Bsa suffering huge membership declines

[Duncan]

26 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Nice try, but no cigar. 

it started in 1910, Lord Robert Baden-Powell

[Bernard Gui]

57 minutes ago, Duncan said:

it started in 1910, Lord Robert Baden-Powell

Still no cigar. You should familiarize yourself with the history of American Scouting. It is a foundational American youth institution. Now dismantled, sadly. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Bernard Gui

[Duncan]

26 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Still no cigar. You should familiarize yourself with the history of American Scouting. It is a foundational American youth institution. Now dismantled, sadly. 

1910 and I don't smoke! What year do you have in mind? Scouting started in 1907 by Lord Robert Baden-Powell in England

[Bernard Gui]

2 minutes ago, Duncan said:

1910 and I don't smoke! What year do you have in mind? Scouting started in 1907 by Lord Robert Baden-Powell in England

Is that all you know about the history of American Scouting? 

[Duncan]

19 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Is that all you know about the history of American Scouting? 

that's all you asked me to know, what time and place do you have in mind? 

 

Feb 8, 1910

Edited July 5, 2021 by Duncan

[Bernard Gui]

24 minutes ago, Duncan said:

that's all you asked me to know, what time and place do you have in mind? 

 

Feb 8, 1910

Actually, I asked you how familiar you are with the history of American Scouting. The founding date is a trivia question. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America

Edited July 5, 2021 by Bernard Gui

[SeekingUnderstanding]

5 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Actually, I asked you how familiar you are with the history of American Scouting. The founding date is a trivia question.

Stop playing coy. If you have information that goes beyond what they teach at every scout leadership meeting I ever went to, share it. Put up or shut up as they say. 

[Bernard Gui]

21 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Stop playing coy. If you have information that goes beyond what they teach at every scout leadership meeting I ever went to, share it. Put up or shut up as they say. 

Read the Wikipedia article I provided. There’s far more than what you “heard at every scout leadership meeting” you ever attended. Speaking of coy, do have ashes from Park Gilwell?

I will repeat my initial comment. Scouting is a fundamental American institution. It had a profound impact on millions of American boys. Unfortunately, it has been cancelled. 
 
My mother taught me not to say “shut up” to people. 
 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Bernard Gui

[Duncan]

29 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Actually, I asked you how familiar you are with the history of American Scouting. The founding date is a trivia question. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America

yeah, where do you think I got Feb 8, 1910 from?! 

[JAHS]

18 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

We are far enough removed from the Church’s historic withdrawal as a chartering organization from Scouting in the USA that I got curious about how it is doing. Not too well, according to this piece:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/boy-scouts-girl-scouts-suffer-huge-declines-membership-78578702
 

The article doesn’t mention the severing of ties by the Church, but I’m thinking that could not have been good for the movement. 

The Church is mentioned in this article:
Boy Scouts lost 2 million members since lifting ban on gay youth

"At the end of 2019, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also completely cut ties with the BSA, noting a shift toward a more globally-focused youth leadership and development program. The Mormons ended scouting programs for about 180,000 older teenage boys 14–18, and replaced them with church-sponsored activities at the beginning of 2018.

The LDS Church said that Scouting's Varsity and Venturing programs did not serve LDS young men of those ages well, according to Deseret News, and the change would allow youths and leaders to implement simplified programs that balanced "spiritual, social, physical and intellectual development goals for young men."

That decision cut the number of Mormon boys in scouting from nearly half a million to 280,000 at the beginning of 2018. The church reportedly paid the same annual lump sum it paid to the BSA in 2017 to dull the impact of such a major loss of revenue."
------------------------

Nice that the church continued to pay in to it even after they split away from it.

 

[Bernard Gui]

38 minutes ago, Duncan said:

yeah, where do you think I got Feb 8, 1910 from?! 

I don’t know. From all those leadership meetings you attended? So now you understand how important Scouting has been to the US and how Americans started it apart from and in conjunction with Baden-Powell’s movement in England. This was what started this part of the thread. It’s so sad that it has been brought low. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Bernard Gui

[Duncan]

5 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

I don’t know. From all those leadership meetings you attended? So now you understand how important Scouting has been to the US and how Americans started it apart from and in conjunction with Baden-Powell’s movement in England. This was what started this part of the thread. It’s so sad that it has been brought low. 

which is what Nehor said all along..............the American version ruined by fellow Americans, great story

[Scott Lloyd]

6 hours ago, JustAnAustralian said:

Primary, YM, and YW achievement awards, activities, and camps (in the case of YM/WY) already existed. …

I know they existed elsewhere, but you will note from the thread title and OP that this is a thread about Scouting and it’s relationship with the Church IN AMERICA (BSA stands for “Boy Scouts of America). Whether one recognizes it or not, it took a great deal of retooling in the Church to cope with the cessation of what had been more than a century of association with Scouting in the United States. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Scott Lloyd

[Kenngo1969]

As, I believe, Elder Ballard said [paraphrasing, but this captures his jist, I think], "We didn't leave Scouting.  Scouting left us."

