Saturday, July 31, 2010
Scouting: Fighting for relevance
Posted by Max Brantley on Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 8:10 AM
- Boy Scouts of America
- AT THE JAMBOREE: Boy Scouts assemble.
The National Scout Jamboree provides an occasion for the New York Times to review the Boy Scouts, whose numbers have declined sharply. Its exclusionary policies — gay youths, atheists, girls (except at the Explorer level) aren't allowed — give some pause. Its problems with predatory leaders, though relatively small in number, undoubtedly factor into parents' evaluations. I suspect changing times and interests play the biggest role in declining numbers.
I was a Boy Scout. An Eagle Scout even. I pushed my son into trying Scouting, but he was unenthusiastic and I found myself unable to argue the point. In retrospect, I couldn't remember what held me in Scouting so long; maybe lack of anything else to do. I know some true believers, too (at least one of whom is on duty at the jamboree currently.)
I guess I'm kind of conflicted. I'm curious what others might think. It might be that a lack of interest is the dominant theme, which would say a lot.
It's Saturday. Fire away.
Comments (88)
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Well, I was not a scout and I can only think of one friend who was. He reached eagle scout or something. Seemed like a geeky group to me. Maybe it appeals to city boys who don't get the chance to be in the outdoors like us country boys. No telling how much molestation and sex play has happened on scouting trips. Maybe that's just an unfair and unfounded assumption, but I'd bet it's second to the Catholic Church.
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I was an unenthusiastic scout in the mid-eighties, as well; I was even in a town of 18,000 with not much to do but Scouts for much of the year.
The only reason I showed up every week was to go outside and play tag afterward.
My best friend, who twisted my arm into joining, eventually became an Eagle Scout long after I stopped attending the troop functions. I guess he turned out better than me - he lives in Australia now.
He was a committed Democrat, too. In 5th grade, our elementary school held a mock Presidential debate and election for the whole school. He was the Lloyd Bentsen to my Michael Dukakis, and we carried that elementary school in Hannibal, MO 60% to
40%. It'd be nice to have that Democratic vote back in the US.....maybe he votes absentee?
I was a boy scout nearly forty years ago in the little town where I grew up. My scout leader was a good man who spent a good deal of his time and money to take us camping once a month and to teach us how to sharpen knives and tie knots. There was never any funny business, and he was never racist, homophobic, or overly religious--that stuff never came up. It *was* geeky and nerdy, but it was also fun and I got a lot out of it. I understand how times have changed, and why the Scouts are passe, but I don't regret my time there.
While I think that bad publicity about sexual molestation along with discrimination of various forms certainly did not help the boy scouts, I also think that a decline in scouting might be part of the same trend that shows fewer and fewer people hunting and fishing.
All of these might be related to the urbanization of the world. Everywhere in the world, people move from the country to the city (or at least the suburbs) , even in Arkansas. City people interact differently with nature. They might like to go hiking on well-marked trails, but be less inclined to explore the woods beyond the trails.
The ubiquity of air-conditioning might have something to do with it also. It is a rather recent development to have centrally air-conditioned homes, schools, malls, offices, etc. Kids who are used to air-conditioning might not find scouting, hunting, and fishing in the heat and humidity to have very much appeal.
There's also a lot of kids addicted to electronics: computer games, video games, texting, iPods. Perhaps today's kids choose to explore the Internet instead of the woods.
Finally, it might also have something to do with the shift to a service economy. When I was a kid, we worked on our own cars, houses, farm equipment, etc. Our fathers worked in factories or as tradesmen. People made things, fixed things, etc. People knew how to do things with their hands. When I was a kid, one man down the street worked the night shift in an airplane factory. During the daytime, he built his own model railroad. He didn't buy the cars and locomotives from a hobby shop---he made them from scratch. With the increases in automation and the shipping of manufacturing overseas, fewer and fewer people grow up surrounded by people who know how to do things for themselves. Scouting, hunting, and fishing are all about doing things for yourself, instead of hiring someone else to do them for you. People are less comfortable with those kinds of activities today.
I was a boy/cub scout for only 3/4 meetings (65+ years ago if I remember correctly) but it didn't take long to find out that they catered mostly to the praying christian adherents and straight whitey's whose fathers probably attended KKK meetings and burned crosses at the drop of the hat. I witnessed a lot of crosses burned back then in NC. Scary as hell and something I will never forget. I can't imagined what it must have been for the non whitey's.
Why doesn't some progressive group come along to replace the scouts with an inclusive group? Need something to replace the chambers of commerce too.
