LOL, FuzzieAlum!

Thank you, John, and thank you all for the great responses y'all are giving us. It's a big decision for us due to time commitments--our son is such an Eagle Scout type but he's already got football and band and church and that doesn't even begin to figure in all his siblings' commitments.

I knew if I just bluntly put the question out there, it was going to sound like, "What's in it for him and to heck with the intangibles"...we just got so frustrated when maybe 1 in 6 college admissions officers even knew what the Gold Award was. Or cared. We'd love for him (and his brothers) to go back into Scouting but it would be sad if all that came from his Eagle was a handful of certificates, which is about all the girls got from the Gold. I want it to be something special for him like you guys have described--both tangibly and intangibly!

As someone who had 7 (yes 7!) of his best friends from elementary school earn their Eagles, I can say this: make sure he is doing it for himself. When I look at my friends who didn't have pressure on them from parents, they enjoyed the process a lot more than those who did it because their parents pushed them to do it (those guys hated Scouts but their parents wouldn't let them quit, it was a constant battle, and while looking back they enjoyed the camps and stuff, there still is a lot of resentment about being made to do something). Now I doubt Carnation the master mom is a pushy parent, but if your son joins a troop where the Eagle is the rule rather than the goal it might make him feel that he is doign it just because everyone else around him is doing it.

I say let him join, but make sure he realizes that the only expectation is for him to have fun.

Just what I was thinking - when John makes a post that's not related to GCAdmin-ing, that means something is important!

Chop chop, carnation! ;)

I'm an eagle scout. It was a blast and is something that you can be really proud of i mean only 2% of all the boys who join scouts will ever make eagle.

Some advice that i would give is to take your time, it's not a race to get the award ASAP. You have until you are 18 to get it and I think that you should definatly enjoy yourself and go at a moderate pace. All too often boys feel pressured into getting badge after badge, end up getting totally burned out and lose intrest.

I just remembered this thread because last night, our son was inducted into the Order of the Arrow! (As a Pi Phi, I was thrilled by all the "arrow" items he was given!) :D Anyway, he's well on his way to Eagle rank and his younger brother is right behind him.

Congrats on the Order of the Arrow :)

Eagle with Two Palms.

It is not what I gained from being and Eagle Scout, but the leassons that I learned. :)

I still have all of My Items and I look at them Lovingly!:cool:

Pat on the Back for sure!!!!:cool:

Gold Award
 

My daughter earned her Gold Award during her rising sophomore summer. Both Mr. Alum and I encouraged her to complete the prerequisites and the actual Gold Award project earlier in the hs years for several reasons.
1. School gets harder in the later hs years. APs start in sophomore year if you are super advanced.
2. Multiple extracurriculars: varsity sports, school clubs, religious activities
3. What else is there to do in the summer when you are too young to work?
4. Very application/resume-enhancing especially as a teenager when the resume is relatively sparse.


Hopefully the son will emulate his sister. He's only in 6th grade so who knows? He will be promoted to 1st class at the next Board.

Neither my spouse or I were Scouts. I admire both organizations although having a GS first, I prefer the way they run things. I'm sure I'll get used to the Boys after a while.

Carnation, How big are your troops where you live? My daughter's troop is an older girl (7th-12th grade ) troop that has roughly 65 girls. The BS Troop has about 80 Boys. These sound huge to me, but there are always multiple IPPs and merit badges to choose.

Re: Gold Award
 

Both of my kids are in scouting and I have to say that I prefer the way Cub Scouts runs compared to Girl Scouts, at least so far. My daughter is in her first year of Cadettes, but here, each troop is by grade. I believe there are two troops for her 6th grade class and there are about 10 girls in her troop. I don't know how many the other troop has. The two orgs have very different philosophies and it is understandable why they do, but GS is much harder to stay involved with because they do not want other family around. My daughter is able to attend any Cub Scout event we have. Most events are designed around the family and she helps out with the boys meetings sometimes. Now that she's old enough to stay home alone, she doesn't have to come to all of our meetings, but she earns service hours for Girl Scouts by attending so many Cub Scout things. Examples: She assists with our annual Can Do food drive and park clean up day. GS says "Our girls don't beg for food or pick up trash". I don't see the emphasis with community service with GSUSA that BSA has. Our GS leader is always begging for drivers to go on field trips, but I am not allowed to let my son tag along, so I can't drive. He's too young to leave home alone.