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

I don’t know. From all those leadership meetings you attended? So now you understand how important Scouting has been to the US and how Americans started it apart from and in conjunction with Baden-Powell’s movement in England. This was what started this part of the thread. It’s so sad that it has been brought low. 

The British kicked it off. Americans copied it quickly afterwards. It is still not foundational. Something cannot be foundational to something if it has existed about only half as long as the thing it is supposed to be the foundation of. It can have an impact on it and definitely impact individual lives. Saying it is foundational suggests something like the Founding Fathers all being Eagle Scouts.

Edited July 5, 2021 by The Nehor

[JustAnAustralian]

27 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Whether one recognizes it or not, it took a great deal of retooling in the Church to cope with what had been more than a century of association with Scouting in the United States. 

Yes. But given the church's experience with creating these earlier programs for the rest of the world, it really shouldn't just be seen as some modern scouting replacement, when it's closer to a harmonisation with what everyone else was doing already.

[Thinking]

8 hours ago, bluebell said:

Exactly.  And the leaders were often called as leaders whether they wanted to be or not as well (as in, they said yes to the calling but did not care about or even like scouts).  It's amazing it ran as well as it did for so long.  

This.

We had a really good Scout leader for a couple of years, and I advanced to Star. Enter a new leader (who wasn't even there sometimes) and much of our time was spent playing basketball - which was fine with me. I did enjoy scouting, but I didn't love it enough to advance on my own.

[Scott Lloyd]

19 minutes ago, JustAnAustralian said:

Yes. But given the church's experience with creating these earlier programs for the rest of the world, it really shouldn't just be seen as some modern scouting replacement, when it's closer to a harmonisation with what everyone else was doing already.

It’s not “just some modern Scouting replacement,” and that’s not what I intended to imply. It’s quite different, and the innovation did impact Young Women and Primary as well as Young Men. As I said, it addresses new goals and needs for our contemporary times. 
 

By essentially moving away from the Church (rather than the Church moving away from (traditional) Scouting), BSA more or less did us a favor by providing the Church with the impetus to kick it into gear and come up with something more suitable. 
 

BSA gave us a template to follow in the early 20th century, when the Church was getting established in the modern era, but we’ve long since outgrown the need for that template. 

[Scott Lloyd]

3 hours ago, JAHS said:

The Church is mentioned in this article:
Boy Scouts lost 2 million members since lifting ban on gay youth

"At the end of 2019, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also completely cut ties with the BSA, noting a shift toward a more globally-focused youth leadership and development program. The Mormons ended scouting programs for about 180,000 older teenage boys 14–18, and replaced them with church-sponsored activities at the beginning of 2018.

The LDS Church said that Scouting's Varsity and Venturing programs did not serve LDS young men of those ages well, according to Deseret News, and the change would allow youths and leaders to implement simplified programs that balanced "spiritual, social, physical and intellectual development goals for young men."

That decision cut the number of Mormon boys in scouting from nearly half a million to 280,000 at the beginning of 2018. The church reportedly paid the same annual lump sum it paid to the BSA in 2017 to dull the impact of such a major loss of revenue."
------------------------

Nice that the church continued to pay in to it even after they split away from it.

 

Interesting article. Thanks for the link. 
 

I find it remarkable that the youth program Trail Life USA, which caters to conservative Christian organizations, emerged and has been steadily and substantially growing since BSA began caving in to political correctness demands less than a decade ago. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, Kenngo1969 said:

As, I believe, Elder Ballard said [paraphrasing, but this captures his jist, I think], "We didn't leave Scouting.  Scouting left us."

Yeah, I’ve had his comment in the back of my mind when starting and posting on this thread. He got to the essence of the matter with that pithy statement. 

[Scott Lloyd]

3 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

I don’t know. From all those leadership meetings you attended? So now you understand how important Scouting has been to the US and how Americans started it apart from and in conjunction with Baden-Powell’s movement in England. This was what started this part of the thread. It’s so sad that it has been brought low. 

 

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

The British kicked it off. Americans copied it quickly afterwards. It is still not foundational. Something cannot be foundational to something if it has existed about only half as long as the thing it is supposed to be the foundation of. It can have an impact on it and definitely impact individual lives. Saying it is foundational suggests something like the Founding Fathers all being Eagle Scouts.

Bernard can certainly speak for himself, but I don’t read his comments the way you do. That is to say, I don’t read him as claiming Scouting was present from the founding of the nation in 1776. That, of course, would be absurd. 
 

Rather, I read him as saying that, for many years, the values that drove BSA were compatible with the values that are foundational to the American experience and are what make our country great.
 

Furthermore, Scouting has been pervasive in American culture for a long time. Irving Berlin left in his will the bequest that the royalties from “God Bless America” would in perpetuity go to Scouting in the United States. It appears he must have felt Scouting was foundational. 
 

So I think you are quibbling with Bernard over semantics. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

10 hours ago, juliann said:

Those cookies are disgusting. Back when there were only a few varieties of packaged cookies they offered fancy unavailable choices.... and they had better producers. 

I love their Samoas. But Keebler has a knock-off now that I can get at the grocery store when I want it. You don’t have to wait for someone to come to your door or hit you up at the office. 