I was a cub scout a webelo and a boy scout. Moving back to the farm in south Arkansas made the scouts irrelevant because every day was spent farming, gardening, hunting or fishing.
Will never forget my one and only camping trip with scouts... was somewhere in the middle of Nebraska (outside Grand Island, iirc). We visited a huge observatory as Jupiter was visible. The night was bitter cold, below zero, before counting wind chill which was a new thing at the time. Anyway it was cold enough to instantly burn your skin if exposed to the air inside a tent. And windy enough we were certain we were going to blow away.
It wasn't fun... it was a test. The kind of test only mother nature can give. Whether through scouts or some other avenue kids need a lot more of that these days.
I can still see Jupiter exactly as it appeared through that giant telescope nearly 40 years ago.
Do they have x box merit badges nowadays?
I think my scouting experiences paralleled Max's. There wasn't much else to do in a small Arkansas town in the 1960s.
I don't know how typical my experience was, but for me, growing up in south Arkansas (Max's statement about joining the scouts because there was little else to do resonates here), the Scouts ironically provided a young gay boy the opportunity to excel at "manly" activities from which I was otherwise usually excluded.
Not that I knew I was gay at the time, though I was definitely tagged as gay from grade school forward, along with a group of other bookish, non-athletic boys. And for those raised in strict Sunday School-oriented families, the idea of any kind of sexual attraction, period, never reared its head in Scout outings or otherwise. Most of us were Andrew Tobias's best little boys in the world.
In the Scouts, I found I not only enjoyed but excelled in woodcraft-type activities--more so than the "manly" boys who were so often promoted and empowered in school and other places. To do well in the woods takes a certain ability to be still and notice things. My father had laid a foundation for this, I suppose, by taking my brothers and me on many walks in the woods, pointing out this or that, teaching us.
For whatever reason, that ability to be still and notice seemed less prevalent among the Scouts who were men's men. They got lost in the woods, couldn't find what they needed to survive, bumbled around and trampled over the markers they needed in order to orient themselves.
We sissy boys flat did better on survival outings in the woods. Given a gun to hunt, I surprised everyone by my ability to aim and shoot better than my peers who had been tagged as male models. And my father, who definitely preferred one of my brothers who fit the male norm better than I did, admitted that I was by far the best fisherman in the family--again, fishing takes the ability to sit still and notice.
All of this (not to mention, Baden-Powell's own murky, twisted sexual history) makes the decision of the Scouts to exclude gays ludicrous. If they admitted youngsters who identify as gay, they might find they had some outstanding Scouts on their hands.
I was a cub scout and boy scout. For me the week long summer camp experiences were the best. I went on to spend 6 summers on camp staff. I started out as a Kitchen Engineer (dish washer) and later worked my way up to water front staff (swimming, canoeing, rowing). I enjoyed teaching campers the skills to earn their merit badges in these areas.
My father was a "successful" scoutmaster and, because of that, was recruited during WWII for a job with the local area Boy Scouts council as an Assistant Scout Executive. (He lacked the normal college degree qualification, but most of their draft-age executives were fighting the war, so they waived the education requirement. Pop was too old to be drafted or to volunteer.) So I was into scouting, naturally.
I earned enough merit badges to become an Eagle Scout -- and have always wished I had earned more after reaching that "rank." I have appreciated having just an introduction to a lot of things that frequently come in handy: how to tie a square knot or do two half-hitches or a taut-line-hitch; how to cook "hunter's stew"; elementary first-aid; how to lay firewood and start it without getting too frustrated!
Scouting's decline in numbers? Pop loved the outdoors. He grew up in Cleburne County. He hunted and fished from childhood. When we visited my paternal grandparents, who still lived in Cleburne County, he took me wading up the Little Red River, fishing for bass, when The Narrows of Greers Ferry Lake was a stretch of rapids with intermittent pools between verticle cliffs that were (surely!) 200 feet high. His love for and comfort in the outdoors was the reason for his success as a scoutmaster. He quit as a Boy Scouts executive after the war because, he said, the organization had put the emphasis on increasing the number of troops and the number of boys enrolled instead of the quality of the program.
I was a moderately enthusiastic scout. Family tradition and all. As an adult, I supported scouting for a while, but since they codified homophobia as part of their creedo, I cannot stand by scouting any more. When I wa a scout, there was no trace of religion in it unless you decided to do the GOd and Country award. In my case, it was doing that which led me to seminary 15 years later. My scoutmasters were good and honest men who gave their time and my experience with scouting was positive. I think there is value in scouting and I wish that BSA would reclaim the honor of scouting, eliminate discriminatory policies and return to being a resource for young men who need a positive place to put their energy.
