I used to be a leader in the scouts. Before I joined, our scouting group tore itself apart because the previous leader felt that girls should be in girl scouts rather than boy scouts.
When he finally relented, the mothers moved in and asked that activities be 'toned down'. When he refused, the complaints came in thick and fast. The leader was removed and the group collapsed. Nobody stepped up to fill the void.
After I joined, we spent 6 months playing skipping rope games until I asked what the hell we were doing as a group to grow our kids. I joined the Scouts to learn leadership and survival skills for my kids. That's when I got the back story from our group leader (a very capable woman who had also suffered in the skirmish and was afraid to rock the PC boat).
The first change I initiated was to split the group activities into 'soft' activities and 'hard core' activities. Those that wanted to play skipping rope games could. Those that wanted to learn bush survival skills could.
Interestingly, everyone dropped the skipping rope games and we actually started to function as a productive and capable scout group. We quadrupled our numbers in 12 months to the point we could no longer cope without additional leadership because our sixers weren't experienced enough to take up the slack.
I don't have daughters, so I never got involved with girl scouts. While headlines like this raise all sorts of questions about girl scouts in the 21st century, I have no idea about them.
One of the under-appreciated qualities of the Boy Scouts is how the National Council mostly keeps its distance, allowing individual troops to organize themselves. There are fixed requirements for advancement through the Scout ranks, but some troops are focused on outings, some are overtly religious, some are basically Eagle Scout factories for college admissions, etc.
This is a great thing. It means that kids can learn the core skills and values, like leadership, discipline, teamwork, and wilderness survival, and receive recognition for it, even if their parents' faith, political leanings, or goals aren't aligned with the National Council.
I hope the Council leaves it up to the individual troops as to whether they admit girls (or boys, for that matter). Many troops will go co-ed given the opportunity.
And as others have said, the Girl Scouts are not perceived to be as rigorous or prestigious as the Boy Scouts, and should step up their game. It's hard to blame girls for being uninterested in an organization best known for selling cookies.
I'm really surprised there was no mention of Venturing in this article. Venturing is the program created by the BSA specifically to have multi-gender troops and focus more on high adventure activities.
From the website:
> Venturing is a youth development program of the Boy Scouts of America for young men and women who are 14 years of age OR 13 years of age and have completed the eighth grade and under 21 years of age. Venturing's purpose is to provide positive experiences to help young people mature and to prepare them to become responsible and caring adults.
I assume that's what this is referring to: "While allowing girls to participate in some affiliated programs, it keeps them out of the core scouting curriculum that has built a reputation as the most rigorous youth development program in the nation."
Hmm, I don't think every activity needs to be mixed. At that age kids have plenty to learn from same-sex role models. However, it sounds like the GS program is not aggressive enough for some people? Well, by all means, expand it in to more hard-core activities.
If the GS administration won't do that, then perhaps BS should open additional girl-only BS troops with the boy curriculum.
As a Boy Scout we often had sisters of scouts come along on our outings. Half the time one or more parents would come, and it just makes more sense. "Admitting" them as full members is just a formalism on top of the core experience, so why not?
Also, it's a shame that these girls don't feel like girl scouts does enough for their sense of adventure and play. The girl scouts should also step up to accommodate them. And I think the girls are right on this one, the Girl Scouts websites in all regions I've checked in the last ten minutes have the primary events being "fun-filled festivals" and "leadership conferences" and "arts and crafts workshops." The images are girls holding rainbow parachutes instead of hard hats, fish, and model rockets like on the BSA websites.
There's no reason a Girl Scout troop can't do all sorts of adventure activities. My wife led a troop that did all their meetings at a GS camp where they usually cooked over a campfire as part of each meeting.
The biggest blow to Girl Scouts is how they're organized. They're almost always single-age troops, which means there's no scout-to-scout mentoring and there are a lot less scouts per unit. It's much harder to keep a troop alive as the girls get older and there's a lot of consolidation. It's hard to grow new leaders when you only have a dozen parents involved in each unit. Then when a troop breaks up or ages out, the leaders almost always leave scouting.
