Cub Scouting and Civics

How does a Cub Scout do his duty to his Country?  How do we break this difficult concept down into something a Cub can understand and learn from?  Some might suggest that a Cub Scout can't understand the complexities of civics.  While this may or may not be true, to Cub Scouts duty to God and country are core values.  Cub Scouts believe that the youth of today need to learn about the democratic values, fundamental beliefs, and constitutional principles of American society that unite all Americans.

The leaders of Pack 230 wrestled with the topic of civics, struggling first to identify what it really encompasses and then to develop a series of age appropriate lessons.  We ultimately identified the following list of American democratic values and fundamental beliefs as ones which, if understood and upheld by Scouts, will guide them toward honoring the Cub Scout Promise to "...do my duty, to God and my Country."  We intend to keep this list in mind as we develop civics lessons for our Cub Scouts.

Civics Project One - Supporting our Citizen Soldiers

Concept:
The concept for this project dates back to WWII and 1941.  At that time, the United States had millions of military personnel deployed in Europe and the Pacific.  In October of 1941, a group of first graders from Brooklyn, New York wrote letters to the uncle of a fellow classmate.  Their simple, sincere words and thoughts connected these young children in a very personal way with a single service man fighting in the Pacific to protect their country.  Though we don't know the impact the service man's letters had on those 23 first graders in Brooklyn, we know that the children's letters had such an impact on the soldier in the Pacific that he kept all of their letters for over 60 years. Click below to see scanned copies of three actual letters.

Peter's Letter  -   Donald's Letter  -   William's Letter

Project:
Our country currently has thousands of service men and women deployed around the world. Our plan was to first identify friends and family members of those in our Pack and school community who are engaged in military service on behalf of our Country.

After identifying some of these soldiers, sailors, and airmen, we had each Scout "adopt" at least one person on our list.  The Scouts identified on a map where their soldiers were deployed and then tried to learn, through conversations with the service members' families, what duties each person performs in the military.  The Scouts later presented to the Pack what they learned. Finally, each Scout was asked to write a letter to his adopted service member, and each Den sent a small care package as a way of saying "thank you" for serving our Country.

Civics Project Two - Supporting our Part-Time Citizen Soldiers

Concept:
America's professional soldiers have historically been called upon to support our national objectives abroad.  But, within the past decade, we have seen another group of 'citizen soldiers' increasingly called up to augment our professional troops.  These part-time Reservists and Guardsmen leave their civilian jobs, often voluntarily, to answer our country's call to duty.  We recognize that these soldiers face unique challenges that our full-time soldiers do not, and we are trying to show them our support as only Scouts can!

Project:
Our Wolf Den has "adopted" a US General currently supervising over 900 soldiers in Iraq!  His name is:

BG STEVEN J. HASHEM
COMMANDING GENERAL
TF 353 MULTINATIONAL FORCE-IRAQ
CIVIL MILITARY OPERATIONS DIRECTORATE

How's that for cool?

General Hashem's 'day job' is working at Lockheed Martin along with our Wolf Den Leader.  We sent a care package and holiday greetings to his troops.   We will try to maintain contact with General Hashem and monitor the needs of his troops.