Maybe that decline is an indicator of where our culture has gone and that isn't a good indicator? I was a Boy Scout and can't think of a finer organization. Before political correctness reared its ugly head, politicians were taught that you NEVER attacked that organization because it was a no win situation. Now it has become fashionable to attack them. It is a wonder that they still exist. Obviously obama doesn't have much use for them. He considered an appearance on The View to be more important than addressing them. Maybe that is an indication of what kind of man he is!
I agree with Hume N. Bein and William Lindsey.
I think during the summer the last thing a modern boy wants to do is step outside the house. Remember only a few years ago, when there would be tons of kids out on bicycles this time of year? I never see that now. Heck, that's how city kids spent their summers--on a bike. Country boys, not so much, because gravel roads and bicycle seats were hell on the nuts.
Boys nowadays don't have much creativity. They don't build tree houses (urbanization), don't have secret clubs (unless it's to shoot the local crips), and don't play "guns" much either (which requires an imagination). In fact, I don't know WHAT they do. They're quite smart, but lack basic imaginative and creative skills.
Boys nowadays don't know how to improvise. How to use wire in place of tape, for example. I've noticed in working with modern kids, that if they don't have the exact tool for the job, they see the job as impossible to perform. Scouting requires the knowledge to improvise and think on your feet. Modern kids don't get that.
As a gay kid, I was in cub scouts, Webloes and 4H and I loved every minute of it. Williams statements were my exact experience! I took to woodcraft pretty damn quickly and had more skills than most. I could build all sorts of things, often imperfectly, but I could still visualize the end result of the projects. I loved building bridges of branches and tree houses, trap making, growing all sorts of things.
I didn't go into Scouting very long. I was informed by the boys in my group that I wasn't liked and that I'd get "corn holed" if I wasn't careful. Threatened by other boys with rape, I left.
Jeepers, my experiences weren't nearly as exciting or threatening as some of those described here. I joined the Cub Scouts because my friends did and they served treats afterward. I quit the Boy Scouts because the meetings were opposite Laugh-In. I think that's largely the story; for an urban kid, it was something to do with your friends, but you didn't do it if it conflicted with something you'd rather do, and there are so many other somethings now kids don't want to make the commitment.
My son was a Cub Scout and enjoyed it. His best friend's mom was the troop leader, which didn't hurt.
Twice they got to go spend the weekend at Camp Orr, and a good time was had by all, as they say, but that child was only about ten and was totally, flat-out exhausted when he woke up on MOnday for school. When they went to Camp Orr, several former Boy Scouts including a few Eagle Scouts went with them. I just drove a load up there. And went back for them Sunday.
they had a great time, but it exhausted them. I found his little shirt last year at Xmas and donated it to the current Cub Scout troop because they were going to march in the Xmas parade and some kids didn't have shirts. After that many years I was very proud of myself.
i will say that he and his friends camped out in my front yard dozens of times, swam and swam and swam, and spent more time outside as kids than in front of the nintendo. Having a friend over to do these things with seemed to be what got him away from it. So it was well worth it.
He enjoyed Scouts, but as far as spending so much time at that age, it just was not practical. Seems like almost any activity he took up during the school year took up all his time. Soph. year he played baseball (I had a great time) but many a day he would come home from baseball practice at six, eat what I had cooked for him, and go directly to bed. He'd get up early to do his homework. I dont know if this is too much for a kid that's still growing or not, i just know he was tired.
that was the reason why most of his friends said they didnt play football -- took up all your time, can't work, and theyre just hitting the age when a vehicle is, of course, an acute necessity, but he did have a great time on the baseball team.
I can't think of a finer experience and a more nobler organization to guide young boys and young men into adulthood. The character building experience and the skills that I learned have been invaluable in adult life. Bravo Zulu to the scouts!
Harvey, my goodness yes, we really have declined as a society from the days in which Lord Baden-Powell founded the Scouts, haven't we?
Here's Marjorie Garber's description of Baden-Powell in her book "Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety" (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 171:
"Baden-Powell cross-dressed, admired photographs of nude boys, and lived with a male fellow-officer in a relationship he himself compared to marriage. He also founded the Boy Scouts, an organization that promoted homosocial male bonding as the best way to build character."
Interesting, isn't it, that the organization he founded now keeps the gays out, and that it has become politically correct to question that exclusion--particularly given the proclivities of the founder of the organization?
