Originally Posted By: SoCalGirl
Originally Posted By: Bulldog34
The biggest challenge these organizations face is cultural, though. At some point in the early teen experience, scouting becomes un-cool to be involved in. Burchey called his troop a "dumping ground for the socially retarded", and he felt the need to get out. While that is an extreme characterization, there's no getting around the fact that negative peer pressure about scouting drives a lot of boys and girls out of their organizations during very critical formative years. I don't know how that gets improved, but I think it's a priority that we find a way. Maybe a super-popular Boy Scout Rap will come out of nowhere and turn the tide, but I doubt it.


I don't know about the "dumping ground" thing... my Troop was chartered with a mission statement specific to including physically, mentally and emotionally handicapped and disabled youth in our program. The boys in my troop who do not live wiht disabilities are shown how to work with the youth who do and are guided in how to work with these other children to help them succeed to the best of their abilities within the scouting program. They interact with the all the youth in our troop at as much the same level as possible and all of our activities, to the best of our ability, include some sort of adapted program for the boys unable to participate in the full activity with the rest of the boys.

I've seen this strange phenomenom of social akwardness though. It's kind of like when a child hits that age where it is no longer "cool" to tell their parent "I love you" in front of their friends... and the parent, instead, gets some mumbled gobbldygook under the childs breath as they turn away.


Just to clarify the dumping ground thing...our troop had a few disabled kids, but the majority were not disabled. The majority were just socially awkward and under-developed. These kids were not "cool" by any stretch of the imagination. That being said - I fit right in. We were a motley crew of dorks, to simplify things, but is that really such a bad thing? How often do the "cool" kids in school amount to much? My experience is that the majority (not all) peak in high school, and then it's all downhill from there.

I'm not sure about the rest of the troops of then or now, but here's a little taste of what we did while in the Scouts - this is what our leaders had to deal with in addition to trying to instill values and the love of the outdoors.

- flaming arrows above the methane vents of the campground outhouses
- carving wood pipes with our pocket knives to smoke chewing tobacco in
- number 2 off the side of an aircraft carrier
- elaborate summer camp snare systems to catch raccoons (who would then be killed)
- flying action figures from the back of the van on the freeway using fishing line and our neckerchief for the parachute
- osage-orange fights in the woods (two kids knocked out, one wandered off and had no idea where he was)
- Upper echelon nerds CONSTANTLY berating/abusing the lower tier
- night-swims out to boats anchored in the lake, lifting and tying off the anchors so they drift a mile away
- slingshots, slingshots, slingshots
- slitting a screen on the mess hall window, inserting captured raccoon for a night, chaos ensued

While typing this list, I'm smiling in amazement that more of us didn't die during those years. We were idiots, as most pre-teen and teenage boys are.