| 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. |