Your hostility towards the scouts and the noble things they do for boys is so typical of an attitude that embraces the downward spiral of our culture. It really isn't surprising. What will fill the void when the scouts are gone? Probably they will be replaced by gangs, drugs and more young boys in prison who wouldn't have been there had the scouts provided an alternative.
I was fortunate. I came from an intact family with a Father and Mother who loved me. Many of these boys today have no stable home environment. This provides the ONLY stability and character building experience they will have. If you destroy the scouts you just add another institution to the list that won't be there to stop the decay. God help us!
I was a Cub Scout as well, started to move up to Boy Scouts when I got old enough and transferred over to a new school district, but my dad pitched a fit and so the Cub badges and arrow point were about as far as I got. I waited awhile, and joined ROTC and eventually the Army, picking up along the way most of the stuff I probably would have learned a little earlier in the Scouts ;-)
The gay thing was something I never paid any attention to. I was pretty much a grown man before I realized that "gay" was something other than an extraordinarily happy state of mind ;-) So I don't think I really missed anything there.
I still serve from time to time as a merit badge counselor, and am pretty well impressed with the scouting program as a way to get the youngsters back in the outdoors and learning to lead an active lifestyle... something other than vegging out in front of the TV or video game console. If I had to do it over again, I'd probably do the Scout thing over again.
Might as well make my own contribution re: scouting. As a "military brat", I was never anyplace long enough to form any lasting friendships; all I could do was take whatever opportunities were available, wherever we were located, to make a few friends, experience growing up and learning things for a while with them, and then be whisked off to the next new place, new school, new experiences and new friends.
I got involved in cub scouting when we lived in the desert (literally) in Southern California, when I was in the third and fourth grades. There was no TV (except for fuzzy, B&W local programming from 4 to 10 PM), and little else to do outside of school, and I enjoyed getting together at the den mom's house and working on "projects" together with other boys my age once a week--I remember when the den dad helped us build one-stringed "ukuleles" out of cigar boxes and 1x2 boards, marking the "frets" in pencil and learning to play "Oh, Susanna" or something using our cub scout knives to slide from pitch to pitch for one of the periodic scout gatherings, stuff like that.
But then we moved to a new station south of San Diego, and I never saw those boys again. I remained a "scout" only through my subscription to "Boys Life" magazine, and the scout manuals (and my dad's Navy training manuals) I had in my book collection. Baseball became my new pastime, and that was the extent of my scouting experience.
Meanwhile, I got lots of outdoor experience with my own dad, my grandfathers and my one remaining great-grandfather at the time. I had many great friends--if only briefly--who now only exist in my distant and pleasant memories.
I wish the scouts well, and I, too, hope they can get their program into a more relevant position in the culture. Maybe one day.
I take it you're referring to me when you speak about "hostility" to the Scouts, Harvey.
And so I invite you to read my initial posting in this thread.
Where's the hostility?!
Why as Boy Scouting lost its appeal? Unless something has changed since I was last active in Scouting 15 years ago, it's a low-tech activity in a very high-tech world. We're all overstimulated and the pace of scouting always struck me as being more leisurely. Even if that isn't the case, I can see where the perception might hurt their cause.
For the most part, those that bash the Scouts have no clue what they are talking about. Some teachers have sex with students. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take your kids to school. Some priests have abused alter boys. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go to church. And the scandals within the Boy Scouts certainly doesn't mean that the average pack or troop has anything wrong with it.
Why would the Scouts be relevant today? Because it is the one place where you can go and get knowledge on a little bit of everything. The entire world is a few keystrokes away from today's kids... but they need more hands-on time with subjects that they can only read about on Wikipedia. The Boy Scouts can offer that opportunity.
Harvey would probably think Penn & Teller are hostile to the Scouts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceOb1-O8rPc
I hope the scouts survive and prosper for the sake of the boys and for the sake of this country's survival.
Harvey has been busy taking a molehill and reshaping it into a mountain. The premise was that Boy Scout enrollment has slipped. Guess what, so has model railroading, stamp collecting, coin collecting, and even to spinning a top, and mainly for the same reason. We have created a culture of instant reward and ""me first" which doesn't lent itself to group activities.
In a group, you may not end up be #1 everytime. Even high school coaches know to push every kid that he will be the next/first one from the school to be pro, etc. We have also over-organized a lot of the kid's time so they don't have the time for what we considered "kid things" like riding your bike into the leaf pile, just tossing a basketball, or slipping off to catch a fish. Look at your kid's/grandkid's schedules-the parents are constantly in the car taking them here and there. I am amazed at Max's list of top scholars at all of the activities they are able to be involved with and still have a grade point average over 4.0. They certainly have mastered one skill that will maintain them throughout their worklife-time management.
