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Didn't see any threads on Scouting in here, and a forum search didn't yield anything. And the more I thought about it, that makes sense, right? Scouts BSA and Girl Scouts of the United States of America are youth organizations, and the average Goon ain't a youngin' no more. But, some of us have kids or are having kids, which is how I wound up back in Scouting.  "Wikipedia posted:Scouting, also known as the Scout Movement, is a worldwide youth movement employing the Scout method, a program of informal education with an emphasis on practical outdoor activities, including camping, woodcraft, aquatics, hiking, backpacking, and sports. Another widely recognized movement characteristic is the Scout uniform, by intent hiding all differences of social standing in a country and encouraging equality, with neckerchief and campaign hat or comparable headwear. Distinctive uniform insignia include the fleur-de-lis and the trefoil, as well as merit badges and other patches. I was involved in Cub Scouts from Tigers (1st grade) all the way through to Webelos, then crossed over to the Boy Scouts (now Scouts BSA) where I was active all the way up to earning my Eagle rank. Like a lot of other scouts I knew who earned their Eagle I became inactive almost immediately after earning my Eagle, 'cause when you're 16 any- and everything is cooler than than doing dorky paramilitary cosplay. However, I'm a dad now, and got my son into Scouts this year and volunteered to be his den leader and it's been a lot of fun. We've been on a couple campouts already this year, and I'm attending a BALOO (Basic Adult Leader Outdoor Orientation) session next month to get more formal training on how to be a good Cub Scout leader. It's cool to teach kids about the outdoors and how to do poo poo like first aid and whatnot. It's also awesome that Scouts BSA (formerly the Boy Scouts of America) is almost-fully co-ed now; girls can join Scouts BSA, though girls and boys are supposed to be segregated into separate dens in Cub Scouts and troops in (big) Scouts. The pack (and affiliated troop) I'm involved in ignores that, though--for a national organization that's had its fair share of controversies around identity issues among other things I'm glad we've found a place that's inclusive and welcoming to everyone. Post about Scouting in here: your past or present experiences with it, questions, whatever. I am not familiar with Girl Scouts at all but Girl Scout posting should happen in here, too. Their cookies kick rear end.
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Apr 25, 2023 16:27
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I’d especially love to read and learn about Scouting from non-American goons. What is Scouting like in the UK, Japan, Djibouti…?
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Apr 25, 2023 16:35
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I was in the Girl Guides of Canada from Sparks through to Rangers (so like 5 to 18) and was a Guider for about a year! Girl Guides is the original British name of the female branch of the Scouting movement which I think some Americans might not realize? The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts brings all the different nations together. I have a lot of love in my heart for the Guides especially the older-age branches, since I learned a lot of life skills there that both school and my parents failed me on. I basically learned to cook for myself at guide camp on a Coleman stove. I'd really like to get back to being a Guider but my job is pretty taxing. I'm hoping I'll have more emotional bandwidth once I've moved in with my partner because Guiding is such emotionally rewarding work It is also so in line with my values to teach young girls with over protective parents to start fires Killingyouguy! fucked around with this message at 20:45 on May 18, 2023 |
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May 18, 2023 20:27
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Judgy Fucker posted:I was involved in Cub Scouts from Tigers (1st grade) all the way through to Webelos, then crossed over to the Boy Scouts (now Scouts BSA) where I was active all the way up to earning my Eagle rank. So how does this work? In Scouts Canada, Cubs is the 8-10 age bracket, after Beavers but before Scouts. Is Cubs an entirely different organization from Boy Scouts in the states?
