Cub Scout update

Yeah, so in the past week we’ve had bombings and attempted bombings — and a near miss by the sheer luck of a thief helping himself to an abandoned suitcase.  Followed by a cop shooting an unarmed — sorry, no, armed man (whose defenders say, “well, he wasn’t pointing the gun at the cops at the time”), which led to protests — OK, riots, in Charlotte, and a further death as one rioter apparently shot another.  And then the Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, was briefly suspended from twitter for a tweet the Powers That Be deemed inappropriate.

(Links on the last of these, as it wasn’t in the news:  from Twitchy, and from the Instapundit blog itself, plus speculation from Da Tech Guy on what got him reinstated – the fact that he tweets and retweets so much, to so many followers, it’s bad business for Twitter to suspend him; and a legal perspective on the content of his tweet.)

And in the meantime, what have I been up to?  Sadly, not blogging about all this.  Instead, well, partly, working considerably more hours than usual, and I have one more project for the week before I’m finished.  But also a variety of Cub Scout prep before our first pack meeting on Thursday.

The plan for the meeting was for the Boy Scouts to demonstrate camping skills to the Cub Scouts.  And at first it looked like it was going to be a bust, as, as of the 6:30 start time, the only boys there were the sons of the leaders.  So we waited, and waited — until finally after 10 minutes, we had enough to get started, and after a few more minutes, had the flag ceremony organized and were ready to start with flags, announcements, and then the activity — in which the boys, in three groups, rotated through stations on tent set-up, fire-making, and campout cooking, ending with a tent set-up competition.  And while this happened, I tried to circulate among the parents, answer some questions, hope that the boys and the parents both thought the activity was worthwhile.  I even had a few conversations with parents who were thinking of inviting other families!

The picture?  Well, this was the one image of the three stations that had the fewest visible faces (and, yes, my removing identifiable faces was admittedly clumsy).  In the background you can see the tent set-up as well.  It’s too bad that the best picture, with the Scout explaining to listening Cubs would violate my personal approach of not having identifiable faces in personal photos.

It’s difficult — because you have to get three different elements right.  You have to recruit the boys — and their parents.  You have to get the content right, and make sure you have the right mix of activities, and that they’re done well, so that the boys enjoy themselves, the parents feel it’s worth the effort of bringing them and making room in the schedule, and everyone tells their friends.  And you have to get other parents to volunteer in all manner of capacities, from den leader to pack volunteer roles of various kinds, and for good and valid reasons, Scouts makes it harder with its “two-deep” leadership requirement:  even for a small group of boys, there must always be two adults with the boys at all times.

Around here, it’s particularly difficult to compete with sports, and one of my objectives is to really promote what we’re doing, so that parents see it as worthwhile, given that sports grabs so much of kids’ time, and is perceived as valuable, either because they think of their son as destined for greatness (or a college scholarship) or because the travel team teaches “life lessons.”  So my hope is to in various ways over the coming year (including a bump up in the amount of service projects) convince parents that there are “life lessons” in Scouting, too.

In the neighboring suburb, which is poorer and more heavily immigrant, Scouting is having a different kind of problem. At least, I learned the other day that one of the two packs that had served the town (there are three public and one parochial school, and each pack had served two of the schools), has folded, and the other is struggling to stay afloat.  (I haven’t gotten a clear answer on the status of the other pack, which I was inquiring about after the question was raised by a parent whether a neighborhood boy was welcome to join us, and I wanted to avoid “poaching.”)  So my guess is that they have a number of boys with no family experience with Scouts, and, of those families with the desire to participate, less ability to spend time volunteering.

But I’m trying to get this right, not just for the sake of “keeping the pack going” but because I think there is value in this.  It’s the sort of program where each level builds on the prior level, and to deepening all sorts of skills — from camping skills to leadership skills to general “life skills.”  Do we get everything right?  Do we fulfill the goals of the program to their fullest extent?  No.  But we’re working on it.