Boy Scouts is just one of the many activities the kids have to choose from and since most are dependent on parents for transportation (they could walk but that is so 20th century), so unless the parents were involved and enjoyed it or the family still camps and travels a lot, Scouting just isn't attractive.
And no, Harvey, it isn't a liberal plot. Actually it is a bunch of profit-making conservative organizations trying to attract profit-producing kids to an ever-increasing group of activities. Why do you think all those churches have built those "family life centers" so their kids won't have a chance to experience life among the rest of mankind which aren't just like them.
Couldn't, I agree with you wholeheartedly: "Harvey has been busy taking a molehill and reshaping it into a mountain."
Or, to put the point another way, he's trying to bring the mountain to Mohammed.
John Aravosis' take at America Blog about why a fine organization, the Scouts, is bleeding members and not attracting new ones in a generation that no longer cottons to exclusion of gay and lesbian folks from the social mainstream: http://gay.americablog.com/2010/07/boy-sco….
It's about the exclusion.
What a crock, pookah! Grow-up and live in the real world and stop trying to hijack threads to promote your personal ideological delusions.
I was a Cub Scout, Boy Scout and Explorer. I attended one National Jamboree (Colorado Springs 1960), several regional Jamborees and many Boy Scout Camps. It was fun and my friends and I enjoyed the outdoor activities and learning both woodscraft and urban practical knowledge.
I don't remember Webelos as an organization, but as a patch for older Cub Scouts. I don't remember that the Eagle Scout quest for badges became a grind after Life scout and I didn't and still don't care to associate with the Eagle Scouts in my troop. About the age where we could drive cars, our explorer post fired our Explorer Post Master (he was a joyless man, rigid and obsessive about working for merit badges) and went out and found a man, ex WarII veteran, who worked at a local sporting goods store to be our Post Master/Leader.
We were into trotlines, jug and set hook fishing, fishing, hunting rabbits, quail, deer, squirrels and spent a lot of time camping and hunting on a local slough off the Quachita River. Among ourselves, we called our Explorer Post the Lower Forty Hunting, Fishing and Mudhole Club (since we spent a lot of time extracting jeeps and our 'woods cars' from the inevitable washouts on the roads, tire tracks, along the Quachita River). The name was in honor of our bible Field & Stream and like the original, as is characterics of teen-age boys in High School the club usually had a jug of ol' stumpblower on the weekend trips.
The Explorer Post was not organized scouting (as some might know it), but it was a graduate school of scouts for hunters and fishers to us. Scouting was a good experience for me growing up, but Hume Bien and Spunkrat nailed it. There are plagues of deer walking around because those weekend expeditions are not as attractive to maturing teen-agers these days (also because deer hunting for most of us is and enjoyable phase rather than a lifetime avocation).
I enjoyed scouting, learned and saw a great deal that I would not have otherwise. I learned and developed skills for camping, woodcraft, swimming, canoeing, hunting and fishing that have been valuable to me throughout my life. I feel sorry for those who don't/didn't have the experiences. But it is what it is . . . a structured recreational organization for boys. The motto, laws and oath are great things in an recreational organization for those coming of age.
It would be difficult, highly impractical and sociologically unsound (IMO) to run a Scout troop of boys and girls, but both sexes need those sociological, coming of age rituals and experiences. The really sad part of the organizations handling of gays is that you can't IMO live up to your oath, and uphold the Scout Laws and discriminate.
"On my honor, I will do my best, To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight."
"A Scout is: Trustworthy; Loyal; Helpful; Friendly; Courteous; Kind; Obedient; Cheerful; Thrifty; Brave; Clean; and Reverent."
SisterTJ and others have found me a bit priggish in my attitudes about how one should live and comport oneself. The Scout duties, laws and motto are a great part of that and a valuable part of what I learned.
However, back to the main question. Is Scouting valid today. I believe it is, but if BSA can not attract members, then it will eventually wither and disappear.
Why are you poo pooing me for defending scouting? As you said, 'do my duty to God and my country'. That is the issue. Their duty to God includes the scriptures clearly identifying homosexuality as a sin. How can they do their duty to God if they wink at his laws.
I am glad you speak favorably of them. I was very active in my youth and contribute to them as an adult. Of all of our institutions they are one of the best. We need them! Respect organizations who live up to their oath even when severely attacked by our culture. That is a rarity in our day.
"Why doesn't some progressive group come along to replace the scouts with an inclusive group?"