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May 18, 2023 20:35
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Killingyouguy! posted:I was in the Girl Guides of Canada from Sparks through to Rangers (so like 5 to 18) and was a Guider for about a year! Girl Guides is the original British name of the female branch of the Scouting movement which I think some Americans might not realize? The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts brings all the different nations together. Yep, had no idea about the "Guide" nomenclature, that's interesting! And I'm the exact same re: learning life skills I didn't get anywhere else. More than anything, just learning a lot of self-reliance and initiative and building self-confidence. Teenagers already notoriously feel invincible, but after roughing it for a whole weekend in 40F degree temps and rain you feel really loving invincible the following Monday. Killingyouguy! posted:So how does this work? In Scouts Canada, Cubs is the 8-10 age bracket, after Beavers but before Scouts. Is Cubs an entirely different organization from Boy Scouts in the states? In the U.S., cub scouts is ages 5-10/11; it's really based on school grade-levels, so kindergarten-5th grade. Cub scouts is run by Scouts BSA, so it's not a totally different organization, just a different albeit related program to (older youth) Scouting. There's also Venturing, which is for 14-year-olds to 21 (I think?)-year-olds, which focuses more on high adventure stuff than traditional Scouting involves. Like cub scouts it's run by Scouts BSA, but is a separate program. Cub scouting is deliberately designed to help shepherd youth into Scouting; there's even a "den chief" position where an older scout comes and helps out with a cub scout den, so the cubs get to see a big kid do big kid Scouting stuff. Judgy Fucker fucked around with this message at 20:49 on May 18, 2023 |
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May 18, 2023 20:42
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Judgy Fucker posted:In the U.S., cub scouts is ages 5-10/11; it's really based on school grade-levels, so kindergarten-5th grade. Cub scouts is run by Scouts BSA, so it's not a totally different organization, just a different albeit related program to (older youth) Scouting. There's also Venturing, which is for 14-year-olds to 21 (I think?)-year-olds, which focuses more on high adventure stuff that traditional Scouting involves. Like cub scouts it's run by Scouts BSA, but is a separate program. Interesting! In the Guides there's age brackets (Sparks, Embers*, Guides, Pathfinders, Rangers**) with a similar progression in program focus, but it is all the same organization and depending on geography there might be a lot of interaction and overlap between the brackets. There's always badges for leading activities for a younger unit, eg a lot of Guide badges require teaching Sparks or Embers new skills, and often Pathfinders and Rangers are mixed into one unit just because there's so few of them. Progression is based solely on age, but you don't get a badge proving you completed the precious age bracket and you get a different progression ceremony if you don't finish the program of your age bracket. Basically you're considered as starting over lol * this was very recently changed from Brownies bc it turned out Black girls did not want to be called that! ** technically there are brackets called Link and Trefoil Guild after this but those are the adult units and the more common thing is to leave or shift to being a Guider Also I want to recommend How The Girl Guides Won the War about international Girl Guide and Girl Scout involvement in The Second World War. Not only were girls on the home front raising funds and raising gardens to supplement rationing, but guides were also dispatched to feed people in bombed out cities by building camp stoves out of salvaged bricks, run intel and do first aid on front lines, and landed planes after getting their semaphore badges
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May 18, 2023 20:55
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Killingyouguy! posted:Progression is based solely on age, but you don't get a badge proving you completed the precious age bracket and you get a different progression ceremony if you don't finish the program of your age bracket. Basically you're considered as starting over lol In cub scouting it's a lot of what's called "social promotion," like what you described as far as being based solely on age. It's not too common for cub scouts to not meet the requirements for a certain rank, but in the event they don't they'd probably be awarded the rank anyway, hence the "social" promotion. In cub scouts the "ranks" are:
In Scouting (grades 6-12), you absolutely have to earn your ranks. Rank isn't based on age at all, only requirements that have to be met. Didn't meet the requirements? No ranking up for you! In Scouting, the ranks are:
Killingyouguy! posted:* this was very recently changed from Brownies bc it turned out Black girls did not want to be called that! Yeah I was familiar with the "brownie" terminology, that was probably a good change to make lol Killingyouguy! posted:Also I want to recommend How The Girl Guides Won the War about international Girl Guide and Girl Scout involvement in The Second World War. Not only were girls on the home front raising funds and raising gardens to supplement rationing, but guides were also dispatched to feed people in bombed out cities by building camp stoves out of salvaged bricks, run intel and do first aid on front lines, and landed planes after getting their semaphore badges That is cool as gently caress. If I ever hear someone ragging on Girl Scouts/Guides I'll be sure to "well, actually" them.
