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This is a subject that is really annoying to me. I have had a teenage son who grew up in our ward with no father in the home. So the scouting program was just one way he got to feel even more left out of things. I tried when he was young to do all the scout stuff with him, be both the mom and the dad but as he got older it got harder. The same would be true of any young man who may have a father not interested in the scouting program. Now I have a teenage daughter of beehive age and all I know is this. The young women feel so second to importance to the young men. They see the young men spending their young men budgets doing fun things and spending their scout budgets doing fun things. These young women feel so much less important than the young men. Are they in the eyes of the church?
My home teacher recently told me that President Hinckley was opposed to the church running the boy scout program but it was never changed because he received so much opposition. What about young men in our communities who may not be of our religion who are forced to come to scouting activities at our church if they want to be boy scouts?
The scouting drive is what really set this off for me, and now you want more money so my daughter can continue to feel bad as the young men and their leaders take off on just one more camp or activity. I don’t think so. Does anyone know if the church is connected to boy scouts in other states? Please let me know how you all are feeling on this one. Thanks!
I honestly think this is a misconception. Being involved at different levels the funding for the youth is not split unevenly between the young men and women. There is not a conspiracy to treat young men better than young women in the church. Young men may seem to do more exciting things but that is a function of the local leaders not the church in general. Frankly some of the things that the young women leaders come up with as activities seem rather lame to me. Maybe it is because the women in those positions feel more of a responsibility to get a spiritual message across. The young men leaders are just trying to keep them under control and burn some energy. Personally I think a lot more integration with the youth would be better. Stop splitting them up so much. Journey1, What is your post in response to? You seem to be responding to something but it is not clear what.
I also do not really get why not having a dad made your son feel left out of scouting. My dad was not involved in scouting at all but I never felt left out because of it. I mean what did it matter? You go off with the scout troop and that is that. Maybe things have changed?
However, your post does bring up an issue that I had never given much thought to but that now I am interested in. Should the church be sponsoring boy scout troops? And I think maybe the answer is no. Not, at least, in the way it is forced upon young men. If I remember correctly it was part and parcel of my youth experience in the church. It was an integral part of being a youth in the church. Am I remembering this correctly? Once a week we had priesthood night but it was really scouting night. I could be wrong but that is how I remember it.
That just doesn’t seem right to me now. The boy scouts are a secular organization with all kinds of discrimination problems, not to mention molestation issues. Why would the church want to associate itself with such an organization. Granted, the church has made clear its stance on gay marriage but discrimination is another thing altogether. If I am correct the church does not advocate discrimination against homosexuals and even accepts that homosexuality is natural, although it condemns the behavior. Still, it doesn’t say gays are not welcome in the church, right? The scouts are just all screwed up as an organization, it seems to me, and there is no reason the church should be so intimately connected to it. I say it should divorce itself from it.
I didn’t grow up with my dad, and I still feel gratitude today for the people in the Ward that ran the Scouting program. They taught me to play basketball, to fish, to shoot guns, to ‘camp out’, all the things my dad wasn’t there to teach me.
HiJolly
I’ve heard this argument about the boys getting more money and more attention for a long time. AND from my experience, right or wrong, yeah – they do. Interesting, I read in the MormonTimes paper that comes with the Church News just two months ago, a lady complaining about it. The response she quoted from the bishop was, “a boy can learn more sitting around one campfire, than a hundred meetings sitting in a hard-backed chair.” I would say this is generally correct – at least it is in my case. This lady then goes on to say that she got called to be a cub scout leader — and her whole position changed, and she now understands “why.” Here in Oregon, In our Stake, the church runs the scouting program. We have a scout troop in our branch. 80% of it is made up of non-members, and the scoutmaster is a non-member who got the “calling” from the Branch President. We fund it – with some help from the local Community Church, and we recruit all the merit badge councilors. We do all the paperwork etc and the camps and merit badge fairs/work are all organized under the direction of the Stake YMP. I think that is the way it’s done throughout the states?
I know Pres. Monson was a huge supporter of the scouting program, Hinkley – not so much. I heard someone say that Monson gave a talk where he said in effect that “we are going to have a young men program. We can either do all the work ourselves, or we can team up with the Boy Scouts of America to do the lion share for us”…so I doubt thing will change anytime soon.
Don’t know if it’s right or not, but that is the way it works here.
