Boy Scouts Matters...
- Thread starter RollTide_HTTR
- Start date
It's not exactly to the pyramid scheme level but has a lot of similarities to the point that it should be considered when weighing things out.
Yeah, the parallels are definitely there.
As an aside, my wife almost got sucked in by Rodan + Fields. My hackles went up right away and we luckily dodged that bullet.
I constantly see friends and extended family getting sucked in by these things and most of the the time I can only shake my head because most people won't listen when you try to tell them. Most recently a friend's wife had gotten hooked on buying LulaRoe leggings (which are ugly as sin anyway) even though she hadn't gotten to the point of wanting to invest and sell them yet. Had warned him it was a scam but don't think it really sank in. Still waiting for the day when she offers my wife an opportunity.
I think I can talk about this more clearly now that the anger has settled and I talked last night with some of the fellas from my old troop that also earned their Eagle.
Some of those guys just don't care anymore. Those that don't care have seen Scouting become more aligned with Girl Scouts in being a tax-free popcorn corporation with child labor, just like the Girl Scouts are with the cookies. Those that feel this way wrote them off a long time ago.
A couple of the guys were super angry like me. We were the ones that were looking forward to our boys going through it also, but had not been as involved and didn't understand that it went from constant activity and support from the corporate office to supporting the corporate office through fundraising constantly. I heard that there are some good troops out there still, but that they are kinda difficult to find and you are going to be pressured to constantly fundraise.
We all agreed that earning that rank used to mean something and that one day people will ask each other whether their Eagle was earned back when it meant something or not. My anger quickly turned to sadness that something which means so much to me, much more than my degrees, was no longer something of significant value because of the corrupt corporate office and failing standards. It's left me grieving and I now understand why those old guys when I was a kid told me about the good old days. They got to see things degrade over time that meant the world to them, just like I have with this.
Some of those guys just don't care anymore. Those that don't care have seen Scouting become more aligned with Girl Scouts in being a tax-free popcorn corporation with child labor, just like the Girl Scouts are with the cookies. Those that feel this way wrote them off a long time ago.
A couple of the guys were super angry like me. We were the ones that were looking forward to our boys going through it also, but had not been as involved and didn't understand that it went from constant activity and support from the corporate office to supporting the corporate office through fundraising constantly. I heard that there are some good troops out there still, but that they are kinda difficult to find and you are going to be pressured to constantly fundraise.
We all agreed that earning that rank used to mean something and that one day people will ask each other whether their Eagle was earned back when it meant something or not. My anger quickly turned to sadness that something which means so much to me, much more than my degrees, was no longer something of significant value because of the corrupt corporate office and failing standards. It's left me grieving and I now understand why those old guys when I was a kid told me about the good old days. They got to see things degrade over time that meant the world to them, just like I have with this.
As I said earlier, I was never really in Boy Scouts so I don't know much about the details of the program or anything. But I do have a question, Boy Scouts has recently received a ton of bad press for a variety of reasons and I believe membership has been down. Again, I don't know enough of the specifics here but is this action taken by the Boy Scouts partially because of a fear that they may become irrelevant? And if that was part of the motivation would that change your opinion on it at all? I understand how you feel to an extent but what if the options are for the Boy Scouts to completely go away or for them to make this kind of a change and maintain some relevance? Again, I do not know enough about the situation to say this is what is happening but I would bet it is a part of it.
The Scouts have indeed seen a ton of bad press over the years. That really isn't what hurt their numbers. The times and culture have changed. It is difficult to do all the things we used to do with the docile, soft children of today.
(Do I have to say that not all children are docile and soft so that someone doesn't jump down my throat for stating obvious facts? The boys and the other adults would laugh in the face of the one nerdy dad that brought a helmet rappelling.)
If they were subjected to the things we were, they probably wouldn't like it.
Yes. It bothers me. I would prefer for it to be a small organization and not change. I know it makes me sound like the guys that bemoan the advent of the three point line in basketball or the spread option in football saying that it isn't the same game and that the old records set by the best athletes carry more weight, but what they have done to it sucks to me. I'm stuck in the past I suppose.
I would imagine that the majority of us have certain things that we're the same way about. Not really any shame in feeling like that but change is always coming especially when you deal with something that brings in money, it is always going to either change to keep making that money or die out as something else moves in and takes the money.