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May 18, 2023 21:15
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Judgy Fucker posted:
That's brutal but also I'm kind of jealous bc I was always very program oriented lol. So at 9th grade you choose to keep leveling up in Scouts or start over in Venturing? Can you do both? Scouts Canada has been coed for as long as I can remember and there was one girl in my Rangers unit who was also very high ranked in Scouts and she was the busiest person I've ever met lol It used to be that after Pathfinders there were three different groups you could chose from and collectively they were known as the Senior Branches. Rangers was one of them but iirc it was the most popular and since most Sr Branches girls were all meeting together to meet membership numbers anyway it was simplified. But then they added back a parallel program to Rangers called Trex which was for girls who only wanted to do extreme outdoors stuff. You could do both Rangers and Trex but idk anyone who did. Idk if Trex is still around lol
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May 18, 2023 21:27
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Killingyouguy! posted:That's brutal but also I'm kind of jealous bc I was always very program oriented lol. So at 9th grade you choose to keep leveling up in Scouts or start over in Venturing? Can you do both? Yeah basically. You can only be in a troop (Scouts BSA) or crew (venturing), not both. You can hop over once you hit 14, and continue your rank advancement. It's not uncommon for Scouts to earn their Eagle in a troop, then join a crew to just do fun high adventure stuff and not worry about ticking checkboxes anymore. Killingyouguy! posted:Scouts Canada has been coed for as long as I can remember and there was one girl in my Rangers unit who was also very high ranked in Scouts and she was the busiest person I've ever met lol It's been a few years since the Boy Scouts of America started allowing girls to join (and thus changing to Scouts BSA), but girls and boys are still supposed to be pretty segregated. However, my unit--and, talking to the upper leadership, a good number of units nationally--are openly flaunting those rules as participation in Scouting overall is way, way down, and the only units that are growing are the ones that are the most inclusive. So district and national leadership know a bunch of units are ignoring the segregation rules but aren't doing anything about it since they know those units are the ones that are doing the most to keep Scouts BSA from going extinct.
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May 19, 2023 23:33
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I was in scouts from tiger through Eagle, which I finally finished the week of my 19th birthday. I also did Order of the Arrow and camp staff for a few years. It was mostly good for me. My council was in south Arkansas, which is not a wealthy place. As such we didn't have a lot of financial resources in my troop or the council, which I think was part of why it was a good experience for me. Most kids seemed to come from a lower to middle class background and our camp relied a lot on common labor. In staff and OA especially, I remember lots of working with our hands and tools to keep the place in good shape. We were fortunately not a super religious council. Even though every troop was chartered through a church, I think most were methodist, so pretty liberal. We had one chapel service at every camp event and a prayer before each meal but that was it. Little to no pushing of Christianity. Similarly, it wasn't a super patriotic council, so other than daily flag raising and lowering, attendance of which was up to individual scoutmasters, there wasn't much jingoism or paramilitary bullshit. We really focused on the essence of scouts, e.g. bushcraft, teamwork, outdoor activities. Order of the Arrow was where I had the most fun because it was independent of my troop and I got to spend a lot of time with my friends from other troops, many of whom were on staff with me. A few of us are still friends today. In retrospect though, OA was the most problematic part of Scouts because of its appropriation of indigenous Americans' culture. The ceremonies were pretty cringy but we did have a lot of fun just being together and running the show of most camp events. I don't think I'm going to put my daughter in Scouts unless she shows an interest. My wife worked on Philmont staff for a couple years and had a few experiences which, in concert with recent far right Christian actions around the program, have soured us a little. It is great to see the changes that are being made and I really would love to know that it is 100% a good, safe, and secular thing for girls, LGBTQ+, and minority kids. The franchise nature of troops and councils mean that your experience in it really depends on the local approach to it, and that pretty often means the churches. It was the only organized extracurricular I did and still has a big impact on me, though, so maybe I'll get back into it some day.
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Jun 1, 2023 19:53
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I was in cub scouts and boy scouts as a kid, though dropped off before I got my eagle (cause, you know, cars and girls and stuff). My son, who just finished fourth grade, has been in cub scouts since Kindergarten because he was interested in it (we didn't really push him toward it), and just finished Webelos (Arrow of Light next year). I've been his den leader since Kindergarten/Lions. I did this originally reluctantly - but no one else was willing to do it so I did it. Which also means by default I was his den leader for his remaining time in cub scouts (one year left on my sentence!). It's actually not been that bad, though I had to lie on my forms about having a belief in god and felt weird about that. His Pack is associated with our local public school, which is very diverse from a religious background, so the pack as a whole is very hands off on the religion stuff - basically saying to parents they can do them at home if they like and not holding up advancement over it. OP - I just did BALOO a couple weekends ago. Don't be like me and forget to bring a pad to go under your sleeping bag, was kicking myself (all night) over that one. My daughter who is three years younger than my son also joined cub scouts (and girl scouts), and having seen both, at least where we are it seems like cub scouts just does more - especially outdoor stuff. For you new parents to scouting out there - get yourself a dremel, it's the cheat code to pinewood derby cars.