Campfire Boys and Girls and 4H.
My son hated and I mean hated Boy Scouts for the year we forced him to go (I was a Girl Scout till I was about 15 and loved Scouting) but it really had more to do with the leaders (yes I could have stepped up but I was already homeschooling him and thought he needed a break from mom and my husband worked hours opposite of all the other leaders so he could never go) who saw it as something to check off for their kids and a bit of a competition instead of a way for boys to learn and grow and have fun...they never seemed to have fun.
In the end we ended up leaving scouting and joined a 4H group which did a lot of the things the BS did (camping, archery, shooting) but with girls.
I am an active Den Leader gearing up for my third year. My opinion regarding the decline of scouting has little or nothing to do with who does or does not attend/appear at National Jamboree, the boys' sexual orientation, or anything of a political nature.
The enjoyment the boys in my den experience is directly related to whether or not Mom and/or Dad bother to get them to the meeting/activity. The actions we as parent exhibit to our children establish a norm for our kids. If they see that it is OK to be late to a meeting, then in their minds it is OK to be late for church, work, court.....If it is OK to attend a meeting and be ill-prepared.....not so easy.
I have spent countless hours preparing materials for my boys that is provided both to them and to their parent directly, only to have the parents ask the same question over and over. If they would bother to hold up their end of the deal, it would be so much better for the boys. Of my boys, the ones who have parents that make it a point to fulfill their end of the bargain have had great experiences at the meetings, day camps, and overnight camps.
Regarding being ill-prepared for a meeting. My boys were asked to present a collection they might have at home. Trust me - the two or three boys who had parents that didn't ensure they got to each of the meetings were embarassed that they had not met that requirement for advancement. You can bet that is a lesson they won't soon forget - not to mention, they made sure their parents knew they needed to take their collections to the next meeting or be left behind.
Is scouting relevant? I don't know. Is it relevant in our society to simply slow down and listen to a young boy as he tries oh so hard to meet all the expectations heaped on him by society to do well in school, sports, and everywhere else? I know that in our house (and in the houses of my siblings who were also scouts and are now scout leaders): Yes. It is extremely relelvant. Not to mention, when you see the elation on the face of the shy boy who makes the presentation or the clumsy boys who wins the race, or the boy who finally understands he is among friends and it is OK to make a mistake - it is the best sight in the world and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Harvey still is hung up on the Talmud, the Jewish bible. You remember the one that says don't touch the skin of a pig (except football, it's in the footnotes) and another 600 rules.
Hey Harvey, what would you think if there might be a sequel to the Old Testament that overrides the Old Covenant and replaces it with a New Covenant that seems to negate almost all of those 600 rules unless you can find a rule in the sequel.
I'm fine with the Boy Scouts while being aware of all the things Max says about them, which are true. I've got bigger fish to fry than to worry about the Scouts.
Looking back on my time as a Cub and Boy Scout, I really shouldn't be so kind to the Boy Scouts. My Cub Scout troop was run by mothers of the boys. If there was a man involved, I don't remember him. I guess because there wasn't a man involved, we never went camping. We'd meet in the basement of a small Methodist Church and do busy work stuff, make a few things of so little interest, I can't remember any of them.
Then someone's mother, maybe mine, decided we needed a Cub Scout outing and arranged for us to tour OK Processors, our version of a Tyson's plant and off we went. Us boys were what, 7 or 8 or maybe 9 and until then, I had never wondered where my food came from. It came from Ma's stove to our table.....good enough for me. But I'll never forget 8 or 10 of us showing up at the door of the OK plant and filing in having no idea of what we'd see next.
What we saw were several men pulling chickens from wooden cages off the back of a semi-truck. The men would flip the flopping chickens upside down so that their legs would be caught by an overhead chain mechanism. Ouch! The chickens didn't like it and their flopping and squawking doubled as they floated passed us, above our little heads.
Next was a double row of old women wearing full length formerly white aprons. They sat on tall stools on either side of a concrete trough running along the floor in front of their knees. Armed with great long butcher knives, these women calmly chatted away as they reached up grabbing the chickens by the head and slitting their throats. The trough was in place to catch the draining blood, but since this was afternoon, the old ladies aprons were blood spattered like something out of a William Castle horror movie.
Next the still flopping dying chickens entered a large hot machine that burned off most of their feathers. The only good thing about the heat and the stink, was that Ms Chicken was no longer flopping when she came out the other end.
To wrap this up...by this point every Cub Scout was white as a sheet and sick to their stomachs. It's a wonder we didn't add some boy vomit to the trough of chicken blood running at our feet. What a horrible idea! I didn't eat chicken again until I was in my early 20s.