Boy Scouts registration has been declining through the years. There are lots of competing activities these days that didn't exist for the first 70yrs of its existence, and perhaps the outdoors and survival/leadership don't attract boys like they used to when they can play video games all day. Boy Scouts is simultaneously suffering from having to maintain massive liability coverage (as are most youth-oriented activities these days) and they are having to sell off property to cover it. The corporate side of BSA is looking for any way to increase revenue. In, imo, a desperate bid to increase membership, they have decided to move away from their core mission statement.
They want to cater to "families" but IMO, Scouts was never about families. If I wanted to go camping with my family I would have petitioned my parents to go camping as a family. I wanted to do something on my own. At most Scouts was a chance for father-son time. No kid learns to be self reliant by having their parents and their younger siblings around all the time.
And as with most other organizations who change their core values and mission statement to try to cater to a larger population, they have abandoned their base and I predict will continue to see a decline in membership, just as happened when they decided to open it up to homosexual men and "transgender" boys the last 5yrs. People who didn't give two figs about the Boy Scouts will clap for a minute and say "look how accepting the BSA is now" and continue not to give two figs about the BSA. Those who did care will no longer recognize their organization. They are nothing more than any other family activity now. Good job.
this was happening in the 80's when i was in. the troop i was in was pretty much disintegrating by the time i was 15 or so. i stayed in because i was involved with the oa, liked working at camp horne each summer and the black warrior council usually had a "high adventure" trip each year that i liked going on (e.g. philmont, boundary waters, backpacking the at for a week).
btw, there were more than a few homosexual kids in scouts at that time. i was very happy when they became more accepting.
Which part was happening?
I loved the outdoors side of scouting and the summer camp. Used to take the shotgun merit badge every year so i could spend the afternoon shooting skeet. I should have had 6 oak leaf clusters on that thing. I also always wanted to do the Pike's Peak trip and Sea Base, but I "earned" all my Scout dues by either getting paid by my dad to do jobs or things like mowing the neighbor's grass, and I could never really come up with the extra $800 to sail to Bermuda and back.
sorry, i should have been more clear. other activities taking away from people wanting to be in the scouts. there were the occasional fund raising things, but not many that i remember. towards the end of my time, there were three of us that were pretty good friends that liked to camp, backpack, etc. that stayed in the troop, and then a couple of other kids, but that was all. when i started ('80) there were 15-20 regulars.
a good buddy who worked with me at camp (he was in one of the tuscaloosa troops, 89 i think) worked the horse camp at philmont a couple of years. he asked me to go out with him, but i wouldn't pull the trigger. i wished i would have.
the boundary waters trip was awesome. i had to mow lawns for the philmont and bw trips. in my first few years, there was a group that would do a 60+ mile section of the a.t. every summer, i got to do two years with them.
I'm sorry you were unable to experience SeaBase. That was one of the highlights of my youth. I saved every nickel I could to match the half that my father offered to spring for.
Gotcha. Maybe my Troop was different. We had at least 50 boys, all crammed in to a prefab shed behind the local Presbyterian church. My own church didn't have a troop until maybe my sophmore year of high school, and I never joined it. I think it may have had 10 guys, but they were all pretty tight and I know a few of them still go on rafting trips together and stuff. Bunch of bromancers, probably.
We had a few also. Openly. It really didn't matter, unless they were unable to do something that the other boys were able to do. They got some ribbing then that included their orientation as part of the joke. Oh, but let one of them outdo all the rest of us at something! Then it was because of their orientation. We all had fun and no one got too bent out of shape.
The problem Scouting had was when homosexual men wanted to be troop leaders. Different ballgame then. Folks got up in arms about that, not really the kids.
being in a small town had a lot to do with it. i know that the tuscaloosa and jasper troops were always fairly strong at that time. for the most part i was closer to the folks i worked with at summer camp and did the high adventure trips with than the ones i grew up with.
I'd still like to do a trip like that one day. I tried to scratch the itch once, sailing around Charleston Harbor one afternoon. Was pretty cool, but hardly the same.
Alternatively I've tried to convince someone to do a multi-day river trip with me down to the ocean. Kind of a "Lewis and Clark" thing. No takers so far. Wusses.
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