Fewer scouts

Boy Scout membership has dropped by nearly forty percent in the past ten years, according to the BSA's Pacific Harbors Council.  As a result, the Council has closed four of the five scout camps in the south Puget Sound area.  Some of the camps are being logged to raise money.

A scout executive for the Council explained:

Kids have more options today, families are busier, and many are choosing organized team sports over scouting.

Scout executives discussed Camp Kilworth, one of the five camps, as an example:

  Home to eagles and owls, kingfishers and ospreys, Camp Kilworth’s forest is flecked with blooming trillium, and the 25-acre property provides a wildlife corridor between the Dumas Bay Park Wildlife Sanctuary and Dash Point State Park. It feels a world away from the bustle of Federal Way [a near-by city].

Scout authorities face a dilemma, because the property was deeded to the Council in 1934 with the proviso that it revert to its former owner if no longer used for scouting purposes.  The scouts can't simply sell it to raise money.

It's sad that, at least within the region governed by the Pacific Harbors Council (which doesn't include Seattle), scouting is losing popularity.  It's especially disconcerting that fewer boys want to be scouts here in the Northwest Corner, where our self-image has traditionally been heavily influenced by a love of outdoor activities.

Organized team sports are great, for those with the appropriate interest and talent.  But team sports teach kids to think and act as a group.  Scouting combines teamwork with encouragement of individualism.  Camp itself may be a place for group games, but Scouting more generally teaches each individual to excel at those activities that especially interest him.

Boy Scouts currently offers over a hundred merit badges -- everything from American Business to Journalism to Plumbing to Public Speaking.  A kid who is terrible at Kayaking and Scuba Diving, may be a star at Sculpture or Nuclear Science.  There's something for everybody.

And in offering something for everybody, Scouting encourages boys to dig into whatever activity interests them, even if no one else in their troop shares the same interest. 

In a post a few years back, I told of my browsing through a 1955 World Book Encyclopedia, and being impressed at how many entries discussed hobbies for young people, hobbies that were popular at the time but that few kids today would even consider.  The obsession of virtually all young people with social media imposes, to greater or lesser degree, depending on the person, a certain flattening out of individual peculiarities. 

If talking about leatherwork on-line invites only scorn from your friends, you find yourself increasingly less interested in leatherwork.  But when scouting offers a merit badge in Leatherwork, your interest is validated.  You have an incentive to work at it, at least long enough to earn your badge.  And, chances are, some of those short-term interests will stick, will become long-term hobbies.

But, as great as it is for a kids to have hobbies, I think something more important is at stake.  And that is encouraging young people to think for themselves, to pursue interests on their own, to be comfortable spending some part of their time in their own company without constant approval from the crowd.

Baseball and soccer are great, but we'll never run out of social reinforcements for participation in team sports.  Scouting encourages other virtues.

Keep those camps open, however possible.  And let's find ways to draw kids back to both scouting and to an increased development of individuality.