My Boy Scout troop was led by a WWI veteran who clearly believed America had lost that war because of a general softness of the US troops. His aim was to make us America's finest fighting men! Insert a series of disasters, punishments, and ass chewing here.
I was drummed out of my Boy Scout troop along with several other kids who Capt. Brogley decided lacked the stuff good Boy Scouts should be made of. Looking back I believe he almost implied we might be French. End of the DBI Scouting career.
I believe I entered scouting because I grew up in the days of no cable TV. My father always thought I might be gay, so I'm sure he wanted me to be toughened up....too long ago to remember the beginning. It was also the era of kids playing outside. Who knows...maybe my parents were Swingers and wanted me out of the house? The Boy Scouts didn't hurt me...well, except for the feeling of inferiority I got by being thrown out of Scouting.
I have never enjoyed the great outdoors. Bugs bite me and some grasses and weeds make me break out. It's hot out there and mostly I learned how badly my little feet hurt after a 17 mile hike over White Rock mountain. Some of us need to be wussies, imagine if all 300 plus million of us headed for the woods each weekend? Upon reflection....I don't much like the Boy Scouts at all. But by all means, be my guest if you do.
PS mag and I bought our girls all the outside kid equipment we never had and looked forward to the girls having the time of their lives out in our properly fenced yard. No go!
All that equipment died over a period of years due to exposure to heat and cold, sun, snow, and sleet. It was a total waste of money as if we had bought them both Coon Skin caps and Roy Rogers cap pistols. Like it or not, most kids don't do outside....and I don't blame them. We've spent millions of years advancing to a life of total climate control in front of TV, computer screens, next to Nintendo & Xbox players.
The great outdoors made me sunburned and itchy. I wish mag could bury me in the house. I will forever be a pissed off dead guy in my plot out in the wilds of Roselawn Cemetery!
Once upon a time scouting was relevant. We learned about knots, fires & keeping knives sharp; about navigating day or night, using the stars or a compass. But I wouldn’t eat the fish any more, you’ve got to take a garbage bag for all the trash and with the depleted ozone layer you’ve got wear protection where ever you go. I enjoyed learning about signaling & Morse code & radio communications; but these days everything is digital.
“The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur.
That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you're already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can't help you any more. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction.” Hugh Macleod
I had a wonderful scoutmaster. His name was Harvey. Really. He was a National Park Ranger in Hot Springs. His kids were grown and he missed them. Few of us could afford a Boy Scout uniform so we omitted that. Later we got the military style caps because a neighborhood merchant thought Troop 13 should resemble the main body in some way. The next year our sponsoring church saw fit to help us buy the handkerchief-slide thingies.
Harvey the scoutmaster had a very old pick-up truck and that was the thrill of going to scout meetings. We would meet at a local church and do our ritual then take off to a destination in the National Park (which was Hot Springs) all 7 or 8 of us in the back of Harvey's old, dark green pick-up.
I learned to smoke cigarettes in the back of that old truck. Some punk kid who had been to reform school was allowed in our Troop to help make him better. Peer association theory. He would steal a pack of his dad's Lucky Strikes and pass them around while we were going to or from an activity while riding the back of Harvey's truck. I didn't like Lucky Strikes. They made me very sick.
The best thing I learned from scouting was how to walk, efficiently. Our assistant scout master, Gordon, would take us hiking twice a year and watch our steps. Then Gordon would carefully explain how to put the front pad of the foot down first and let the your heel come down after the pad touched the ground. Gordon said it would save you 500 steps in each mile walked. I thought that was pretty damn smart. Gordon said he figured it out. He taught algebra at the High School.
Well, I flunked hiking, mostly because I was fat and my shoes never fit. I flunked naughty boy Lucky Strikes, but I earned several honor badges, learned to build an outdoor fire without using kerosene. We never hung any dogs at the jamborees.
It seems to me that this is really much to do about nothing (or very little at least).
@Harvey, you are more than entitled to your view and your interpretation of scripture. However, if you want to limit "Duty to God" to your own particular brand of evangelical fundamentalist interpretation and make that a requirement for scouting then you cannot bemoan the decline in scouting's influence. The decline in influence and numbers mirrors the decline in fundamentalist religious commitments.
I am a scout and a protestant pastor and I believe that my duty to God involves resisting the policies of any group that would seek to single out a group for discrimination the way modern day scouting does.
