Parents speaking foreign languages at den meetings

[clemlaw]

>>>>>Check your state's wiretapping laws before following advice like this.

[Oak Tree]

Ok, yes, fair enough. Setting up an obvious video recorder would do the trick, though. Everyone clearly knows they're being recorded. Still, roughly 3/4 of the states let you tape a conversation with "one-party" consent, at least according to this: http://www.rcfp.org/taping/Twelve states require, under most circumstances, the consent of all parties to a conversation. Those jurisdictions are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.

[evry]

This post is so lame! Why do people get upset just because others are speaking a language that they cannot understand? It reminds me of a time when I was speaking to my brother in Greek about some family matters at a previous job. My boss comes over to us and reprimands us for speaking a foreign language. My brother, without missing a beat, responded "but we are talking about you and we don't want you to understand what we are saying."

 

Trust me....we aren't talking about you....we are speaking in our native tongue because it's what comes natural to us!

[clemlaw]

>>>>Twelve states require....

[buckytom]

Thanks very much, Joebob. You know, I realize that everyone is really trying to help, each in their own way. It's partly my fault for not describing this very well.

 

Oaktree, LOL about the recordings. I would never secretly record anyone just to prove a point to already unhappy parents, but I'd love to.

 

The video camera thing is interesting. I wonder if any of the parents involved would be so chatty when they knew it was being recorded. But nah, it's already all gone to far.

 

The best advice I think is to ask the Polish moms to help the den to learn their language. That would get them involved and may help break the ice.

 

In any case, I'm going to have to do a lot of hand-holding and peacemaking in the meantime. If this gets any worse, I'll just walk away and put my son in another pack if he wants to stay with it. Hopefully one where the parents try to get along.

 

There's so many other problems that it might end up being my only option. Our Bear den pretty much just dissolved. We went from 6 or 7 Bears down to 2 since the beginning of the year, mostly due to problems between the CM and the Bear leader. I'd feel terrible quitting on the boys, but this is affecting my wife and son so I have to put them first.

[frank10]

I'm coming late to this topic, I read the first page and the current page skipping most of what is in between. So please forgive me if this point has been made...

 

Speaking a foreign language in a group is comparable to sitting there using your cell phone. It is an exclusionary conversation that is just plain rude. I don't care what the topic is it is rude.

[Scoutfish]

"I'd feel terrible quitting on the boys, but this is affecting my wife and son so I have to put them first."

 

ABSOLUTELY!!

 

WEll, wether we agree or not on the original post, see eye to eye or not on the den meetings, Family comes first.

 

In the pack, the most you might see any one boy is five years, In a troop...5 to 9 years?

 

But family is forever.

 

[buckytom]

You betcha, Scoutfish.

 

Btw, for everyone's edification I looked into the term Pole.

 

I asked some of my neighbors, my preist (a Polish immigrant himself who serves at St. Stanislaus Kostka church), and a friend who's a John Jay College professor, and they all said that Pole is not a derrogatory word. Technically Pollack isn't either- it literally translates to a Polish man. Only in America is the latter considered an insult.

 

But a Pole is a proper name for a Polish person.

 

Lol, is anyone still counting how many times I wrote Polish to try to prove a point??? He-hee

[OldGreyEagle]

This could be also a post for the thread on how words have changed, but here goes:

 

buckytom, I don't know what part of the country you live in, but I was brought up in the city of Chicago and the western suburbs. I have to tell you, it wasn't until I was 14 I learned dumbpollack was actually two words, not one.

 

When the neighborhood bully would taunt me about my dumbpollack mother, I don't think he was questioning her sexuality, that level of subtelty was not in his armamentarium.

 

Perhaps I should have asked my Polish Grandmother and Grandfather about what pollack meant, but I am not so sure I would have gotten to far saying pollack in their prescence.

 

Now words are just words and to some they have meaning and others they don't. It will tale a long time for me to shake pollack as not derogatory.

 

PS. Madame Marie Curie nee Sklodowska was Polish, she was kinda smart

[BartHumphries]

I always thought "Pollack" was a last name. Until today, I never knew that anyone thought it was derogatory, or that anyone would use it as a generic term to describe Polish people.(This message has been edited by BartHumphries)

[clemlaw]

In my neighborhood, Poles* weren't quite the majority, but they were probably the single largest ethnic group. "Pollack" was a derogatory term, but in a good-natured way. I told Polish jokes to my Polish friends, and they told Swede jokes back to me in return (generally, the same jokes, with only the nationality changed).

 

Interestingly, in Spanish, the word "Polish" is translated as "Polaco", which is pronounced exactly the same way as "Pollack", but with an "o" at the end. I was kind of surprised the first time I heard that word in polite company, but that is indeed the only word, adjective or noun, to describe something or someone from Poland.

 

Several years ago, I travelled to Ukraine by way of Warsaw. Upon my return to Warsaw, I realized what an amazing job the Poles* had done rebuilding the country from communism.

 

When I got home, I talked to a Polish friend and told him that I hereby retracted every Polish joke that I had ever told.

 

* - If anyone believes that "Pole" is a derrogatory term, then please let me know the correct plural noun.

[The Blancmange]

 

PS. Madame Marie Curie nee Sklodowska was Polish, she was kinda smart

And let's not forget Casimir Pulaski: Revolutionary War hero, honorary U.S. Citizen, and hero to countless Illinois schoolchildren who get a day off school each year in his honor. Or Nicolaus Copernicus, father of modern astronomy and one of the first to publically advocate the theory that the earth was not the center of the universe.

[OldGreyEagle]

Just to be sure, the pronunciation I am familiar with is Po-Lock, Pollack is the last name of an actor/director or a fish.

 

I always thought Pole or Poles were fine references

[qwazse]

BT: In any case, I'm going to have to do a lot of hand-holding and peacemaking in the meantime.

 

Yep. That's about it. And I don't mean this to be negative, but there will always be some kind of fence-mending going on in any unit you join. The good news is that 9 out of 10 times those fences do get mended.

 

And, my solution with chatty folks (in the same language as mine or different) is offer them a job to do. That puts an end to a bunch of useless conversation, and usually starts a few meaningful ones.

[BadenP]

Well if this thread just proves one thing it is that the scouting world is full of intolerant, red neck, unfriendly, unkind, and unhelpful ethnocentric bigots. Those of you complaining and addingyour own ethnic slurs should be forced out of scouting since our kids should not have to be exposed to your own narrowmindiness. What a bunch of unscoutlike individuals, you ought to feel ashamed of yourselves.