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Jun 5, 2023 18:33
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schwein11 posted:OP - I just did BALOO a couple weekends ago. Don't be like me and forget to bring a pad to go under your sleeping bag, was kicking myself (all night) over that one. Oh I never forget, it just never matters. I'm cursed to always find a spot that has a root or rock I missed and spend all night trying to contort myself into a "comfortable" position and by the time I do it's sunrise.  Our charter org is a church, but it's a mainline Methodist one and my pack is definitely not particularly religious. We have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and secular folk in addition to the expected Christians. I was careful trying to find a pack for my son, didn't want him joining some right-wing white male grievance factory.
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Jun 5, 2023 19:00
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I joined cub scouts at like 7 years old. My whole den was a bobcat den, all kids that started scouts at like 7 or 8. It was 2 years of going over to some lady's house twice a week to cut circles out of construction paper or whatever. No official scout pocketknife, no knot tying, no camping. It sucked poo poo op. The only fun thing was the raingutter regatta and they almost disqualified me for gluing a M.U.S.C.L.E figure to the bow of my balsa wood boat. E: i also jammed several M.U.S.C.L.E figures into the frosting of the cake i made for the bake sale. As decorations. I did not wash them beforehand. E: I grew up living in San Diego but spending my summers in Michigan. I started fishing and camping at 3 years old and learned to shoot a rifle at the age of 6 and i was NOT trying to do arts and crafts. I wanted to do the real poo poo, not the soft L.A. suburbs poo poo. I always wished there was some sort of proficiency test you could take because surely if my den mother had been aware that i could catch, clean, and cook a fish by myself then surely i could go camping with the older boys instead of making construction paper hand turkeys titties fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Jun 8, 2023 |
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Jun 8, 2023 00:12
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bobcat isn't itself an age group. bobcat is the badge that kids get during their tiger year (first grade) before they get the actual tiger badge. bobcat for the first half of the school year, tiger for the second. more or less. second grade (7-8) is the wolf year; kids will generally get that badge towards the end of the year.
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Jun 8, 2023 01:01
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Achmed Jones posted:bobcat isn't itself an age group. bobcat is the badge that kids get during their tiger year (first grade) before they get the actual tiger badge. bobcat for the first half of the school year, tiger for the second. more or less. second grade (7-8) is the wolf year; kids will generally get that badge towards the end of the year. They have changed how the Cub Scout ranks work sometime in the last 30 years, so titties’ experience may have been prior to the change. Though I do remember Bobcat also not being an age cohort when I was a kid, it was the “introductory” rank prior to Wolf in 2nd grade. But it also sounds like their den leader sucked, so maybe they just never actually worked on earning the badges and just did the arts and crafts stuff? That is one of the pitfalls of American Scouting—the franchising of the program can be good in some ways (telling council leadership to gently caress off regarding gender segregation) but can also be bad (lame den leaders, bad units, etc.)
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Jun 8, 2023 01:11
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First class is the rank you have to get to be allowed to do the good stuff. Star life and eagle are extraneous achievement chaser stuff
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Jun 8, 2023 01:14
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I may just be misremembering too, since this was nearly 40 years ago. I do remember being a bobcat and then getting a new wolf's head slider for my neckerchief at the jamboree so maybe i graduated to Wolf after my first year idk. I mostly remember that i did not like it very much. Except one time where we hiked the old mission trail and visited Mission San Luis Obispo where we made adobe bricks and tallow candles. That was pretty good.
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Jun 8, 2023 02:11
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yeah that sounds right for tigers. apparently they have lions too now for kindergartners. idk if that existed when we were kids. i know i started as a tiger at least. it's all changed a lot now, but mostly for the better i think.
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Jun 8, 2023 03:43
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Achmed Jones posted:yeah that sounds right for tigers. apparently they have lions too now for kindergartners. idk if that existed when we were kids. i know i started as a tiger at least. it's all changed a lot now, but mostly for the better i think. Lions are pretty new. My son was I think a lion the first year it was available like 4-5 years ago.