If you want to point the finger for the decline in American society, try pointing at Ayn Rand and the free-marketeers who have encouraged replacing ethics with consumption.
I am 40 and would love the opportunity to be outdoors more. Like so many of us, I am dying a slow death under flourescent lighting! Perhaps what we really need is a new form of scouting for a new century and this time lets let the adults have the fun!
I,as with Harvey, hope the Scouts survive and thrive. But unlike Harvey, I don't tie the fortunes of this Republic to the well being of the Scouts or YMCA or Pals of Palin or the DeMolays (of which I belonged as a teenager).
No, couldn't, I am concerned about both the Old and New Testaments and their commands.
My little footnote comment to this thread:
I was a Boy Scout beginning in 1942; lived in the country in relative isolation and yearned for the companionship and fun with a group; found it in my church-sponsored troop in town. Almost made Eagle but gave up my senior year of high school and my last year in Boy Scouts to enter college early. Good experiences all around.
My observation on the decline: It's not just the Boy Scouts or the young. In my 30s and 40s I was very active in a civic club--along with other 30s and 40s. In the last twenty years I've visited several civic clubs and seldom find anyone under 50. Enrollments have declined and the clubs are held together largely by old men who used to be 30 and 40 and wish more men in their 30s and 40s would participate. Incidentally, I speak primarily of "men" because my participation pre-dated the co-ed clubs.
I think our culture has turned away from the group orientation we once revered. Some of the same decline is seen in churches--which are more hard-pressed than ever to attract and/or retain the young. Many bail out during their mid- to late-teens. What attracts and holds many of those who continue are the social and athletic activities provided, not "Bible study and spiritual development."
Don't take these as authoritative or authoritarian pronouncements; just the observations from where I sit.
I think SkyPilot has the best take on matters yet... I'm a couple of generations behind him, but I also see the same things from where I sit.
@harvey, the implied comparison of GLBT persons to pedophiles is both specious and ignorant. You should be ashamed of yourself.
No it isn't. To many, homosexuality is a perversion. It is based on the teaching of scripture. They are being true to their beliefs when they compare pedophilia to homosexuality. In many cultures they are both considered perversions. The Muslims certainly consider them both perversions and you wouldn't want to attack Islam would you? That would make you a ethnocentric bigot.
I grew up in Little Rock in the 60s and admired the uniforms of and stories from the white boys in my mildly integrated school who were scouts. If there were black troops or troops that sought/accepted blacks, I never heard about it. We frequented the Boys Club (now Boys and Girls Club), but I think there's a clear difference in purpose.
Maybe that's why, at 53, I've never once gone camping. Don't think I'll start now. Never rode in a raft or canoe. Went fishing once or twice in college, not since.
I hope the Boy Scouts survive and thrive. But I wonder about those Christians who say they hate the "sin" and not the "sinner" when it comes to being gay. If a boy has figured out that he is gay -- the same way I knew that I liked girls long before I had figured out sex -- but isn't sexually active, then why exclude him? No "sin," as you say, yet. On the other hand, fornication clearly is forbidden by Christianity as well -- why not exclude *all* who are sexually active, regardless of whether straight or gay? Do the Scouts inquire into fornication among their members? Or is it that "sin-plus, SuperSin, Sin-with-a-bullet" thing, again, that folks like to apply to homosexuality?
Oh well. Good luck to the Scouts. I'm guessing eventually they will stop excluding based on levels of unChristianess. But I guess that's their business.
Tap, I can appreciate your 'quaintness' but I think you are a pretty smart fellow so I'm sure you understand their genuine objection to homosexuality. They can't afford to tolerate homosexuality because then they would have to tolerate homosexual scoutmasters and I know you are cleaver enough to figure that out. Considering that their opposition to homosexuality is being used to destroy them I'm sure you can understand those of us who love scouting coming to their defense.
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Clinton in LR for the book signing season
Fox 16's Hubert Tate posts a Twitterpic of the line forming outside Barnes and Noble for the autograph session with former President Bill Clinton.
- Dec 19, 2011
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Maumelle watershed survey no cause for land use delay
An e-mail from Kathy Wells, who leads the Coalition of Little Rock Neighborhoods, demonstrates that those who sought to slow down proposed land use rules for the Lake Maumelle watershed used a red herring in urging delay on account of a U.S. Geological Survey study.
- Jan 26, 2012
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Re: The Republican war on birth control
Why does the GOT Party hate women so much?
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This country has seen the rise in numbers of Ayatollah's to be. When you hear…
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Re: Thursday night line
I'm surprised that Cal Thomas is still around. I would have thought that he would…
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