I've been told it's possible to have a single Girl Scout unit with multiple ages, but I've never seen that. The best I've seen is a couple individual troops that share a common meeting time and place.
For example, my daughter's been in two Girl Scout troops. One is "huge" especially for high school aged girls and has maybe 15 girls from 13 to 15. That troop has had 3 official leaders in the 8 or so years it's been around. Her other troop folded once it dropped to three girls. My son's Boy Scout troop has over 100 boys from ages 11 to 17 and has at least a dozen adults in leadership roles and dozens more registered + background checked "at large" leaders to draw from.
>>> The biggest blow to Girl Scouts is how they're organized.
My wife has expressed the same sentiment. She was a leader in our daughter's Girl Scout troop, which had maybe a dozen or so girls and fell apart as the girls got to middle school and high school.
In contrast, our son's Boy Scout troop is currently over 80 years old and has some 250 to 300 registered Scouts and maybe 50 fully-trained adult leaders (including a number of moms).
My wife said that the biggest difference she saw between the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts was that Boy Scout troops are chartered to an organization (typically a church), whereas GS troops are all formed ad hoc.
I tried to join the Girl Scouts and did some similar group activities through 4H. I wanted to learn about fire and camping, and after a session of gluing plastic rhinestones to cups or something and then the promise of learning how to do my hair I quit. How boring & frustrating, and not at all what I'd read about in my mom's Girl Scout Handbook. It was full of information on trail signs and semaphore and how to build a fire and waterproof your tent and Morse code and knots.
A group has become dissatisfied with a monopoly on girl scouting and created a more satisfying alternative. They've taken the responsibility upon themselves to create that which they desire.
Unfortunately, I don't think that's the lesson the Unicorns' parents are trying to encourage.
There's nothing wrong with co-ed scouting. There's nothing wrong with single-gender scouting. Really.
How would that work in camps? Apart from having to have separate times for bathing, obviously.
The wonderful thing I remember from my time was that there was very little status jockeying in our troop. It wasn't like school at all. I felt like I could trust and rely on most everyone.
Now, I'm not sure introducing girls into this would not mess it up. Teenage boys behave differently with women around. Instincts involved are likely much more powerful than mere social technology.
I think your concerns about the dynamic are very valid -- on both sides -- but it's probably useful to remember that the girls and boys specifically mentioned in the article are pre-puberty (10 and 12 year olds, one 13 yr old).
Is it only in the US in which Scouts are called Boy Scouts? It's just been called "Scouts" here in Australia for as long as I can remember, I was a member about 20 years ago and we had quite a few girls in our group back then.
Not sure, for boys it goes cub scouts then boy scouts. But there'a an analogous girls organization that goes brownies to girl scouts.
I've not a clue what the girls organization does at meetings, but they're famous for selling thin mint cookies and being overtly over sexualized to teenage boys.
The comments to the NYT article are worth reading, especially the one under the tab "NYT Picks."
(Disclosure: I'm an Eagle Scout, as are my brother and my son, and I'm a long-time adult leader in what we're pretty sure is the largest Boy Scout troop in the U.S.)
When he finally relented, the mothers moved in and asked that activities be 'toned down'. When he refused, the complaints came in thick and fast. The leader was removed and the group collapsed. Nobody stepped up to fill the void.
After I joined, we spent 6 months playing skipping rope games until I asked what the hell we were doing as a group to grow our kids. I joined the Scouts to learn leadership and survival skills for my kids. That's when I got the back story from our group leader (a very capable woman who had also suffered in the skirmish and was afraid to rock the PC boat).
The first change I initiated was to split the group activities into 'soft' activities and 'hard core' activities. Those that wanted to play skipping rope games could. Those that wanted to learn bush survival skills could.
Interestingly, everyone dropped the skipping rope games and we actually started to function as a productive and capable scout group. We quadrupled our numbers in 12 months to the point we could no longer cope without additional leadership because our sixers weren't experienced enough to take up the slack.
I don't have daughters, so I never got involved with girl scouts. While headlines like this raise all sorts of questions about girl scouts in the 21st century, I have no idea about them.