Boy Scouts...Are there any here????

[Kelemvor]

I'm an Egal Scout but pretty much gave up any association with them after their Gay Bashing episode from a few years back.

 

[BornStar]

I'm an Eagle Scout but I haven't had much interaction with Scouts since I got Eagle. The leaders of my troop were a bunch of jerks who wanted nothing more than to not let me obtain that rank. I was Star after maybe a year and it took me another six I think to reach Eagle. I absolutely hated Scouts the last few years there but I wanted Eagle more than anything.

 

[WhiteKnight]

Eagle Scout since '98.

 

[AlienCraft]

< troop 575 North Highlands CA
Life Scout......
BSA lost my EAGLE paperwork back in 1974. :brokenheart:

 

[Rent]

Eagle here.

 

[FettsBabe]

Congrats Guys!

 

[CubicZirconia]

Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis
What is the point of Boy Scouts? Do they teach you real survival skills or just how to knit and tie knots?

Like anything, the "quality" varies from place to place (in this case troop to troop). People have been making all sorts of generalizations about Boy Scouts as a whole just because they happened to have a bad experience. In my opinion, what a person gets out of Scouts depends on a) what they put in it and b) the quality of the leaders. During the 6 or so years I was active in Scouts (I'm technically still in it) my troop had excellent adult and Scout leaders. Plus, I had a lot of friends in the troop and I genuinely wanted to learn things. As a result, I learned a whole lot (though I never learned how to knit). I learned plenty as far as "real survival skills go." Am I an expert in outdoor survival? No. Do I know a lot more than the general population because I spent time in Scouts? Yes. Just to give you an example, last semester I had a communications class where I go to college. At one point we were given this activity where we had to imagine that we had crash landed in the middle of nowhere with only certain items (matches, a map, chocolate bar...). Then you had to rank each item based on how valuable it was to your survival. Now clearly, this is nothing like actually crash landing somewhere, which I understand, but, it really showed me how ignorant most people are when it comes to outdoors kind of stuff.

And merit badges don't only focus on survival. They run the gamut from American Business and Animal Science to Veterinary Medicine and Woodworking. Again, it's about what you put into it.

edit: just minor corrections

 

[FettsBabe]

Very well said Cubic.

Now if we could just get off of the PC BS.