My nephew thinks BSA is boring…what does that really tell us?
Please re-read what I wrote, and understand that the GSA has been there for girls all along, but hobbled by traditional gender roles. They literally could not offer the same sort of program until recently.
The GSA in my area has had very little support in the way of volunteers and financial support, while the BSA was bolstered by churches and other organizations, and have not been restricted in their pursuits. The GSA has not had the same opportunities to fully develop in the way that the BSA has.
I’m not intetested in preventing anyone from joining anything.
I’m pointing out the privilege and hipocrisy of the BSA.
Even in organizations organized around putting the children in peer leadership positions, the experiences of the kids in the BSA and GSA are going to be highly variable depending on the abilities, interests, and resources of the parents and the adult leadership of the individual units. So there’s no reason to take “My kid had this or that problem” as a blanket condemnation of the entire organization. Although I think that it IS important to listen to Novium’s point about the necessity of the national organization providing support for parents to get out of their comfort zone.
A scoutmaster acquaintance basically had to drag his pack into the importance of teaching meal planning for outings so that the kids didn’t just end up living on pop-tarts for the weekend. The kids were probably actually happier eating real food, but without SOME pushing on them, and the rest of the adult leadership it wasn’t going to happen.
When I was in scouting, the mantra that the adult leadership repeated to every parent new to the troop was this: “we are not here to keep them from making mistakes; we are just here to keep them from making dangerous mistakes.” Overpacking, underpreparing, and eating poorly were not dangerous mistakes. They were object lessons.
Ugh, I was turned off to joining the boys camping because of this. A scout needs to plan a menu to get the merit badge, so basically every camping trip menu is planned by a scout except the Quartermasters trip. After a dinner of mac & cheese with mashed potatoes I didn’t go again. I felt the Scoutmaster needed to give more guidance, but that wasn’t his style.
When I car camp it’s borderline gourmet! A 12" wok is a standard part of my kit.
Then there’s no problem with them accepting girls, is there? I need to bail from this thread like the sharper members have, when the eyerollers arrive it’s time to go.
So basically the Boys Brigade? The whole point of the Scouting movement was to get away from that (B-P was a vice president of the BB at one point, so if he wanted that kind of organisation he was already involved in one).
I am much less concerned with the name as I am with the ridiculous decision to make the dens gender segregated. I’m sure they will change the name but my daughter will not be going to a “girls den”. The whole point of not enrolling her in the girlscouts was to keep her from being indoctrinated into the cult of vanity that most “for girls only” groups and activities devolve into. When will people’s obsession with gender segregation end? We look at the Omish with women doors and men doors into the same home with ridicule and disdain buy fail to see how obsessive we are about it ourselves. I always wanted my kid to join the scouts. When she was born and I realized they did not accept women I was planning on erolling her in the Powell Scouts. When I heard they were going to accept trans gender kids I thought, " ha, she is in!" simce there is no brehalizer test for gender identity. I pretty much knew girls would be allowed soon based on that fact but am dissapointed now. I will either go with the gender missrepresentation ploy or launch my own coed pack where all kids will be allowed in and be treated like…kids who love the outdoors. Period. And gods won’t be brought up at all.
I was an atheist scout. I was actually challanged when I was 14 by a Scout master at a gamboree because He noticed I left God out of the oath. He told me, in front of my scout master and other scouts that they did not descriminate based on what religion you were but you had to have one. I replied that my god was the Sun. He was not too pleased but shut the hell up thereafter.
I don’t know about that. I have not been in the girlscouts but based on the statements of their leadership in relation to the BSA move I’m pretty sure I would never expose my daughter to them.
Example:
"
GSUSA thinks that’s exactly the problem. “It’s well-known, well-documented: Boys and girls learn in different ways,” Mike Lopes, a GSUSA communications director, said in a phone interview. “Our concern is for girls. We really feel that to take a program that the Boy Scouts have … we know that it will not simply translate easily into girls. It seems more like kind of a quick fix rather than something that is really in the best interest of girls, helping them actually develop and become leaders.”
"
She is confusing “learn in different ways” with taught in different ways. There are not two different ways to teach a kid to love the outdoors and how to drive themselves to accomplish goals.
I don’t know what scouting is like today. When I was part of BSA in the early 80s in Dallas it was an overall positive experience and the Scoutmasters I encountered were good male role models. Cant remember if our troop was church sponsored or not but I don’t remember any Christianity about it at all. I do remember some Hindu and Jewish scouts in my troop.
FWIW I heard from the girls at school that their GSA went camping and did rafting trips same as the BSA did.
Sometimes gender segregation can work in favor of girls and women. It gives them a space in a world that’s still incredibly hostile to their realities and needs, and patriarchal in nature. Not all forms of gender segregation are predicated on idea that women are inferor. Sometimes it’s predicated on the idea that women have to live in a world that is incredibly hostile to them as women.
