OT: Boy Scouts of America changing name, dropping "Boy"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/05/02/boy-scouts-sc…
It's all biased, and if you don't see that you are biased.
There's a 0% chance you've ever watched a full episode of any show on Fox News and almost assuredly your only interaction with the channel is through carefully curated clips from other sources (Late Night shows, left-leaning websites, etc.) designed to appeal to your sense of outrage. I say this as someone who doesn't watch any cable news.
For example, the night Tucker Carlson gave a great monologue regarding our pointless intervention in Syria (something the left in this country used to be against) did left-wing sources give him any credit? No, instead they played clips of a lighthearted segment from the show regarding pandas to discredit him.
But please, pretend you're getting news from a non-partisan source when you read Huffington Post and watch MSNBC. It's heartwarming that someone as naive as you exists.
Sure man. Everyone gets their news from a "variety" of sources behind their screen name, but somehow end up having the same positions as someone who reads exclusively from HP, Mother Jones and watches MSNBC. And you could of course say the same about the counters to that.
I understand that you've staked out a position now and, like so many others in this country, can't accept that your opinions are not facts.
But your opinions, as noted above are not facts.
The US BSA was one of the last countries which was not co-ed. Talked with Canadian scout leaders once at an event when I saw their female boy scouts and asked if it caused any problems. They said no. Venturing has been co-ed for some time with no problems that I am aware, and it wasn't a problem in the troop where I was committee chairman. Things change, and BSA has had a numbers problem for some time. This was inevitable in my opinion.
A lot of scouting is merely developing the kids' self confidence. That is going to be tougher to do in a coed group. It just is.
I don't like this. Now get off my lawn.
Funny how it works in every other part of the world, where coed scouting is, and has long been the norm.
That's an honest question, not saying you're wrong.
But putting a kid in a contrived male-only environment that will rarely be replicated for the rest of his life doesn't in my experience help with self-confidence. Just as often, putting him in a "safe" place would allow him to appear confident but precisely wouldn't develop self-confidence for, you know, actual real world situations. But again, that's an unsubstantiated theory just like yours so curious if there is any evidence of what you're claiming.
At least you owned it with the get-off-my-lawn comment.
But I'm not the arbiter. I think boys, and girls, respectively, are more comfortable learning new things without the slight pressure to impress the opposite sex. I think it injects a certain level of distraction that is unavoidable. That's a very healthy thing as well, and day to day living, and school systems provide plenty of that. I think there should also be a space for scouts as they have historically existed, for that reason and lots of others.
...there is...
Read what the policy actually entails. It's local option. No troop is being forced to go coed. It's local option--if you want to have an all-girl troop, you can. All-boy, you can. Coed, sure. It's up to the chartering organization to determine what format works best for their unit.
It's a modern and changing world, and as long as we are not throwing out gender-centric modes of thinking and behaving I don't see anything wrong with crossing lines at times when it benefits everyone. But virtually every culture on Earth that has ever been, and at the same time, and unbeknownst to one another includes ritualized sex-specific teachings that help young men and women grow into adulthood within society. Joseph Campbell researched and wrote brilliantly about this throughout his whole career. It is entirely human and natural, and, arguably, vital to the survival of the species.
My instant reaction was "what is this bullshit?!!!one!11eleven"
But, honestly, the boy scouts are an organization with declining membership. I'm all for having kids share this kind of experience, in general.
Its the adults I worry about.
has lost its identity. I tried to have get my then 6 year old son involved in it a couple of years ago, and by extension, myself, and it was not at all apparent what their purpose had become as an organization. It was like the leadership still observed all of the "customs" of the organization without any real coherent idea as to the end that such customs were serving. Honestly, my son was just confused. I decided that if we wanted to camping or hiking or clean up a park, we would just do it and avoid all of the..., uh, weird stuff.
Yeah, in regards to declining membership, the real issue is that Boy Scouts isn't cool. Even when I was in them 15-20 years ago, it wasn't something you bragged about at school or anything.
I think this will give a temporary enrollment boost by adding girls to the ranks, but long term??? I see more benefit in having Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts as separate entities. As a scout leader, I found it hard enough to comply with the two-deep leadership requirements. Adding another gender to the equation will make it that much more difficult to arrange. Our Troop had a great adult leadership enrollment, but it was still challenging to get actual participation from the parents. Still, I hope this works out for them because it's a tremendous organization and learning experience for kids.
