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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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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 03:08 |
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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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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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I keep mine on my resume, and I've hired at least 3 guys over the years who have Eagle, 2 of them are now permanent in my lab. It didn't sway my decision so much as give an opportunity during an interview to talk about relevant stuff, e.g., teamwork, camping experience, resourcefulness that you can theoretically learn in scouts. They all turned out to be really solid guys independently of that, but I'm really careful to not use that rank alone to give an edge to a candidate, especially since applicants for my crews are all from the time before women were allowed in. I've had at least one woman on my crew who earned the gold award in girl scouts.
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Jun 19, 2023 14:05
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Jorath posted:Give me your reasons for/against being a scoutmaster. How does it compare to being a cubmaster? I did short stints as assistant scoutmaster in my early 20s. Are you prepared to deal with some extremely difficult stuff? It's mostly a lot of babysitting and reminding kids about hygiene at camp, and keeping them on task at meetings and smaller events. Maybe busting them for cigarettes (or vapes nowadays?) and booze occasionally in an understanding manner. That said, in my troop a 13-year old showed up to camp with cocaine. Another year, one kid gave 2 or 3 other guys blowjobs in a tent. It wasn't clear if it was consensual or not (the story I got was that it was of course), but pretty shortly after camp it blew up into a very big thing involving the police and a lot of unhappy parents. I was not directly involved in any of that but I think it did a number on the scoutmaster. Boy Scouts are just old enough to be getting into some serious poo poo or revealing stuff at home that you'll have to carry with you and maybe contact authorities over. They're also still immature enough to be irritating or vulnerable children who need help a lot. This is probably no different from being a middle school or jr high teacher. I'm sure you know all this already, but learning those things was enough to steer me away from it at that time in life. Reasons for? Pretty much being a facilitator of all the fun stuff being talked about in this thread. It's an avenue for you to teach a bunch of kids values that are important to you. You get to go camping and revisit some fun skills and build stuff.
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Jun 30, 2023 18:43
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Imperialist Dog posted:I'm an unexpected Akela for an English-speaking Cub Scout Pack in Hong Kong. Good on you, this is great. I bet what you've done really has made a positive impact on a bunch of kids.
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Jul 11, 2023 17:29
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Jorath posted:Wait til you hear "scout vespers". Quite the mix of scouting and religion. I had scout vespers stuck in my head the other day and nobody to share it with. Never cared about scout songs at all but I liked that one. Those fuckin popcorn hustlers got me. I was going into the grocery store with my daughter the other day and a kid with his sales table says " hey mister, wanna help me get to summer camp?" I said no not today but while I was in the store I had a minute to think and got some on the way out. My daughter picked the big bag of cheddar popcorn, so I said I'd take 2. Kid says "that's $40," so I said I'd take 1. poo poo was nasty, too, but I hope he has a good time at camp next year. I chatted with him and his dad for a bit and and his dad was an Eagle.
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Oct 7, 2023 05:55
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 03:08 |
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Ok
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Oct 7, 2023 22:16
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