Cage Match! Girl Scouts vs. Boy Scouts vs. Social Change

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In This thread it was mentioned that facing the same societal changes, the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts have approached challenges in different ways and with different degrees of suceess. In recent years, the Boy Scouts have received much more negative publicity in regards to thier policies on gays and religeon, while they appeared to have had more issues with molestation, at least in the media. Also both organizations have been challenged by changes in youth interestes, and less interest in “joining”.

The Boy Scouts seemed to have entrenched themsleves more in thier core practices/activities, while it seems the Girl Scouts have made significant changes to their programs and are vastly different compared to what they were 30 years ago, although I’d apprciate more experirence on this.

I’m interested in thoughts/expereinces from both former Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts as well as parents of kids in these programs on this subject…

2

I was a boy scout, and while never a girl scout, my two girls were. The first difference I noticed between the organizations is the 180 difference in focus. The girl scouts seem to focus on developing independence. The girls in a troop are not supposed to go to camp at the same time. I was told this was to develop their ability to do their own thing. The troops are very small (3-6 girls), meet whenever the girls want to get together wherever the girls want to get together, and are formed by groups of friends in elementary school. Many activities are aimed at helping the girls be independent. A successful boy scout troop is much larger. The troop may have been founded 60 years ago and is housed in an organization that will lend them space for free - typically a church. The troop all camps together. The emphasis is on developing teamwork and leadership of a team. Of course, the Eagle scout project is supposed to demonstrate those leadership skills. Essentially, boy scouts seem to focus on encouraging a boys ability to work within a team, and the girl scouts seem to focus on encouraging the girls to be independent.

I think that impacts the two organizations approach to religious and homosexualuality. The girl scouts are lead by one of the girl’s mom. It is almost impossible for the two issues to affect a troop. If two families disagree strongly on these they probably weren’t in the same group of friends to start with. On the other hand, the boy scout troop may be the only group within the area. It is probably housed and supported by a church, synagogue, or temple. Whichever, the group will have well defined ideas on religion and homosexuality. If those ideas differ too greatly from the Boy Scouts national positions, they probably don’t support a troop. (Some churches, such as the Presby. Church USA are pretty flexible, some such as the Missouri Synod Lutheran, are not. But no organization will actively support with volunteers, etc. another organization that actively oppose itself.) It is difficult, almost impossible, to start a Boy Scout troop in the abscence of a larger organization that will provide room, materials, and organizational continuity.

So, the boy scouts tend to entrench, while the girl scouts are more free flowing.

3

One thing to realize about the Boy Scouts is that on a national level, Mormons are extremely overrepresented in Scouting. I was never a Boy Scout, but I was and am a Girl Scout. My brother was a Boy Scout. Here is what I have n oticed about the organizations:

Girl Scouts are very committed to safety, we have a large, 180 page safety manual and have to be certified to take girls on anything more exciting that a walk around the block. Boy Scouts has a calculable annual death rate. By keeping adults trained and reminded about safety, girls are usually not placed in danger. Also, in our safety rules, adults are not allowed to be alone with girls to prevent real or accused molestation.

Girl Scouting is about empowering girls to succeed in their lives. We teach and role model civic duty, life skills, outdoor skills, safe and wholesome fun, appreciation for all cultures and ethnic groups, etc. Boy Scouts seems to behave like a pack of wolves with the older, bigger boys bossing and bullying the smaller, younger boys. Girls Scouting tends to be one grade level only per troop and is always chaperoned by adults. Adults in Girl Scouting are treated like another age level of scouting and there are programs in place for our development and growth.

Girl Scouting is constantly analyzing and adapting to modern life. I don’t know if Boy Scouts does that. We have tools to deal with bullying and cliques among girls, we have the girls learning to communicate via the internet and to use computers safely, we add badges and patches to all age levels almost annually, local groups have alot of say in what goes on locally. All of our national traditions are adapted to local use.

I was just reading in our local paper that Girl Scouts is considering starting virtual troops. I can’t say that I agree with it 100%, but there is a place for that in kids’ lives these days.

I can say that after one year of working with my girls, I have seen amazing changes in them. I can’t speak for Boy Scouting, but I definitely recommend Girl Scouting for your girls. And if you don’t have any girls of your own, you should get a troop of other peoples’ girls to hang out with and have fun with.

4

I told myself I was going to stay out of this, but I can’t let this one go. Cub/Boy Scout leadership must also take training classes and no adult may ever be alone with a boy. Two-deep leadership, it’s called. Two non-related adults must be present at all times for exactly the reasons you mention.

5

Which is a great idea on paper, but most of the boy scouts who have disappeared/died in the last few years were not anywhere within sight of an adult, let alone two when something happened to them. I’m sure that there are good and bad Boy and Girl Scout leaders/troops, but Girl Scouts seem to follow their own rules more closely.

6

I know relatively little about Girl Scouts, but my son is a Boy (Star) Scout. As far as I’m concerned Boy Scouts is not for everyone, especially very sensitive boys with emotional issues, but for kids like my son who tend to think the world revolves around them it’s a pretty good tonic arguing against that world view. Boys have to learn how to get along with others, follow orders, complete tasks, and basically how to be young men and handle responsibility. Slackers and dawdling late sleepers (like my son) can get the rough end of treatment if they don’t shape up (and he did)

In the end Boy Scouts helps to teach boys how to be effective men and work in groups. It’s not perfect and I don’t agree with it’s theist requirements (which are rarely ever an issue IRL) but it’s better at what it does than almost anything else out there.

7

Um, I was talking about the “prevent real or accused molestation”.

