Scouting History
Share and celebrate the history of the world's largest youth Movement
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LATEST POSTS
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I find parents understand the merits of scouting. It's the kids who have trouble grasping it. Sports are fun. They can run around on a field everyday after school, again and again. It's an everyday commitment for a season. If they want to keep up and get ahead, they are encouraged to join offseason programs, another everyday commitment. After you factor in school commitment, then they are practicing/playing sports every day, they are not left much time for other endeavors. Scouting is different. We only meet once a week and have an outing once a month. The rest of the time they are supposed to be working independently: reading the handbook, working on merit badges, etc. Scouting is not only physically demanding; it is mentally challenging, socially and spiritually. It is hard work. Scouts are free to choose how much obligation they want. It is easy to fall in the sports trap, coaches demanding you practice everyday. It is difficult to lead yourself through scouting. Then realize families are strapped for time and money. It takes a lot of investment to play a sport, buying nice equipment and travelling around. It takes investment to adventure in scouts, to have good equipment and to keep up abilities (swimming, fitness, etc.). Often it becomes a choice, one or the other. -
False, units are mandated to participate in YPT and adult training. Go read your adult registration form. If you can't figure out how to do it online you are mandated to go in person. Furthermore, though never enforced, councils can mandate that you do your adult leader training in person (which is why when you run a unit adult training report there is that weird little column that shows mandatory in person training but does not ding you as untrained if you completed the online version). Try again. Every time units decide to not participate in their local council they are weakening the council, they are breaking down the scouting community. Camporees have less energy from less units/scouts, klondikes have less competition, round-tables have less value when fewer people are bringing their knowledge and experience to the table. You are correct, and it's funny how this unit has higher costs because they are going out of council. By refusing to participate in the council of registry they have become a cash cow for the neighboring council. Man it sure is thrifty when that unit pays all those out-of-council fees in neighboring councils. -
A lot of good points, though I think I want to die on this sporting hill. I think a lot of parents pull their kids from scouting to do sports thinking their kid is something special athletically. I had a meeting with a parent at the troop last night, she raised concern that we're losing a PL for the summer to some club baseball team and he might not come back. I told her it's not likely to work out for the kid; he's in 8th grade, he's like only 5ft tall, 90lbs soaking wet, both parents are sub 6fters and fat. Really what it might be is that scouting is too nice; I deal with some of these coaches with my own kids and it's a joke the yarns they spin to recruit kids. What if scouting pushed the hard sell on parents, think along the lines of these dingleberry baseball coaches "You're kids got it, with my mentoring he'll get in shape, learn how to problem solve, have a bunch of fun, learn how to survive in the outdoors, get his eagle scout, and then from there every top end business school and military academy in the nation will want him! rabble rabble rabble". Do you think we can get carve out on the scout is trustworthy for this?
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It would be interesting to see this as a percentage of children. I'm not sure what that looks like, but I think it was on the order of 25%. -
Technically declining. 2020 to 2023 had a little bump but basically is level, and comparing modern counts to the BSA peak membership in 1970 ... well looks like 2, almost 3 times the single parent households.
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