You know, this doesn't surprise me as much as I wish it did. Now that I have kids and have to deal with other's people's hang-ups as parents, I've found you never really know what a scumbucket your neighbor is until children are added to the equation. People these days just are not thinking about what they teach their children. Shame on the pack leaders, and shame on the other parents.
How do you know the kid wasn't disrupting things? We only have one side of the story. Maybe he was abusive or tried to stick his dick in another kid's ear or something.
Possibly, but then work with him and the parent. Sounds like nobody talked to her or let her know anything--she just had a sinking feeling that the other parent's were avoiding her. The burden was on the pack leaders to communicate any concerns and try and work something out. They ducked out.
I have to go with GringoTex on this one. The story as written tugs at the heartstrings. But for all we know, her son may have been very disruptive. Or was she gently asked to help manage her son's behavior, and she did not hear the requests. I wouldn't automatically condemn the other parents until we hear their side of the story.
:-/ Anyway, I think the scouts should've been nicer about this, but the emotional comparisons to discriminations and pledges of allegiances are misplaced.
All due respect Gringo and Doctor D, but your attitudes are the kind of discrimination that is being fought here in the first place. There is abundant evidence that children with special needs have a great capacity to thrive when placed in structured social settings with typically developing children. This is both scientific fact and it's also the law, as the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act requires a school system to prove that a child cannot participate in a regular classroom environment before removing him/her from the classroom. The burden is not the other way around for the child to prove he can participate. You cannot assume the child's behavior was a problem, you should assume the opposite. There being no evidence of disruption from this article and the burden being on the Cub Scouts to show some form of disruption, it seems clear the Cub Scout is in the wrong. It's possible the scout troop needed additional supports in place for the child, and it's possible the mother may not have provided that support, although the article suggests she was a den mother and attended every meeting. It's far more likely that the Cub Scouts are perpetuating a problem in our society. This problem is even more severe in that it is visited upon young children by adults. What kind of person tells a seven-year old he's too different to participate?
to contradict that "other scout mothers" stuff, earlier in the article they mentioned the many kids stopped coming. There is more here than what is here, the scouts naturally will NOT comment that will only cause trouble. If its just plain discrimination its wrong, if the kid was causing real issues there should have been attempts to deal with it before this letter. Something is missing here.
Asked about the controversy on the campaign trail, President Bush said, "I think the young cub scout should be executed. It shouldn't matter that his IQ is a little low when you consider the crimes he committed. . . . [rove whispers in his ear] . . . . oh, he's not on death row? Then I think he should be excluded from the scouts for trying to stick his dick in some other kids ear."
FWIW, when I was in Boy Scouts we had a mentally retarded member, who was technically too old to be in scouts, but his siblings and father were very involved in the troop and everyone was cool about it and looked past whatever rules would have barred him. Of course, he seldom caused problems. He was a tad annoying on camp outs and such since he couldn't really do anything himself, but he is a good guy, and his family was fantastic.
You're on to something. If there were no attempts to deal with any "real issues" before this letter was sent, that in and of itself is wrong and discriminatory. The better guess is since there's no discussion of the accommodations that were tried and failed, nothing was tried. So far the only evidence you have is one mother saying she never saw a problem. Assuming there was a problem despite no evidence being provided of a problem is part of the attitudes that need to change towards children with special needs.
All I said was that we haven't heard the other side of the story. You seem to be treating the reporting of an activist alternative free weekly that failed to gather comment from the other side as balanced evidence presented in a courtroom.
I realize I'm being strident, but you also made some assumptions about what the other side of the story might be. The Cub Scouts did comment in the article and nothing in the article suggested what the other side of the story might be-- that they tried and were unable to accommodate this particular child. It's not so much balanced evidence as it is that I don't think you should be tipping the scales based on assumptions.
I found this quote from the Boy Scout spokeperson to be a bit chilling: "The pack has made a determination." It's like voting someone off of Survivor or killing Piggy in "Lord of the Flies".
The statements of the regional and pack Cub Scout leaders sound like standard operating procedure in situations where legal action may occur: say as little as possible for whatever you say can and will be used against you by the opposite side. I'm not saying the pack leaders were justified angels or that they were discriminating ogres. But my BS meter is going off that there may be more to the story than is reported. My kid was in a Boy Scout troop with 2 deaf kids and the others got a chance to learn sign language. It's hard to believe (although not impossible) that this kid's pack would be so callous.
What the hell is with everyone getting their knickers all in a knot about this? They're a club. The whole point of a club is to exclude people so those in the club could feel better about themselves. What kind of pride is their in being a scout if a retarted kid can be a scout as well. What's next, a nerdy kid not allowed in a fraternity shocker?
Man, that's so retarded. The kid was probably one of them crazy retards. You know the kind of retards who go ape shlt if they don't get their milk and cookies and who can beat a grizzly bear to death with their fists.
how nice that these poor poor scout leader dicks have so many people here to blindly make up hypothetical excuses for them
Kind of like the club known as "BigSoccer Boards > NSR - Not Soccer Related > Politics & Current Events" compains to the Mods about posters it doesn't like.
I think that the above two posters, far from being discriminatory, are being (in a wise-ass way, maybe) open to the entirety of the issue in this specific case; I'm not sure if there is enought there for any of us to extrapolate to anyone's views on the larger issues you correctly describe, nor enough to condemn anyone for offering to consider all sides of the issue.