8

I was a Girl Scout, my daughter was a Girl Scout, I was a registered adult in Girl Scouts and a Cub and Boy Scout leader. Many of the differences people perceive between the organizations are actually differences between individual groups and their leaders

For example, in my area, both Girl Scout and Boy Scout units are normally affiliated with a church ,a private school or some other non-profit organization. I’ve never experienced a Girl Scout troop which met in someone’s home, biut I’ve known Cub Scout dens that did. I’ve seen both Boy and Girl Scouts leaders who promote independence, those who promote teamwork with some adult guidance, and some who act like Scouting is school, determining which badges will be worked on when , what the Silver Award project will be, etc with little or no input from the Scouts.

9

One thing I wonder since you bring it up is the difference in the local leadership. The boy scouts especially seem to have opened up to female adult leadership, and of course explorers are co-ed. What is the offical stance regarding male leadership of say a girl scout troop, as well as real life experience?

While I have not seen a Boy scout troop with a female scoutmaster, I have seen plenty with Female ASM’s and they certainly have a different flavor from other troops (not saying bad or good, just different). There seems to be actually a much stonger focus on the soft skills / leadership type stuff in those units.

10

I can’t actually find the official policies, but the council I’m involved with is rather against male leadership at the troop level. There are many dad/daughter activities and males are more involved with the various special and council wide programs.

11

GSUSA definately accepts male leaders, they even have a classy blazer/tie combo so that men can be in on the cool uniforms.

In practice, male leaders are a bit rarer than female leaders, but I’ve known some really amazing ones. As far as various regulations are concerned, it hasn’t been too much of an issue in my experience. I don’t have a copy of Safety Wise (the GSUSA safety rule book) handy, but I believe there is a rule stating that it can never be just adult men around the girls. I could be wrong about that though. I’ve only had to worry about ratios and gender twice. Once, we were transporting a girl from camp to the doctor’s office for some stitches and the only available person who was insured to drive campers was our sailing instructor, who was a man. I had to go along because they weren’t allowed to be alone together, although I do remember times that our female health supervisor transported campers to the doctor’s office without an additional adult. The other time was on a troop camping trip with a father volunteer. One of the younger girls really wanted to sleep in her dad’s tent with him, but it was against Safety Wise (and he had a really small tent that already had him and a dog in it), so she wasn’t allowed to. For what it’s worth, the female troop leaders are allowed to sleep in the same tent as the girls.

This is all anecdotal though because I can’t find my copy of Safety Wise.

12

To add a note about safety…

BSA (Boy Scouts) does have a rulebook full of policies to follow. All trips a troop goes on has to be approved by the council, who wants to know that the leaders are trained and have been following the rules. BSA continually adds rules (and in fact, there are adults in the Boy Scout program that whine about this periodically).

A link to their rule book is: http://www.scouting.org/pubs/gss/index.html
(Safe for work, if a bit dry).

As far as the accident rate goes, my perception - which is just that, and may be wrong - is that the Boy Scouts have more opportunities for mishaps, because they are more likely to be out in the wild on high adventure trips than Girl Scouts.

I’ll also note in passing that the older division of Boy Scouts - Venturing, for 15-20 year olds - is coed, and even more likely to go on high adventure trips. Just to further muddy the waters

13

Boy Scouting was essentially “invented” by a military hero and in some senses can be said to have been modeled after the military (dating back to a time when the army was seen as being much “cooler” to the average boy than it is today). The military flavor, with the uniforms and ranks and badges and troops and so forth, were a big part of Scouting’s appeal. As society’s attitudes towards the military, regimentation, etc. changed (thanks to, for example, the Sixties and the Vietnam War), what used to be seen as pluses came to be seen more and more as minuses, and the Boy Scouts were criticized as militaristic.

In practice, just how closely being in Boy Scouts resembles being in the Army will vary from troop to troop and leader to leader. You’ll see a few Scoutmasters who relish the role of drill sergeant and like to run a tight ship, and quite a few others who don’t really care about that and are pretty unstructured and easygoing. Either way, Boy Scouting can replicate many of the positive aspects of the military, such as developing discipline, character, leadership ability, teamwork, self-reliance, etc. I feel safe in saying it had a good influence on me, including in ways not unlike what you say about your son.

14

Girl Scouts make it rather difficult to do the wild high adventure activities precisely because of safety. The girls are (often) very much interested in the activities but SafetyWise either requires full body armour with butt loads of trained certified adults or out and out prohibits the activity. I’ve been very involved in a girl scout sailing program and several times, we’ve almost lost the program due to perceived risk.

15

I heard this mentioned in the other thread. Does anyone have the numbers? It certainly was not the case when I was involved in the 70’s.

I agree with the others, below. Boy Scouts take safety seriously, but they tend to be more involved in more dangerous activities. My sister never joined the girl scouts in our home town, because they never did anything outdoors. My girls have only ever been to very structured camps. They did a mountain biking deal at one summer camp, but they didn’t learn to handle the trails in parks near our house. (These are pretty tough for me, too.) They stayed on pretty easy trails. My troop truly went into the wilderness, sometimes having to canoe and portage our equipment to get to our summer camps. No matter how much you work on safety, any time you have large numbers of boys using axes, white water rafting, rock climbing, pack backing into the wilderness, or even swimming, someone will get hurt and there will be the occassional death.

As far as the pack of wolves thing :dubious: You sound a little close to gender slamming there. Of course, bullying occurs. Of course, the adults try to work against it. Of course, some troops and councils do a better job than others. The point of boy scouts was, and is, to help make men out of boys, to help teach the difference between bullying and leading - as both the leader and the followers.

I think they are both the same in this regard, although one may be more effective than the other.

That might get a guy arrested.