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Boy Scouts to Admit Girls. Sigh.
As announced today, the 100-year-old organization will allow begin allowing girls into scouting. As a parent and former Eagle Scout, I can think of a hundred reasons why this is a lousy idea. Here are the first few that come to mind.
- Overnight co-ed camping trips.
- Overnight co-ed camping trips with adults.
- The Girl Scouts have a nice thing going.
- Modifying traditional scouting activities because girls won’t do that.
- Modifying traditional scouting activities because boys want to do that.
- Like co-ed dorms, girls don’t civilize the boys. Quite the reverse.
- This appears to be a push by BSA leadership to expand membership — so yet another non-profit abandons its mission to support growth goals and keep grown-ups employed.
- It will increase pressure on Girl Scout troops to shut down/merge
- One more duck peck in the effort to convince the nation that there is nothing different between boys and girls
- Yet another non-profit that abandons its core mission to try and be a social services agency
- It basically implies that the Boys Scouts are better, and that real scouts are in that organization, not Girl Scouts.
- It implies there is nothing positive about all-girl activities
- Or all boy activities
- Dating Merit badge?
- How about That’s Not Funny Merit badge?
- He Said-She Said Merit Badge?
I am the mother of two Eagle scouts. I watched my dad and my brothers participate in BSA activities, and I felt it was a good experience for them to have an opportunity to do things together besides haul hay and milk cows. But…I’m really torn by this decision by the Boy Scouts to change so dramatically. I have no idea how this will affect the Scouting program in my church, but I worry that it will eliminate it. I hope not. It has always been something of great value to earn your Eagle Scout award for young men. They even give you a rate boost in the military, right after boot camp, if you are an Eagle Scout. So, I stand by, nervously, to see what all the ramifications of this will be.
Don’t know if someone already asked, but can boys now become Girl Scouts?
How about the Tomboy Scouts?
Meh, the Girl Scouts already have that one.
Me too – exactly. I will not support my daughter joining Girl Scouts – with its pro-abortion agenda among other things.
My daughter has already done cub scouting events with her older brother and I lamented that she wouldn’t have the opportunity to earn the Eagle Scout badge or the equivalent. I am heartened by this decision.
It is a question on enlistment forms as well as applications submitted to service academies. There is no comparable question regarding Girl Scouts.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates both pushed for gay boy scouts.
As I stated here when Tillerson was to be confirmed, “Even Alec Baldwin used to make fun of this idea during the Canteen Boy skits on Saturday Night Live (1993-1994).”
Did we all just live through the horrible, life-destroying Catholic priest pedophilia scandal for nothing? (The case of Schultz v. Boy Scouts of America even involved a priest who sexually assaulted two boys with of the boys one later committing suicide.)
I recently spotted this twitchy.com headline: “Newsweek asks an admitted child molester to weigh in on ‘what’s wrong with Trump’s Congress'” (“What was the editorial meeting like when someone said, ‘You know who we should get a take from, the GOP Speaker who was a child molester.'” — Jason Karsh)
…
From an August 2017 ricochet post, I stated…
“36 Women Pregnant Aboard a Navy Ship That Served in Gulf”
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/30/us/36-women-pregnant-aboard-a-navy-ship-that-served-in-gulf.html?mcubz=3
You gotta love this quote:
“More than half became pregnant after the ship was under way, but a Navy spokesman, Lieut. Comdr. Jeff Smallwood, said there were no indications of improper fraternization between men and women on the ship.”
…no indications of improper fraternization…
…
What’s that clicking noise?
Curious children (boy/girl) scouts taking numerous smart phone photos of the opposite sex during camp outs and posting them on the Internet…
Yeah… and girl scouts is not immune from their own band camp jokes. Its just flash lights instead of flutes.
“That’s not terribly surprising: most new ideas aren’t very good, after all.” @henryracette. I agree.
I wish I could share your optimism and apparent enthusiasm for this brave new world. Perhaps it is time to revisit Ann Douglas and her now ‘ancient’ The Feminization of American Culture. Yes–the “mix” these kids will face is and will be different. But I doubt the workable answer is more new women aping the old male and the new males being pajama boys.
It’s just another application of Conquest’s Law.
Second Law or Third Law?
Seawriter
Mostly the second; partly the third.
I was a little girl who would’ve wanted to be a boy scout, badly. And never had any interest in being a girl scout.
So it is strange to find myself sympathizing with those of you who lament this change. I think @marcin points to the problem: girls are better at social interactions, taking and following directions and generally behaving in ways that please authority figures. And they are somewhat less competitive and more cooperative. In other words, they might make very good boy scouts.
If the point of boy scouts was to develop the capabilities of boys, it’s important for them to be measuring themselves against other boys. This amounts to harnessing male competitiveness to the aim of helping boys become good men.
At my nephew’s graduation from college, I was struck by how many of the awards, fellowships and other academic prizes went to women, and not just in the humanities but in the STEM fields too. I don’t think it’s that women are smarter (obviously?) but rather that a.) women tend to be good at school-stuff and b.) men lose interest in competing when the competition is female.
Not the brilliant ones or the driven ones. Not, pro tem, the sons of asian immigrants. But the middle-of-the-pack reasonably bright guys who, when faced with a choice between horsing around with the bros and studying, might go either way. That’s where small extra incentives or disincentives make a difference.
This is what I can imagine happening to boys in boy scouts.
I could not agree more.