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Jun 8, 2023 18:13
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I've got two daughters in scouts and one in cub scouts, they all seem to be enjoying it. The cub scouts are coed and then the bsa troop is all female (or non-binary). There's a rule for the BSA troop that at least one of the adult chaperones on trips etc needs to be female which is a problem sometimes cause several of the kids have two dads so we're always short on female adult volunteers.
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Jun 9, 2023 12:06
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Boy Scouts Australia mid 80's to early 90's Being dropped off on some camp ground with 15 other kids, just fend for yourself for a week. We would set everything up with everyone else, tents, camp kitchen, etc...then our group would just leave, walk a km or so out, and make our own huts and camp there for the week. We would raid the main camp for food at night.
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Jun 9, 2023 14:41
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Wee posted:Boy Scouts Australia mid 80's to early 90's This sounds fun as gently caress, though I have this image of the Australian wilderness being filled to the brim with bugs and other wildlife that will kill you cold by simply looking at you. Being an outdoorsy program I'm sure you got at least some kind of education on the fauna? Any other details to share about Australian Scouting 30-40 years ago? When I was a Scout the eldest patrol was permitted to walk off a bit from the troop's main campsite and camp on their own, too, but not a kilometer away, maybe more like 50-100 meters.
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Jun 9, 2023 14:50
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Judgy Fucker posted:This sounds fun as gently caress, though I have this image of the Australian wilderness being filled to the brim with bugs and other wildlife that will kill you cold by simply looking at you. Being an outdoorsy program I'm sure you got at least some kind of education on the fauna? Any other details to share about Australian Scouting 30-40 years ago? Theres badges for that, and you get them before you can go camping. I remember vividly running into the thick scrub and just dropping to the floor to hide (a spotlight game or something), then looking up and the bush is just webs in the moonlight with a spider in the middle of every one. Also occasionally finding scorpions in the tents. Also ticks. You're not coming across much other wildlife, you're a pack of screaming children. Aus Scouts at that time was just casual camping and learning basic skills. You attended the group once a fortnight, and every month or so went on a camp, either local camp grounds or a full on trip somewhere, we did some gorges in Kalbarri one year. I must state at that time, something like a really great remote camp site was still just a short drive out of town. But it was just run by whatever local dad or guy was a scout as a kid and never left and has all the badges. The scout leader lived just down the road, the second in charge is in final year highschool just down the road. I think they were called Venturers or Rangers? (Not a John Wayne Gacy bio). I remember ripping around in sand dunes on the roof of a 4WD, and flying out the back of a ute doing donuts in the bush on red stone gravel. Doing the ANZAC Day poo poo at like 4AM. Oh, blast from the past, we delivered the phone books, probably one of the dads jobs, but it was a Bob a job good deed or whatever it was called. A car towed an open top trailer full of books and we just jumped on and off grabbing books and running them to the houses as it cruised at 3kmph around the neighborhood It was important we got our badges, I shouldn't make it all seem like a riot, and they cared, as parents, as older kids we looked up to, and as scout leaders. But holy poo poo, those weekends we got to go Lord of the Flies, eternal memories.  The book says First Lone Scouts, but it was given to me by an older scout, we were the 1st Spitfires (the caterpillar, not the plane) . Badge colour Red/Black. Wee fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jun 9, 2023 |
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Jun 9, 2023 14:59
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Many years back, my daughter was the first girl in the metro area we lived in to be born on the anniversary of the founding of the Girl Scouts. The day after she was born, about 15 Girl Scout and Brownie troops from the around the area came to the hospital and each brought her gifts. We didn't have to buy diapers for at least a year. It was tremendous surprise and a really kind gesture from the GSA. E: i don't think it was a particularly significant anniversary, they might have done it every year but i don't remember.
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Jun 10, 2023 14:09
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GGC owned it's own campgrounds and they had long histories with bits of camp infrastructure decorated by the girls who built and donated them decades ago. A few years ago GGC could no longer afford to keep my childhood guide camp and had to sell it and ngl I cried a bit when I read the news Because it was only Girl Guides at the site you'd often just wander around and introduce yourself and your unit to all the other units camping there and I remember one time a younger unit invited us to campfire that night and they had some song about witches being burned at the stake and how maybe one of them was your great grandmother and all of us older girls were like '😰 the hell is going on' the whole time titties posted:Many years back, my daughter was the first girl in the metro area we lived in to be born on the anniversary of the founding of the Girl Scouts. This rules Killingyouguy! fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 15:06
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I was a Boy Scout a long time ago, this is all the remains. But I did keep the Malaysian patch I traded for, I was very proud of that.