The philosophy is that GSUSA needs to focus on the girls and their own personal growth and development because girls were ignored in our society for so long. I do understand that. However, in our changing world, they need to understand that they aren't going to get parental assistance if other siblings can't tag along sometimes. The neighborhoods are poorly structured and kids get lost if a leader decides she can't do it anymore. A troop just disbands and the girls aren't notified or put into a different troop. My daughter missed her second year of brownies because of this. I didn't go to Girl Scout sign up night because I thought she was already in a troop from the year before. Perhaps it's just our area, but they're very disorganized. There is no real structure to advancement, awards, badges, etc.

Cub Scouts (no experience with Boy Scouts yet) focuses on the family and has a stronger structure with a large Pack and several smaller dens. There is a committee that runs the pack which helps avoid the issues noted above if a leader quits. The pack committee can find someone new, get those boys in a new den, etc. The pack events are whole family oriented and many of the advancements/awards depend on family involvement. I like that, but have also seen how it adversely affects boys whose families don't get involved. Advancement in Cub Scouting is very structured, with some flexibility built in too to account for varied interests. Cub Scouts puts less work on the leaders also (as a leader myself).

Anyway, two different orgs with two different philosophies and structures. Each has it's advantages and disadvantages. Cub Scouts is definitely more expensive and it's harder to sell that darn popcorn than it is to sell Girl Scout cookies!

Following up on an earlier post on this thread:

I rejoined CAP as a senior member in October after a 17-year break in membership; my Amelia Earhart award (second highest (at the time) milestone award in CAP's cadet program) earned as a cadet got me advanced to the grade of first lieutenant as a senior member.

As of this date, less than 1600 cadets have earned the General Carl A. Spaatz Award (since its inception in 1964), an award even tougher to earn than Eagle Scout.

A huge congratulations to Your Son.:cool:

It is an auspicious occassion to be sure.

In striving to become and Eagle Scout, it was not the award alone, but the working, learning, and training that it took to get there.

It always looks good on initiatl resumes, but again, it is what is learned that really counts.

Thank you , Tom!

alum--the Boy Scout troops around here are very large. They tend to be based at churches with membership from many schools. They have so many regional and city activities! The Girl Scouts have smaller troops, mostly school-based, and they work on their own. You don't see troops banding together to work on joint projects.

About 12 years ago, I moved my Girl Scout troop from a Georgia council to an Alabama one--we could do that because we're so close to the state line. I much prefer the Alabama council..much less drama, a lot less grabbing for power.

AGDee, I hear you about the tagalongs but I think that was done for 2 reasons--the first being, of course, liability issues. The other was issues with bad behavior of younger siblings. Once I took my Brownie troop to a pet store and 4 girls' little brothers came along with their moms, who made no effort to control them. One kid climbed into the tarantula enclosure, one was playing with scorpions, one made a mess with bird seed, and I forget what the 4th did but the whole trip was a wreck. I've heard a ton of similar stories and some much worse. It seems as if bad behavior of tagalongs is the rule rather than the exception.

Service Units
 

What usually happens in our area that all the girls from a service unit switch in 7th grade to the SU older girl troop. There are some leaders that keep their troop separate, but most are happy to step in the role of an assistant adult leader and take a bit of a break until the current troop leader is ready to "retire." My daughter's troop leader from 7-10th grade had run the troop for 10 years. A older GS troop of 65 members must have a lot of assistant leaders and a head leader who is not a micromanager. Both the past senior leader and the current one have been excellent. The current one had four years of "training" as an assistant adult leader.

In terms of the GS vs. the BS I really wish the Boy Scouts focused on career development a bit more. Our GS Council places senior Girl Scouts on Capitol Hill as volunteer Congressional Aides. The area BS Council does not have a similar program for teen boys.

There is a list on GSUSA for Gold Award Scholarship information. It's mostly women's colleges that issue automatic GA scholarships but there are a couple of co-ed schools. A Gold Award recipient in our council is getting an automatic $5000 scholarship to Randolph-Macon Women's College due to her GA. That plus academic $ will reduce the cost of that school to less than instate at William and Mary (public Virginia school).

Even if my daughter gets no specific $ due to her GA, it has led to her selection in several programs that hopefully will get her into the college of her choice. Again, hoping this will be the same for the younger child.

One thing I love about the Girl Scout camp where our girls have gone through counselor-in-training and wrangler-in-training programs, and have then become counselors and wranglers: all this led to career decisions for 2 of our daughters. Because of their camp experiences, our oldest got 2 degrees in recreation management and our fifth is majoring in equine science. Our others have had good jobs working there that look great on resumes!