The Boys Scouts have been in operation since 1912 and has influenced many great men. Boy Scouts of America recently modified the scope of the program, with proposed changes taking effect January 2019. These changes will allow girls to join and changes the name from Boy Scouts to “Scouts.”
These changes look like uniting efforts, but, having spent several years in the Boy Scouts, these changes may not implement as well as planned. Having co-ed activities is important for development in young people but in this environment may not be helpful.
The purpose of Scouting was to teach the important lessons that boys needed to be morally astute, hence they are currently lacking in said knowledge. If the sole cognitive capacitor among boys was actually their brain, then girls wouldn’t be as much of a distraction, but girls are a distraction for most boys.
Boy Scouts is not just a method to learn survival skills but a means for boys to become men of character, demonstrating chivalry, fraternity, and morality. Having an exclusive program allowed more room for young men to focus their energies on learning these valuable lessons, without any distractions. Allowing women to become scouts is not a disrepute, but was rather unnecessary.
Women have been allowed to join scouts as a “Venturer” in Venture Crews. Venturing was started as a coed opportunity for women to participate in high-adventure scouting activities. From survival skills to methods of integrity, scouting activities are great teachers of life-lessons.
While changing the scope of Boy Scouts is unconventional, the culture and context in which we live are very different from that of the time when scouting was started in 1910. It is certainly hard to say if the changes will be beneficial but there are as many young women as there are young men, who desire to learn the leadership and survival skills that the Boy Scouts are well-known for.
From my time in the BSA program, while I had specific goals, many of the other boys were simply there for “social club.” This wasn’t a bad thing. Social club or not this did help keep those young men out of trouble. While scouting isn’t a surefire troubled youth prevention tactic, the foundation of the organization is such.
Perhaps after this change we will see a spike in troubled young men across our already challenged country. Then again, we may see a drop in troubled young women. Our country has the difficult task of working with very diverse youth and having programs that are open to both men and women is helpful. I don’t know the outcome of these changes but prospectively they will help turn youth of our nation into the leaders of tomorrow, and that is something we can all stand behind.