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Jun 10, 2023 15:25
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I was in Beavers, Cubs and Scouts in the UK - cubs/scouts was just kind of the done thing if you were a boy between the ages of about 8 and 12 in the village I grew up in (this being rural England in the mid 90s, sexism was sadly rampant so girls largely stuck to Guides). Highlight was probably going to a jamboree at Kandersteg in Switzerland in about 1998 with loads of scouts from other countries, did lots of badge, necker and woggle trading. We were all really jealous of the Norwegian scouts as they had kickass sheath knives that our leaders wouldn't let us try to trade for.
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Jun 12, 2023 11:12
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 looks like WW1 artifacts
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Jun 12, 2023 16:53
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I was never really a scout when I was a kid, I spent about six months in cubs and never camped once, it seemed to be more of a football club with weird uniforms. However my kid had better luck with his pack and has stuck with it, he just made first class and has dragged me along, so now I'm the Scoutmaster by default. The camping is the really good part, everything else is just a means to an end  .
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Jun 13, 2023 12:55
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I did scouts from Tiger to Eagle, including Philmont twice and national jamboree 1997. It was a good experience. I had a very small troop in a rural area, with maybe a dozen active people total in the boy scout troop. It got me to go places and have interactions I otherwise would not have experienced. As someone else mentioned earlier, I liked OA a lot because it was much more independent from the adult leaders, and we would go to our summer camp to work on repairs or just hang out. But yeah, looking back on it, the appropriation of native culture is very bad. Also right after I aged out was when BSA started being very anti-gay. I understand that has changed now and scouts is gender inclusive? I live in Switzerland now, and my kids do Pfadi, which is the Swiss affiliate of scouting. It is mixed gender, with levels based solely on age. They spend 3 hours a week in the woods going through a semester long story the leaders create, with costumes, games, and skills. Much less paramilitary, no badges or patches, and good, 2-week long camps in the summer. You her kids go stay in a big vacation house together, older kids go tent camping. The group is solely youth-led. There is an adult to be the treasurer (which just does the bookkeeping, not the spending decisions), and another to sign off on bylaws and hold an annual meeting for legal purposes and to provide guidance for the leaders on formalities they have to follow, but basically the kids are kicked out at 18, at which point they can become leaders. The leaders age out at 26, and the oldest are put in charge of the kids 4-6, with the younger leaders handling the older kids and just a very few, older leaders handling the oldest kids, who mostly manage themselves. I think it is a much better system, as the kids really connect with their leaders and see them as cool, because if you are 10 and get to hang out with some 18 year olds every weekend who want you to have fun in the woods, what's not to like? Better than like, someone's dad every Monday evening in a church basement, which was my experience.
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Jun 15, 2023 11:04
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hello fellow scouters
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Jun 15, 2023 12:40
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Psycho Society posted:hello fellow scouters Hello! It's been cool to see others post about their Scouting experiences, for better or worse, from around the world. I'm glad TGO got moved to the top of the forum index, it certainly looks like it's helped traffic. Not much to report on Scouting on my end--in the U.S., Cub Scouts goes semi-inactive over the summer months when students are out of school because that's when a lot of Americans plan their vacations so there's no telling who is in town at any given time. Things will pick back up late July or early August. Our Pack does do some organized activities so that the kids don't forget they're in Scouts, but my son and I couldn't make the multi-day camping trip a lot of the pack is on right now.
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Jun 15, 2023 13:43
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Found this list of Cub Scouts requirements from the late 90s/early 00s while poking around the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20090807124636/http://geocities.com/cybercubber/requirements.html Some of the links may work, who knows! Anyway, have a mess around with the tool to search images on these archived pages: https://gifcities.org/?q=scouting 
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Jun 15, 2023 16:29
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My son's starting to get a bit older and I find the idea of scouting appealing. I've never been a camper myself but I'm feeling drawn to it, and getting my kiddo into scouting seems like an ideal path to getting outdoors and helping him get outdoors as well. However I've been hesitant about Boy Scouts due to the controversies, religion, etc. Has the switch to Scouts BSA improved things?
