurt to learn from it. And one must "bear up" to grow.

These things are subtle.  

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.

"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.

On 8/3/2021 at 1:20 PM, Armymutt said:

The problem is that "equity" is a loaded term.  It is focused on equal outcomes, not equal resources.  Therefore, someone is likely to get more than their equal share of whatever resource, which potentially means a reduction in the potential outcome of the person better able to utilize those resources. 

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.

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.

12 hours ago, T2Eagle said:

Public opinion regarding the Catholic Church being sued for past abuse has resulted in a lot of outrage --- towards the church.  That has been the primary driver behind the changes in SOL laws that brought us where we are today.

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."

12 minutes ago, HICO_Eagle said:

IMO, the Eagle brand took a huge hit a long time ago for a variety of reasons.  PC culture in elite colleges appeared to be using it as a strike against instead of for the applicants.  Standards seemed to be lowered in merit badges, projects, etc. in order to increase the success rate.

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.

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...)

19 hours ago, 5thGenTexan said:

I joined Cub Scouts as a Wolf in the 82/83 school year.  I couldnt tell you if we had Tigers or not.  I know I was never a Tiger.

As current CM, I am not sure I see much point in Lions/Tigers.  I think Wolf would be a good starting point.

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.

How did the BSA end up being forced to pay for both their own lawyers as well as their opponents' lawyers?

5 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

If I were a betting man...

- 50% or more of local camps that exist now will be sold.

- In the next 18 months we'll merge down to one council per 10,000-15,000 scouts.  Each will retain a camp

- all other council owned buildings will be sold to preserve whatever camps we can.

I'll take that fate 100 times out of 100 if it means avoiding a Chapter 7 liquidation and the demise of the program.

22 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

I gave the example of  Black Swamp Area Council which as recently as last week was emailing and getting articles in the local paper about how LC funds were safe and secure and would never, ever go to pay for any of this.

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.

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.

I'm trying my best to understand the new legal document posted by ThenNow.

It sounds like the lawyers are arguing that BSA and Arrow aren't really distinct from each other given the terms of the debts between them, so the Summit property (and related assets of Arrow) should be considered assets of the BSA for purposes of the settlement.

I didn't know Summit was only 10 years old. I remember hearing about Northern Tier, Philmont, and Florida Sea Base from when I was a kid, but I had never heard of Summit until I started looking into volunteering as an adult. Guess that's why.

My 70-yo mother caught Covid back in December, survived it, and then got the first Moderna shot in early February. She had redness, swelling, and arm pain at the site of the injection for a week, and now she's really hesitant about getting the second shot. Having already survived Covid once, she's thinking about skipping the second shot and taking her chances.

On 2/15/2021 at 10:37 PM, denibug72 said:

My oldest had a major reaction to his 6 mo shots, to the point that we stopped all his shots.  Years later we found out that Guillain-Barre Syndrome is a horrible disease to go through.  My oldest son contracted a rare variant of it (Miller-Fischer) as a young teenager.  We still don't know how or why he got it, and probably never will.  So thankful for IVIG plasma treatments, and a neurologist that had a pretty good guess as to what it could be (since the spinal tap & blood workups took weeks to come back).  At the time, the doctors told him never to get a flu shot...

Finally, someone else who went through this! My father had a similar reaction to a flu shot he got back in '99 when he was in his early 50's. What he came down with looked a lot like Guillain-Barre, but in the end wasn't exactly. He ended up having to retire early on disability. I've been very circumspect about getting flu shots ever since.

23 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

Wild shot at rank and yank: Lawyers, National, Abuse Victims, Councils, CO's.

I think that's a good guess. The further down the chain the lawyers go, the more blame they'll get. Going after BSA national is one thing, but going after Prince of Peace Lutheran PTO for an abuse case that happened before the current pack leadership was even born will leave a very bad taste in everyone's mouth. From my perspective, having the most visible lawyer for the abuse victims rant "Burn it all down!" repeatedly on Twitter and in the media is not a good look. To a relative outsider like me, it looks as if the other side is negotiating in bad faith, given his stated end goal is not just money for the victims, but the death penalty for the BSA. In Kosnoff's ideal world, BSA national, all councils, all cub scout packs, troops, sea scout ships, and venturing crews flat-out cease to exist at the end of this lawsuit. I'm not sure the general populace is aware that the stakes are that high, and I doubt many parents with kids in scouting would approve of completely wiping out the organization their kids belong to as justice in this case.

Maybe I'm wrong, however. I often am.

Hello! I'm a long-time resident of the Chicagoland/NW Indiana area who has recently relocated to SW Florida following a family tragedy. I had a blast as a Cub Scout back in the 80s, and I enjoyed volunteering to help my younger brother with his Cub Scout experience in the 90s. I have over a decade of experience as a high school math teacher, and I was planning on applying to volunteer with the local council once my circumstances settle down a bit more. In particular, I'm really excited about the STEM opportunities that scouts have today, and I hope for an opportunity to be useful to Scouting. I've been lurking on this forum for quite some time and I am glad to formally be a part of it.