That’s what I see happening too.
The head of our local Boy Scout council echoes what @bryangstephens has said (from the Cape Cod Times):
I had the other experience: my troop was so active that several second-grade boys wanted to join my Brownie troop.
This is a local issue, I think. It’s up to the individual leaders how active and exciting scouting is to the local kids.
I had that problem too, that my own family was a mix of girls and boy, and that was true of the assistant leaders as well. We had boys and girls most days–and nothing terrible happened. :)
That said, I would not have wanted middle school or high school mixed troops. I didn’t even much like the overnight school trips at those ages. I think that’s way more temptation for the kids than they can handle. We are setting them up for failure.
There are already girls in Scouts. In Exploring and Venturing.
The plan is not coed Troops. At least argue about the plan, not the fears in your heads.
Definitely some mixed feelings in this Eagle Scout. On the one hand, @marcin and @katebraestrup are very right about how different boys and girls learn and compete, especially at a young age. I know I learned a lot in Scouts, but I wonder if I would have had the same experience in a co-ed environment. Knowing how I was around girls at that age, I doubt it. On the other hand, I have daughters that I’d like to see learning those same lessons, and the GSA seems to have some real issues. (Really good cookies though.) There seems to be a need for a new Girl Scout organization that has the Boy Scout values.
While all of the positives laid out here are undoubtedly true, why do I think as well that this is the end of the Boy Scouts and what it has represented for 100 years? Maybe because I suspect this time next year we will start to see headlines like “Girls earn 50% fewer merit badges than boys, alleges lawsuit against the formerly Boy Scouts of America.”
You have just nailed it.
I could not agree more.
It was true when I was a leader–the national council went bonkers. Everything the council initiated was right out of the feminist literature. I saw it happening years ago. It was weird and unnecessary.
What annoyed me was that the national council really depended on the cute little first graders’ selling the cookies, but the council gave very little back. It was really the Brownie troops who made all the money for the national council. The years I was a leader, all that money went into the headquarters operations while our local Girl Scout camps needed new facilities and equipment.
I can’t help thinking that families can see the work both organizations are doing, and it’s a competition in a way, and the Boy Scouts won this one. They do more for the kids.
I think it’s great.
I think the plan is coed troops. It’s just that dens (now) and patrols (presumably, later) will not be coed. It is good, though, that the whole scheme will be optional for individual units.
Also, I agree that exploring and venturing are great – but those are really separate units altogether. There’s a place for it, in certain contexts and to a limited extent.
But now it’s filtering into the main units, which I think is a huge mistake. And, you are correct that although it is not in the official plan, I fear that this is just a transition – I don’t think the barriers or the option to decline will survive long.
If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. :)
I appreciate your effort to keep this discussion about the specific changes, and I don’t mean to single you out, but at least grant folks the leeway to think thru the possible downsides of a wholesale change to an organization. Unless I’m mistaken, this was not the result of a groundswell of popular support amongst the local troops and active campaigning. It was announced left to the locals to figure out. It has all the earmarks (forgive the pun) of an unfunded federal mandate. Forgive us for being a little put out.
What is the scout motto? Be Prepared. How does one prepare? Among other things, by thinking thru the downside of possible scenarios.
I’d hate to be told by a fellow scout, 15 miles into a hike, as we prepared to cross a narrow ridge and the wind came up and rain down, that I should focus on the plan – which is crossing the ridge quickly and without incident, and not the fears in my head, which include slipping and falling 500 feet. (True story. Ok, not the falling. But we did decide to turn back rather than risk crossing a rocky ridge in full pack in the middle of a thunderstorm. Downside outweighed the upside.)
Apparently, any adjustments or change are all, 100% nothing but leftist actions.
Count me in as one of them I guess.
I think it was interesting that this decision was unanimous. There was not one person within a traditionally conservative organization who thought this might not be a good idea? Seems odd to me.
Bryan, there are plenty of actual arguments to engage with on this thread. The one you present here is not one of them. We’ve all experienced change in the program, including exploring, venturing, women working on summer camp staff, etc. Not all are viewed as or argued in context of “leftist actions”.
I personally don’t view this particular change as political (though I can understand how someone would). I just think it’s a bad idea in practice, a bad idea which will be made worse once we start the slide down the slippery slope, and an unwelcome change to the fundamental mission of the BSA.
98% of all statistics are made up on the spot. And 30 out of 30 Helens agree you can’t pay too much for a good pair of shoes. This thread seems to be careening towards hurt feelings, which is not my intent. I don’t think you’re a leftist and I appreciate your contribution and your points. Good luck a Philmont next year.
Just to throw this out there: one thing the Boy Scout leaders were upset about when I was a Brownie leader was that their troops were made up of a lot kids who did not have a dad. The mothers and the local social workers were looking to Boy Scouts to provide a male role model for many boys who did not have one. It was hard on the Boy Scout leaders because this particular group of kids did not come with dads who could help with the troops’ activities. It was also somewhat emotionally draining.
That said, where else some of these kids, in female-dominated elementary and middle schools, would have had such an experience is hard to say.
The Boy Scouts helped a lot of young boys find their feet, so to speak.
That happened in one of our Dens where a single mom was looking for male mentoring for her autistic son. The problem was the dads and Den leaders were too tied up with their own sons to offer her much help. I have noticed over the last few years as a side note that Scouts is attracting more special needs boys and boys from homes without fathers.