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Jun 15, 2023 18:09
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withoutclass posted:However I've been hesitant about Boy Scouts due to the controversies, religion, etc. Has the switch to Scouts BSA improved things? The short answer is yeah, for the most part, sorta. Longer answer is Scouts BSA works under a kind of franchise model, where individual units can be quite different from one another in terms of culture and how they operate. My suggestion is to use this site to find units near you, email them expressing interest in joining, attend a meeting or activity or two and get a feel for the unit. You're not under any obligation to join or really even entertain entreaties from the units if you decided it wasn't a good fit, it's pretty common not only for visitors to attend meetings etc. but to also nope out if it doesn't feel right for them. My anecdotal experience so far is Scouting has become much, much more tolerant, inclusive, and welcoming since I was a kid. Not just my unit, but even interacting with district and council leadership. I'm typing from Oklahoma too, which I think says further things about the generally good direction Scouting is going.
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Jun 15, 2023 18:16
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withoutclass posted:My son's starting to get a bit older and I find the idea of scouting appealing. I've never been a camper myself but I'm feeling drawn to it, and getting my kiddo into scouting seems like an ideal path to getting outdoors and helping him get outdoors as well. My dad was pretty outdoorsy so I grew up doing all that stuff independently of scouts as well. But that said, I learned a bunch about camping and stuff from a different perspective in scouts, and in a few ways it was more informative than our family stuff. Camping in large, cooperative groups using ancient equipment made of canvas, wood, cast iron, rope, etc. gave me a great appreciation for modern lightweight stuff and camping independently or with only one or two other people. I learned how to wash dishes efficiently and conserve water, keep all my poo poo together in my own space, and stay dry when conditions made that hard to achieve. Side note: a buddy once asked me the most important thing I learned in scouts, and I think he expected something about honor or teamwork, but my response has always been "keep your stuff dry." It's kind of a fudd mentality, but I feel like learning how to do woodsy stuff with equipment and people that make it more difficult helps ingrain efficient and minimalist behaviors, among other benefits. Not to mention it's cool to build towers out of nothing but rope and trees you cut down on site with bowsaws and axes, which is a near useless skill for most people. Further, because scouts does tend to attract a decent amount of kids who otherwise have no outdoors/camping access via family, the prerequisites are pretty minimal. Showing up to a friends camping trip when everyone else has fancy tents and sleeping bags and packs and other gear can be kind of intimidating, but at scouting events, you see more kit from Walmart and there's way less snobbery cultivated by financial and cultural means. You're all out there uncomfortable together learning skills that may or may not ever matter, but the field is more level. I actually do use lots of bushcraft in my job and recreation, but the time I spent learning it is more important than my need for it now. I could have learned to sharpen an axe anywhere, but I remember doing it with a flat file at a campfire with my scoutmaster and splitting my knuckle open. I use knots all the time, and teach my technicians a bunch now, but I got into it from me and my buddies in scouts sitting around trying to one-up each other. I use boats a bunch for my work now, and could have learned it at any point along the way, but I started to love it during canoeing merit badge when we had to do swamped canoe drills in ancient Grumman aluminum boats that got to 150 degrees in the sun in a muddy lake. Anyhow, all that's to say that it can be a very different approach to outdoors stuff than a lot of people take, and my experience was that it's a much humbler approach. Therein lay the value to me, and if your son wants to do it along with you, go for it.
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Jun 15, 2023 21:51
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Awesome thanks for the link and comments. I'm pretty much a know-nothing so it'd be cool to me to be able to learn the skills alongside my kid, and having him learn group dynamics, confidence, etc.
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Jun 15, 2023 22:18
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I've become very cynical about anything passing itself off as an honor society anymore, and most kids in scouts see right through that part of the whole charade too. But if you can memorize "trustworthy loyal helpful friendly courteous kind obedient cheerful thrifty brave clean and reverent" and the scout oath and recite it once a week, there is real value in just having a group of people to do stuff with outside. Even if a bunch of it feels silly. Camp and scouting events are punctuated by episodes of the pageantry throughout the day but the rest of the time is mostly some variety of dicking around outside and doing stuff with your hands, which is pretty much my goal in life.
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Jun 15, 2023 22:24
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PYF campfire song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi6i-WCm9wU
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Jun 15, 2023 22:25
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 00:41 |
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HenryJLittlefinger posted:swamped canoe drills in ancient Grumman aluminum boats that got to 150 degrees in the sun in a muddy lake. God that brought back memories.
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Jun 16, 2023 02:00
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