In the late 1990s, I put my own sons through the program but it was already in steep decline. Boys weren't even allowed to carry a pocketknife and the mothers went everywhere with them. It was more like helicopter parent scouting.
Wow, I must be a total screw up as a Trail Life Leader. We train each boy how to safely use a knife on his first campout. When they hit a certain level, they can carry a sheath knife. Most boys are never without a knife. Same with fires.
Our summer camp last year expended 7000 .22 cartridges and 1500 12 gauge shells.
At a recent recruiting meeting, I had a power point slide with three pictures. One was one of our boys on a climbing wall stretching for a handhold, another was a six year old sporting a BB gun and a happy smile. The third was our FReeper favorite Pajama Boy. I simply asked “Which of these do you want your son to be?”
On the flip side, a buddy was sitting outside his tent one day and they saw two trucks with trailers pull up. Several women got out and started setting up a large group camp. He thought a Girl Scout troop was there to camp and was on the way. The women set up all the tents, the kitchen, cleaning areas etc for a very large group. They got in their truck and left. A few minutes later, a Boy Scout troop arrived. My buddy was speechless. That’s exactly how NOT to do an adventure program.
That's sad. I was in Scouting in the late fifties and early sixties. It was, of course, a completely different world.
Scouts were never a perfect organization...They had quasi-Masonic aspects in Order of the Arrow ceremonies and “great Scoutmaster in the sky” language at camp chapel, emerging from an odd crucible of Teddy Roosevelt-style nationalist progressivism and British Empire civics of the early 20th century. Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” also inspired Cub Scout ranks...Our family’s relationship with regular Scouting ended around the time our younger son in fifth grade ran to get his copy of Boys Life magazine in the mail only to throw it aside because it was featuring girls, as if photoshopped into Norman Rockwell Scouting art. He lost his enthusiasm, our eldest lost his home troop, and dad didn’t want to send money to a national organization adrift.
Really? OA was never a Secret Organization - all parents can see anything they want to see if they inquire. As for the things "lost" (which, I agree, are not in line with Scouting's core competency of forming men), they strike me as having more to do with laxity on the writer's part. What about fighting for what is good and right?
Dr. Siewers is SOOOOOOO concerned about the morality of Scouting, but he hasn't a problem working for Princeton, a place not well-known for defending the West. I guess that's ok for him...but Scouting, well, they are DIFFERENT. / sarc
I get it....Scouting has lost some of its focus. But, to paraphrase Churchill, Scouting is the worst organization focused on forming boys into men, except for all the others. If people fought for Scouting like Deplorables fought for Trump, I suspect we'd have a success story on our hands.
That must not be true for every troop - unless things changed in the 2000's. In the troop my sons belonged to, up to around 4 years ago, their summer camp had archery and rifle ranges. They were encouraged to have pocketknives. (One of my sons brought home a large folding knife from camp once.) And we mothers (mostly) weren't allowed to be as involved as the fathers.
In some places, they still had rifle ranges! My Grandson belonged to Boy Scouts, and they still did target shooting when they went to camp! We live in Utah, and they still did a lot of the things scouts always did! They had campouts in the Summer for a week or two. Of course, it was through the local Mormon church. (his mom and step-dad were not Mormon, most of the family were not, or were only nominaly so) He’s not active in in now, though, he lost interest in it after awhile. I don’t know what reason.