So you thought it was just pinning four plastic wheels (provided) onto a wooden block (provided) using four small nails (provided) and then running your creation down the club's track (provided)? Or as an organizer, you thought the cubs would line up and take turns letting their cars run down the track to see who's was the fastest? Not so fast! There is a lot more to it than that, a whole lot more.

Pinewood Derby is an institution because it is a microcosm of life, and it can change lives. Pinewood Derby is an experience that can be good or bad depending upon the success of its organization and management, but no matter, parents and cubs who participate will learn many things they never expected to learn, and these lessons can be profound and last a lifetime.

As the inventor of Pinewood Derby timers for timing race times of cars from the start gate to the finish line, I feel somewhat responsible for tampering with this institution, and perhaps altering it for the better or worse. As I sat on a bench on a hill overlooking the San Francisco bay on a bright sunny and clear day, with sea birds and ground squirrels all around, my attention was drawn more to a bronze plaque on the seat of the bench. It reads, "In memory of our Dad - Thank you for the start in life you gave us". And I reflected on the fun my own son and I had in our shared Pinewood Derby experience 22 years ago. And I had these thoughts.

Pinewood Derby races are for scouts in their preteen years and are conducted by parents. Scouts are focused more on having fun and discovery. The parents, on the other hand, are focused more on organization and success. Fathers, in particular, can get these factors confused and sometimes forget to throttle their own egos and enthusiasm. Woe is the scout who's dad thinks that a Pinewood Derby race is an opportunity for dad to demonstrate his own engineering prowess without his son's contribution; his scout may take home a trophy, but what lessons has his son learned? Moms are often a bit wiser (see Please don't cry.) It is better to have a dad or mom who is a patient, understanding, and nurturing mentor than someone obsessed (to put it gently). Pinewood Derby's can be exhilarating and exciting to some, but complicated and perplexing to others, so never forget to put sportsmanship first.

Pinewood Derby is a chance for Scouts to learn about participating, trying hard, winning, loosing, learning, experimenting, playing, and celebrating. It's a chance for dads and moms to demonstrate mentoring skills and patience, to understand motivations and needs, and to participate in development of manual skills, social skills, and sportsmanship. Don't overlook the opportunity to provide shared experiences with other dads, moms, and scouts during the designing, building, and testing stages of pre-race preparations. There can be a lot of satisfaction from teamwork as well as from individual work.

The opportunities for learning are practically endless so shouldn't become an obsession, at least not in this one event alone. Consider lessons of craftsmanship, physics, strategy, execution, and social dynamics.

The craftsmanship lessons can include the use of tools such as saws, chisels, sanders, drills, paint brushes, and more.

The physics lessons can delve into statics (for example balance arm scales for weighing a car), kinematics, dynamics, gravity, inertia, momentum, potential energy, kinetic energy, aerodynamics, friction, lubrication, wear, alignment, and much more. Don't forget that physics lessons can include the recognition and appreciation of randomness and chance (such as resulting in a car's interferences with the guide rail down the center of a lane). Of course the physics can include the use of mathematics such as arithmetic, trigonometry, geometry, calculus, differential equations, statistics, and more if desired.

The strategy lessons can include questioning purpose and decisions about balancing time and effort against expected results. Strategy lessons can also include the use of stealth, tricks (either documented or trade-secrets), elements of surprise, different objectives (such as artistic design against functional design for performance), exploitation of crowd dynamics, and (especially for the lawyers) alternative interpretations of the rules.

The lessons about execution of course will entail making sacrifices, meeting deadlines, and just doing it. And with lessons learned hopefully will come satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.

The lessons in social dynamics, not overlooking sportsmanship, can include lessons about leadership, mentoring, teamwork, individual efforts, sharing, supporting, respecting, inter- and intra-family dynamics, listening, observing, influencing, judging, and learning from your own mistakes as well as those of others. Don't forget lessons about awareness and control of emotions and feelings.

Within each of these categories for lessons, there are lessons to be learned about paying attention to detail as well as to the "big picture". And don't forget the importance of memories long after the dust has cleared.

So is all of this overwhelming? Well, yes it is! Just like life itself, and that's my point. But please remember that an event for Scouts should be primarily for Scouts to learn and discover. It is my opinion that, "it's not whether you won or lost, but what you learned from trying." And incidentally, my motivation for introducing Pinewood Derby timers to Scouting was primarily for helping to assure parents a means to run an efficient and fair derby event. Providing a quantitative means for experimentation in improving design, construction, and maintenance of Pinewood Derby cars was only a secondary motivation.

Copyright © 2011 Novelthink