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Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

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Re: Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

#41

Post by Henchman21 »

muwtyhg wrote: post #39
JuniperMesos wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be Mormon or even religious to think that there's value in having a youth program that is specifically male-only, such that you'd be highly motivated to abandon a youth program if it stopped being male-only.

> You don't have to be Mormon or even religious to think that there's value in having a youth program that is specifically male-only, such that you'd be highly motivated to abandon a youth program if it stopped being male-only. Are you going to expand on this at all? What is the value in Scouts being male-only?

Boys need to learn how to be men. Just like girls need to learn how to be women. LOADS and LOADS of material available to young girls to accomplish this goal. Lots of funding for them too, to become women. Boys? Boys are _disposable_ and get _no investment_. I'll admit this is my personal perspective. I would be happy to be wrong about this but I just don't see it where I am in the Midwest.

So I think the value comes from having a male-only space where boys can learn to be men. This is especially true of young men in the throes of puberty where young women are such a huge distraction they cannot even _think straight_. I know this because I got to experience this _first hand_ and it took me many many MANY more years than it would have to integrate my feelings for women into my being or psyche or whatever the word is.

For the record I am neither Mormon, nor religious. In fact I wildly far to the left by most assessments. Admittedly I don't fit neatly into other people's labels.

What is the value in all programs being mixed gender?

Re: Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

#42

Post by Henchman21 »

bawolff wrote: post #7

> The cost falls on both ends of Scouts BSA. That program is optimal for middle schoolers, but middle schoolers are not trusted to own it. They are managed by older youth instead. High schoolers fare no better. Instead of receiving programming built around autonomy, peer challenge, advanced outdoor adventure, and responsibility suited to their age, the vast majority are trapped in a middle-school program where their…

Seems like the problem is actually that we have decided children have and deserve no agency.

Re: Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

#43

Post by moribvndvs »

naijaboiler wrote: post #20
decimalenough wrote: post #2

The article gives short shrift to the real real crisis: you need to read 12 paragraphs down to find a casual mention of the "sexual-abuse bankruptcy", which also explains the precipitous 2020 collapse in membership in the chart that is prominently shown up top. Turns out parents aren't too keen on sending their kids into camps that have reported 92,000 cases of sexual abuse (and how many cases were not?).

i disagree with you. The author is pointing at deeper cultural issue of lack of candor that unaddressed allows things like sexual abuse to flourish. It is an organization that is not willing to tackle serious or face hard things head on. Yeah and their product sucks, so improved marketing won't save it.

I was in the Boy Scouts and a lot of it was appealing at first, but it eventually became ugly to me. I loved the aspects that focused on nature, exploration, self-reliance, and to a degree the quasi-military sense of duty, brotherhood, structure, and (at least the illusion) of support which I craved. As I got older though, I became impatient if not infuriated with the organization’s preoccupation with dogma, ideological loyalty, and increasing focus on establishing in and out groups. The leaders and scouts that flourished where rigid top down authoritarian types that epitomized what I grew to strongly dislike about the rest of American patriarchal society that I was increasingly struggling with in day to day life: bullying, hypocrisy, cruelty, and fearful of anything that doesn’t conform to an embarrassingly narrow and ignorant standard. Of course, I understood that it perhaps said more about the fact a lot of dads in my community were assholes, but organizationally it seemed to reward those sorts of people and shit all over everyone else. I just wanted to camp and respect nature, not join the Hitler Youth and get bullied more. I was/am annoyed by people being surprised by the BSA’s problems with abuse, as logically and historically these sorts of institutions are fertile ground for abuse.

Re: Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

#44

Post by bluGill »

slv77 wrote: post #38
bluGill wrote: post #24

As scoutmaster the article feels wrong. There are things that I'm sure are wrong but I don't know what they are. the article doesn't seem right either though.

As a scoutmaster you have probably noticed the problems go much deeper: 1) The BSA national organization sized itself in the 1970s based on the idea that membership would continue to increase forever. The national organization is grossly oversized relative to the needs of the troops. The result is that the national organizations needs are at odds with the troops needs. The national organization is primarily focused o…

And I really get the impression that you're very out of touch with what's scouts is like today when you make comments like that. I mean, yes, there are problems, but they are not what you say. There are plenty of great leaders, at least from what I can see. There's lots of parents that are very good at this.

As for sexual abuse, the scouts have very good programs to stop it. The past is not the reality today. Comments like yours probably are the reality of public opinion. However, they are not the reality of scouting today.

Re: Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

#45

Post by vintermann »

Henchman21 wrote: post #41
muwtyhg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't have to be Mormon or even religious to think that there's value in having a youth program that is specifically male-only, such that you'd be highly motivated to abandon a youth program if it stopped being male-only. Are you going to expand on this at all? What is the value in Scouts being male-only?

Boys need to learn how to be men. Just like girls need to learn how to be women. LOADS and LOADS of material available to young girls to accomplish this goal. Lots of funding for them too, to become women. Boys? Boys are _disposable_ and get _no investment_. I'll admit this is my personal perspective. I would be happy to be wrong about this but I just don't see it where I am in the Midwest. So I think the value comes…

> Boys need to learn how to be men. Just like girls need to learn how to be women.

Do they? That suggests not only that there's one right way to be a man/woman, and that you'll need to learn it from your peers and not just your parents.

