What Happened to Boy Scouts?
What happened to boy scouts? Catch up with what boys in scouting are up to and learn what’s new in Scouts BSA.
By Josh Lau
At 5:30a.m., an hour before we need to be up, someone starts a campaign of serially pushing the snooze button on an alarm that sounds like an air raid siren. It’s Saturday morning, and I’m in a modern-day Hooverville of teens and pre-teens crammed together with the density of a Japanese hotel but with walls of 20-denier nylon. I decide to talk with Ian, our bugler and youngest member, about his alarm once I’m up and have coffee. I take a deep breath, make a half-hearted attempt to pull my stocking cap over my ears to block the noise, and remind myself that I’m not here for the creature comforts.
The Value
I suppose that begs the question, “Why am I here?” Some kids seem just to grow up right. For a long time, I struggled to put my finger on the magic sauce that makes this happen, sometimes accidentally. Still, often, it’s done with deliberate parenting in an environment that demands responsibility.
It’s not a coincidence that this frequently happens in a rural setting where people have to solve their problems early on. Growing up rural and in Scouts, I sometimes conflate the two value sets. Still, now that I’m seeing the scouting program through an adult lens, I appreciate how it can instill the same values and habits in young people who don’t have the benefit of growing up out of town with critters and the steady stream of practical problems accompanying it. It presents kids with the same tasks and struggles faced in rural life, but they’re metered, structured, toll-gated deliberately, and packaged around core skills, beliefs, rewards, and outdoor adventures.
So, I’m here for the same reason as all the other adult leaders; I recognize the program’s value and want to make it available for the protohuman adolescents who will be tomorrow’s adults.
Perhaps I’m using a broad brush to characterize the adult help here. Volunteers come in all the flavors of the rainbow — coaches, mentors, leaders, artists, and fighter jet pilots. Each troop tends to take on the culture of its leadership; if they’re calm and collected, the troop tends to be relaxed and collected; if they do everything at the last minute, the boys tend to follow suit.
Often, but not always, a core group of involved parents spreads the load out, acts as guardrails to keep the boys from doing anything too rash, and keeps outlier parents from pulling the center of mass too far out of orbit.
There are also folks that just sort of hang on. They feel like they’ve found their place and keep doing it into their senior days, trying to steal back the years that time has stolen from them. Some are full of help and the kind of wisdom you can’t buy at any price, and some want to discuss their glory days in Scouting.
The funny thing is, a lot has stayed the same in Scouting since those glory days; I have a 1959 copy of the Boy Scout Handbook, and the requirements for advancing in rank are still very close to what today’s youth need to do. The formula for turning boys into responsible men has changed very little in 100 years.
Speaking of old-timey, this campout, which is more like a rendezvous of all the local Scout troops (versus our regular, more adventurous outings where a troop of 10 to 30 boys goes out by itself), has a theme and the activity that we’re hosting needs to fit into that theme. Brownsea Island, heralded as the birthplace of Scouting, is that theme. It was the first Scout camp where the founder, Lord Robert Baden Powell, tested the plan and vision he’d been developing since fighting the Boers in South Africa. Much like many people today, he was concerned for the future of his country’s youth and wanted to set forth some organization to keep them on the right path.
The Changes
The organization has withstood the decline of reliance on strength that seems to have shrouded the country as a whole, perhaps in large part because it has always been a torch-bearer of those venerable values that homesteaders and self-sufficiency advocates hold dear — citizenship, competence, grit, helpfulness, manners, respect, and honor, to name a few. They teach firearm operation and safety at almost every Scout summer camp. They don’t want anyone going rogue.
While many things have remained unchanged in Scouting, many haven’t. In its heyday, Scouting was wildly popular, but, like so many things “back in the day,” it lacked some of the barriers needed to keep everyone safe. On the other hand, the emphasis on safety sometimes makes it feel like lawyers are parachuting from the sky with bandoliers of red tape, ready to cordon off any area that smells too strongly of edgy fun. It’s unfortunate for today’s youth who are paying for the atrocities dealt to yesterday’s youth, but a few paper barriers are a small price to pay to keep everybody safe.
One game played at the original Brownsea Island camp was called “the whale hunt,” in which two groups of boys rowed out to a swamped log (the whale), threw harpoons into it, and towed it back to their base. The opposing team’s captain led his boys in an attempt to drag it in the opposite direction. Baden Powell wasn’t without regard to safety; his original instructions state, “… on no account must you throw your spear over the other boat or over the heads of your crew, or a serious accident may result.”
Our troop replaces the whale with a stack of pop cans and turns it into a sort of biathlon race with pool noodle harpoons, which even the fun police will have difficulty finding fault. The boys in our troop are doing a good job managing the game — organizing lines, handing out prizes, and generally wringing order from chaos. We’ve practiced, troubleshot, and refined this game in our troop meetings so the boys can live up to the Scout motto, “Be prepared.” It’s paying off dividends with the game participants, some of whom are Cub Scouts that we’re trying to recruit into our troop this weekend in something like the Scout version of a fraternity rush.
On my way to our activity area, I pass by the restrooms and am reminded that tightening safety rules aren’t the only organizational changes. COVID did to enrollment what lawsuits did to the coffers. To add to the organization’s membership woes, the Mormon church pulled out of the program to start its own version of it. As with the lawsuits, there’s an upside. There have been generations of girls with a longing for adventure and a desperate desire to descend upon the woods to learn about leadership, service, fire, and axes. They’ve watched their brothers and fathers head off with Scouts while they were left behind.