[Bernard Gui]

4 hours ago, The Nehor said:

The British kicked it off. Americans copied it quickly afterwards. It is still not foundational. Something cannot be foundational to something if it has existed about only half as long as the thing it is supposed to be the foundation of. It can have an impact on it and definitely impact individual lives. Saying it is foundational suggests something like the Founding Fathers all being Eagle Scouts.

No, It doesn’t suggest that at all. This is why Scouting is a foundational American institution:

By foundational I mean pioneering, important, fundamental, critical, basic, or essential. Scouting was the first national, the largest, the most successful, the most important, and the most enduring institution for American boys.

Scouting was the foundational institution for American boys, but American outdoorsmen were establishing adventure-based training programs for boys before 1910.

For example, E.T. Seton founded The Woodcraft Indians program (1901-02). He published How Boys Can Form a Band of Indians in 1903, and his bookThe Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians (1905-06) influenced Lord Baden-Powell. In 1906 these two men met to discuss their concepts of outdoor training for boys. 

Daniel Beard founded The Sons of Daniel Boone in 1905. His handbook Boy Pioneers: Sons of Daniel Boone was published in 1909. Both Seton and Beard were principal founders of BSA.

BSA was also foundational  for later youth organizations such as Cub Scouts, Exploring, Brownies, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire, YMCA Indian Guides, and other religious groups for boys, including being the official activity program for LDS boys for over 100 years. Teddy Roosevelt served as the first Chief Scout in 1910 and all US Presidents since WH Taft in 1910 have served as Honorary Presidents.

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

2 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

 

Bernard can certainly speak for himself, but I don’t read his comments the way you do. That is to say, I don’t read him as claiming Scouting was present from the founding of the nation in 1776. That, of course, would be absurd. 
 

Rather, I read him as saying that, for many years, the values that drove BSA were compatible with the values that are foundational to the American experience and are what make our country great.
 

Furthermore, Scouting has been pervasive in American culture for a long time. Irving Berlin left in his will the bequest that the royalties from “God Bless America” would in perpetuity go to Scouting in the United States. It appears he must have felt Scouting was foundational. 
 

So I think you are quibbling with Bernard over semantics. 

Yes, this is correct.

It is sad to this foundational institution go down. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Bernard Gui

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

 

Bernard can certainly speak for himself, but I don’t read his comments the way you do. That is to say, I don’t read him as claiming Scouting was present from the founding of the nation in 1776. That, of course, would be absurd. 
 

Rather, I read him as saying that, for many years, the values that drove BSA were compatible with the values that are foundational to the American experience and are what make our country great.
 

Furthermore, Scouting has been pervasive in American culture for a long time. Irving Berlin left in his will the bequest that the royalties from “God Bless America” would in perpetuity go to Scouting in the United States. It appears he must have felt Scouting was foundational. 
 

So I think you are quibbling with Bernard over semantics. 

I don’t think it is just quibbling. I think the larger point of disagreement would be that the values of BSA are somehow foundational to the American experience. I think too often the foundational elements of the American experience are shorthand for the American experience from the 1950s to the 1970s. There is a weird perception that those values and mores are a constant through American history and that just isn’t so. The Roaring 20’s were not 1950s America with a bit more of a wealth gap and the pioneer communities of the 1800s were not the 1950’s community with different clothing portrayed in “Little House on the Prairie”. The quasi-feudal southern plantations in the 1800s hardly exemplified the ‘values that are foundational to the American experience’. We cheapen our history by limiting it in this way. It also leads many to a strange obsession with preserving a specific time period of Americana in perpetuity while imagining it is some birthright had from the beginning instead of accepting that it was a time period like any other that has to pass away and there is no way to bring it back. This can and has led to anger and a demand that that ‘birthright’ be given back because it is being stolen from them.

I think Scouting seems like a part of that as the biggest explosion in Scouting membership came following the Second World War. Prior to that period Scouting was not what it would later be. The controversies in Scouting before then are largely forgotten now. There was talk of a scouting duty of loyalty to one’s employer which did not go over well in the battle between capital and labor and the strikes in the early 20th century. Then there was the lite fascism that came in with Baden-Powell. The controversies of scouting being both too militant and also somehow not militant enough. The controversies over race and Southern troops threatening to burn their uniforms if colored troops were formed. The Catholic fear that the BSA was a Protestant organization due to its ties to the YMCA that led to them forming their own troops (similar to how our own Church did). The barring of atheists and agnostics from participation. Some of these they handled pretty well. Others not so well. The scouting of the 1910s was not scouting in the 1950s.

In the end Scouting and the Church basically had to part ways and towards the end I winced whenever I thought of it. They were basically in a codependent relationship. The Church had the Scouts over a barrel due to the amount of money they brought in and the Church wielded an influence over the direction of the organization that was just unseemly. I like freedom and it felt like the embrace was making both the Church and the Scouts less free. The Scouting organization could not determine its own destiny without restraint while the Church had the money. The Church was tied to its history and didn’t let go for some time.

Now the BSA can sink or swim on its own merits. My money is that their current reckoning means they sink. I don’t take pleasure in it but I am also not too broken up.