I do think there's a point to gender-segregated spaces for kids, but that is because the social dynamics are different. There are some ways a boy can relax when there's only other boys around, and same for girls, and that's probably good for mental health. But you're still a man/woman even if you didn't get that chance and went through your whole childhood worrying what the opposite sex thought of you.

Re: Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

#47

Post by em-bee »

Henchman21 wrote: post #40
intrasight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its historic advantages—brand recognition, inexpensive outdoor access, and the prestige of Eagle Scout—once masked program defects. I don't think the product sucked at all I think the packaging of that product was terrible. My father took me to a scout meeting when I was 13. Afterwards, he asked if I was interested. I said no - they really come across as Nazi Youth combined with religious fanaticism, and neither ap…

When I was a child I was made to endure an organization called "Stockades". This was -- in the 1980s -- an extremely religious version of scouting. It... was not fun. After a few weeks of this, of literal begging and crying to not go, finally my parents relented. Neither of them had considered what a "stockade" really was: a place to barricade yourself inside for protection OR a literal prison. Neither seem appropria…

yeah, very weird name. it's part of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Service_Brigade

Re: Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

#48

Post by slv77 »

bluGill wrote: post #44
slv77 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a scoutmaster you have probably noticed the problems go much deeper: 1) The BSA national organization sized itself in the 1970s based on the idea that membership would continue to increase forever. The national organization is grossly oversized relative to the needs of the troops. The result is that the national organizations needs are at odds with the troops needs. The national organization is primarily focused o…

And I really get the impression that you're very out of touch with what's scouts is like today when you make comments like that. I mean, yes, there are problems, but they are not what you say. There are plenty of great leaders, at least from what I can see. There's lots of parents that are very good at this. As for sexual abuse, the scouts have very good programs to stop it. The past is not the reality today. Comment…

There are many of parents who are good at running activity programs for youth but there aren’t many parents who are good at running a youth leadership training program. The article rightly points out that the Eagle Scout project, which is supposed to be a leadership capstone project has devolved into learning how to navigate bureaucracy.

The BSA settlement over sexual abuse allocations was $2.46B for claims going back to the 1970s. No matter how good the program to prevent abuse today, this generation of controls will be judged against the standards of 2070s. This makes any asset heavy youth program financially untenable.

Personally I think scouting, done right, is a beautiful thing but I don’t see how the program survives or how any similar volunteer program would she able to survive long term.

Re: Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

#49

Post by em-bee »

Henchman21 wrote: post #41
muwtyhg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't have to be Mormon or even religious to think that there's value in having a youth program that is specifically male-only, such that you'd be highly motivated to abandon a youth program if it stopped being male-only. Are you going to expand on this at all? What is the value in Scouts being male-only?

Boys need to learn how to be men. Just like girls need to learn how to be women. LOADS and LOADS of material available to young girls to accomplish this goal. Lots of funding for them too, to become women. Boys? Boys are _disposable_ and get _no investment_. I'll admit this is my personal perspective. I would be happy to be wrong about this but I just don't see it where I am in the Midwest. So I think the value comes…

What is the value in all programs being mixed gender?

to learn that both genders are normal people and have some common and some diverse interest and capacities. to learn to respect each other and to collaborate. to avoid turning the other gender into a mysterious unknown.

there is room for gender segregated spaces. but it doesn't have to be at the organization level. you could have boys only and girls only patrols.

i also disagree that men need to be by themselves in order to learn to be men. the most important quality of a man is to be able to treat women with respect. and see them as their equal, not as something lesser. that can only happen in mixed spaces.

gender specific spaces are good for dealing with certain experiences, such as puberty, but beyond that y experience is that male only spaces are a breeding ground for toxic masculinity.

i also reject the idea that boys can't think straight when the see a woman. that only happens when those boys don't have enough contact with women and are not used to them and if they had bad role models (so blame their parents). if that was a serious issue all schools would be gender segregated everywhere. the whole idea that boys can't control themselves is insulting. it's perpetuated by an archaic view of gender differences. and in fact telling boys that they don't have themselves under control is only making them feel more helpless than they really are.

Re: Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

#50

Post by AuthorizedCust »

6stringmerc wrote: post #4
decimalenough wrote: post #2

The article gives short shrift to the real real crisis: you need to read 12 paragraphs down to find a casual mention of the "sexual-abuse bankruptcy", which also explains the precipitous 2020 collapse in membership in the chart that is prominently shown up top. Turns out parents aren't too keen on sending their kids into camps that have reported 92,000 cases of sexual abuse (and how many cases were not?).

Actually the 2020 drop in membership is more closely tied to the disproportionate “voices” of the LDS membership who did everything possible to change the culture of the organization to suit their ends. Yes the abuse issue is real, but don’t discount the Mormon influence. As a group, they have serious psychiatric issues (the most medicated state in the US by a huge margin) and frequently use dishonesty whenever it su…

The 2020 drop was 1/3 LDS pullout, 1/3 pandemic.

The spring membership numbers reveal this. Mid-spring is when the lapsed members from the prior year finally get dropped. Spring 2020 was before the pandemic had any real effect on membership (main recruiting is in the fall), so that is when LDS's withdrawal became apparent.

Then spring 2021 is when we see drops and poor recruiting during the pandemic.

Since then, membership has been largely flat, possibly declining modestly (hard to read precisely).

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