The Boy Scouts of America, now officially Scouts BSA, is a late adopter in allowing girls in its ranks — most countries have had girls in Scouts for years. However, it takes some getting used to in an institution historically limited to boys. While the buddy system is employed for a trip to the restroom, now there are a half dozen Scouts on their way there en masse from the local girl troop. Though stereotypical differences between the sexes can become amplified at this stage, the youth strike a natural balance in behaviors.
Responsibilities
My stocking cap isn’t shielding me from the ever-increasing clamor of an awakening camp, and my bladder urges me to get up and move. I also need to ensure the boys take the proper steps to prepare for the day’s activities.
My role in this is as a coach, not a nanny, so I force as many of the day’s problems onto the boy-led leadership structure as it can tolerate so they can delegate and wrestle with them, and I can guide and make sure everyone comes home with the same number of fingers as they left with.
This hands-off approach is paramount to the success of the youth, who only grow when they’re allowed to solve their problems without an adult coming and messing it up by saving the day.
Gradually, in this way, the Scouts become more capable of doing their own dishes, setting up a tent in the dark, and packing their gear for a three-night backpacking trip. The ones who are late to the game are typically those who get more help from adults in these tasks and learn to rely on them instead of themselves. It’s a fine line between teaching, enabling, helping, and deliberate inattention, and it feels an awful lot like the operation of a big family on a farm.
I check in with Anson, the Senior Patrol Leader, a king of the boys, to see if he’s ready for our part of the program. He’s been elected to this position by the other boys in the same manner that the youth elect all the positions. While separate from the rank system, which rewards and recognizes Scouts as they build competencies, service in specific leadership roles is required as rank increases to the highest levels. As usual, Anson has a plan to set up our activity, starting with a “rubber band delivery device” marksmanship competition.
The youth are surprisingly well-behaved, given their sheer numbers. There are codes to live by, such as the Scout Oath and Scout Law, and there’s peer pressure to live by their values. After a time, it’s easy to see self-imposed pressure to build skills to achieve the next rank. There are awards ceremonies every 3 to 6 months, and the boys who receive fewer recognitions start taking notes and upping their game.
Eventually, a few (around 4%) boys stick with it long enough to complete an eagle project — a capstone service project in which the boy coordinates paperwork, peers, planning, and a beneficiary to make a meaningful philanthropic impact. The project’s point is to build, stretch, and test the boy.
It’s easy to see why someone might want to become an Eagle Scout. The list of distinguished Eagle Scouts reads like a who’s who of modern history makers: Neil Armstrong, Steven Spielberg (who got his start in film-making from a photography merit badge), Sam Walton, Gerald Ford. The list goes on and on, but it’s still a relatively exclusive club, with only about 2 million members spanning 100 years. It’s not that the requirements are so complex; they require tremendous perseverance, and they’re so hard for someone that young. The award is often an indicator of the trajectory of the rest of life based on resolve, goal-setting, giving and taking, leadership, and organization. Like I said, I sometimes conflate country values with those of the BSA.
The Wrap-Up
The day is wrapping up. Everybody is tired but in a good mood. Organizing a big campout like this is a production, and the host troops have killed it. There’s a tent where qualified medical personnel are standing by, and they’ve enlisted the local branch of the VFW to play revelry in the brisk morning and taps under the black blanket of the sky and the brilliant stars. The troops are getting fed in preparation for a closing campfire.
By the time scouts close in on the end of their trail to Eagle rank, the scouting challenges of their earlier teens have become old hats to them. They’re still involved in mentoring and teaching but often don’t want to hang out with the “little kids” anymore. To keep them interested and involved, an older Scouts’ honor club, the Order of the Arrow, gives them more autonomy and an escape from 11-year-olds. These kids are now splitting wood for the campfire and practicing the solemn ceremony in which it’s lit.
The host troop is in a town adjacent to a reservation and has invited a drummer and dancer from the Confederated Tribes, who perform a stirring and inviting performance of a friendship dance in which we all participate, shuffling around four huge campfires in a show of community and solidarity. The singer follows with an otherworldly cover of the Black Lodge Singers’ rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and introduces a generation of youth and adults to an awe-inspiring genre of music that they’ve never heard in their entire lives. The boys impress me with their respect for these traditions and the reverence with which they hold them. It’s a great wrap-up to a weekend where the kids were exposed to many new things — rope bridges, matchless fire starting, tying lashings, leading a large group in a prayer, or a flag ceremony.
The next day is welcomed by a bright, crisp morning. I’m up early enough to hear Ian’s alarm go off. It sounds distinctly different than yesterday’s 5:30 alarm, which sounds uncannily like the alarm of one of the adult volunteers, making me glad I forgot to have that talk with Ian. As we break camp, it’s easy to see that there are twice as many Cub Scouts here as last year. It feels like we’re rebuilding the culture of the country, one Scout at a time.
Originally published in the July/August 2023 issue of Countryside and Small Stock Journal and regularly vetted for accuracy.
Josh Lau is a writer, engineer, inventor, and Eagle Scout. He raises chickens and steers in the Pacific Northwest with his patient wife and awesome kids.