I think it's cool, because the Girl Scouts is a garbage organization that doesn't teach anything of actual use.
It'll be nice for girls to be able to join the (Boy) Scouts and do actual stuff instead of just selling cookies and crafting.
As a former girl scout, I can confirm that boy scouts is a far more educational program. This is a good step.
I'm much less familiar with Girl Scouts' programs than Boy Scouts (having been a Boy Scout). What has been the take from the Girl Scouts national orgainization? I have to assume, they've at least looked into the problem of "we're boring, outdated, and less applicable than the Boy Scouts" (I'm just paraphrasing here). Are they making attempts to modify their approach?
seems like a great front for allowing child labor. However, learning how to hustle and sell stuff is probably a more important lesson than most of what Boy Scouts learn.
anyone who uses the pejorative SJW gets an auto neg from me. Good lord you people are bonkers.
(Notice how I didn’t really give you a neg)
I don't know, I can see how it may help. I'm probably a small demographic here, but I have boy/girl twins, I am an Eagle Scout any my wife has her Gold Award, we both want our kids to do scouting, but in our discussions about scouting, it's pretty clear the infrastructue to offer greater experiences is, or at least was, much higher in the BSA. My wife says she wishes she could have been in my troop. We both had well run troops (mine was probably extrememly well run), but I had easier access to all the high adventure camps and jamborees that my wife just didn't. I know Ventures in co-ed, but that's not until your older and getting in a troop and enviornment that fostors growth toward those high adventure experiences is important for retention and growth.
And secondly, man, it makes it a hell of a lot easier on us parents to juggle one troop instead of two. I know that's a bit selfish, but man, we already got a lot going on in life.
My wife and I acknowledge there are definiate advantages, at least in our opinion, to single-gender spaces at times, so it would be a big change for a co-ed troop, but I can also see a lot of advantages. In the end, how this turns out will probably have to do with how well individual troops are run.
I enjoyed my time in scouts as a child and I have been worried for a while that the whole ship may come down.
I think a name change is a good idea.
Most people don't understand this topic. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are two entirely different organizations. It's not as simple as "there is already a place for girls." The organizations do many different things. Some girls may prefer the programs in the Boy Scouts.
Yeah the Girl Scouts organization is shit. This name change / mission change will be cool because girls can go camping and learn how to change the oil in their car and shit instead of just selling cookies.
It's not shit, they do some really cool stuff in my daughters troop, but I will concede it's an organization that does really well with younger girls and loses it's appeal as Girls get older. There's a great opportunity for cooperation between the organizations to learn from each other and it's one that should be taken advantage of without trying to burn down the other organization.
I had a handful of friends in high school who were still involved in Girl Scouts. They were the only ones left of their group, even though there had been tons of them as Brownies. They wouldn't even admit to being in the organization--they always talked about it as "church."
All of them got the Gold Award; none of them publicized it. It was crazy, considering that Gold Award is an incredibly difficult achievement, far more difficult than Eagle is on the Boy Scout end. But they were embarrassed of what the other girls might say. The stigma was that great.
It's the same for Boy Scouts. None of the "cool kids" are in scouting nowadays, or very few at best. It's not something unique to girl scouts.
I don't know, YMMV, but it was totally acceptable to be a visible Boy Scout in my town growing up, and remains so.
It was when I was growing up too, but that time is long past. Things are a bit different today, as you may, or may not know. No offense, but if you don't have kids, then you just don't know.
The kids in my troop have a tradition of wearing their Eagle medals pinned to their gowns at high school graduation. It started with a group of guys about five years ago, and kept on going. Just because you have kids doesn't mean my observations of the program on the ground in my neck of the woods aren't valid. Scouting isn't universally reviled out there.
Again, YMMV.
You're doing that thing where you put words in people's mouth's again. Please don't do that. I basically said none of those things. One was close, but not in the mark.
Because people with different gentialita have different developmental requirements and needs, having space for that is important.
I think that applies all throughout life, honestly. Sometimes men don't want women around and sometimes women don't want men around (and the same is true for boys and girls) and that's called human nature, and why that's become morally repugnant is beyond me.