Memoirs of a Sea Scout: Entry 005

As I was nosing around at the scout den one afternoon after school, I heard some heated discussion inside between a few people. I paid more attention and realised they were my seniors and the topic of discussion turns out to be the indifference of us junior scouts towards scouting life now.

One of the seniors who I respect said this:

Majority of the junior sea scouts seem to show no interest in sea scouting life. Most of them say its just a waste of time whereas there are some who still think its interesting. They never seem to put much effort and take the initiative to learn knowledge or ask us questions by themselves. If we didn't push them, no progress would be made. What else can we do other than telling them the benefits of scouting and the fun of it? It is something they must learn to like on their own because we cannot force them to do or like what they don't.

I find what he said to be quite true. I admit that there are many junior scouts who are really just not interested at all. We just do not show enough passion. Even my passion for sea scouting is fading. It's truly sad. Is my seniors to be blamed for this or is it just me? As this was running through my head, another senior spoke up.

I agree with what K said. It's true that most of the juniors are now losing interest in scouting life. Most of them are getting bored with what they usually do such as the daily patrol corners. They are also getting bored of the meetings as it is just like they come and learn new stuff every week. In fact, the attendance for the patrol meetings are not really good. Almost half of the members of a patrol only turn up during patrol meetings. Other troops have their meetings by starting it with a football match and followed by knowledge teaching after that. That attracts a lot of members to turn up for meetings and the attendance is very good. I think we could make our weekly patrol meetings more enjoyable for the juniors. We do not need to follow the same thing like other troops are doing during their patrol meetings like playing football. ATL W had already suggested that we should maybe have monkey crawl and vertical climb instead of the same things every week. This can be something new to the juniors and they will enjoy it. Besides that, we can still have other stuff for the juniors. It will be more enjoyable for them during patrol meetings and hopefully more members will turn up for the weekly meetings. Can anybody suggest what more can we do during the patrol meetings to make it more enjoyable and fun?

How true...how true. I actually have a few suggestions to make the meetings more attractive but how do I get the ideas to them? Will they accept what I suggest or will they scold me instead? Should I go see an EXCO to tell them my ideas? I'm very afraid actually because they are just so fierce. What would you do?