Thank you for all of your input, as always it is good food for thought. To make myself more clear these are my core issues with boy scouting and the church’s involvement. As it stands we have the young womens organization and the young men organization. In ADDITION to the young men program is the boy scout program. Last year the young men organization in our ward used $600.00 of the young women budget (why this was allowed I will never know) then for the last few months of the year the young women had no money. A lot of the so called fun activities of the young men are under the umbrella of the scouting program. There always seems to be an abundance of funds for the young men/ scouts. We cannot even use a boy scout camp for our young women camp because there is not enough money in the budget for the girls to go. From the Young Women General Presidency we are supposed to make every activity a spiritual one. That is a whole other issue but could be the reason as Cadence put it as to why young women activities seem so lame. All I know is that being part of the young women organization has been an eye opener for me and I can absolutely see why the young women feel less important than the young men. When my daughter was young she was a girl scout, it was separate and so should this be in my opinion. The church is just that church and should not be running the boy scout program. I would rather give my money to the young women organization that they ask for in the friends of scouting drive. Unlike HiJolly my son did not learn to play basketball, fish, shoot guns and camp out through the scouting program attached to our ward, it just wasn’t like that. Having had the experience of being a cub master and a scout leader in the Church for many years, I have mixed feelings about our Church’s participation at this point in my life. I think overall it’s a great program for young men. It really is, especially when it is run the way the Boy Scouts designed it with their 100+ years of experience as an organization developing young men into confident young adults with skills and also into young leaders. BTW, girls can join Venture Scouting crews outside the Church. The Girls Scouts is also an EXCELLENT organization, and I highly recommend parents with daughters look into that as an option regardless of our own Church youth programs.
I kind of feel a little burned out lately about the odd way our Church implements scouting though, trying to force it to fit into the priesthood program. Our Church only permits a subset of the scouting program, and forces it into the Primary and Young Men’s age advancement schedule. I really got burned out as the 11 year old leader in my last ward. The 11 year olds aren’t in the Priesthood yet, so the local leaders did not want them mixing with the 12+ year olds. They were also no longer in Cub Scouts, but still in the Primary. This might not be a problem in gigantic, active wards in Utah where the whole ward is 2 or 3 blocks in a neighborhood and they have fifteen 11 year olds to make a program, but out here in the “mission field” I would end up with 2 or 3 boys. Most of the time I was violating the scouting rules by not having another adult leader (safety for the boys AND the adults), but it was hard to justify calling multiple adults to teach 1 or 2 boys. It was just messed up. So I was putting a lot of effort into maintaining a whole separate scouting program for a couple of boys so that it could fit right into the Primary program.
A very important aspect of scouting is the older boys mentoring the younger boys, the oldest essentially running the show. That’s the leadership training aspect. But that did not happen most of the time because all the quorums were separated too much, and the adult leaders did most of that. Lastly, the men running scouting are often “called” only for a year or two. Outside scouting programs are run by people who are interested in the scouting program. Scoutmasters and other adult leaders often spend decades doing what they do (because they love it). In the Church, half the time the boys just play basketball because nobody really cares about the program. They are just doing their time…
YM using YW funds is NOT appropriate, nor is it normal. Frankly, I’ve never heard of it happening in my life. Over-spending by one organization happens (and it’s supposed to be addressed right away with the organization leadership when it happens) – but one organization spending another organization’s funds? That would require a Bishop or Branch President redistributing funds mid-year and changing the annual allocation for those organizations. That’s messed up and against everything the budget system in the Church is structured to do – and I can’t believe it happens in anything but a handful of units throughout the world in the way described in the post. Therefore, I can’t condemn something just because it’s abused somewhere. I’m ambivalent about Scouting within the Church. It works dependent on the local leadership, but, as Brian says, it is hard to make it work in small units or those with few boys. I ended up one or two merit badges away from being an Eagle Scout – and that’s fine with me. I got that far due to the effort of one particular leader midway through Scouts. I really like the Scouting program overall, and I think it works wonderfully when run like it’s supposed to be run, but it’s just hard to run it that way in many units in the Church.
Journey (and everyone else), given the Church’s involvement with Scouting, how can you make sure Scouting doesn’t create a wedge between you and the Church? Scouting, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, and that result doesn’t come from Scouting, in and of itself.
My own answer is that whether or not my sons participated – and to what extent they participated – was up to me and them, and I wasn’t about to feel guilty if that decision in our family was different than the decision others made. Retaining or eliminating Scouting wouldn’t change one thing about that answer, since the key is me – not any particular program.
I echo a lot of the concerns already expressed. talk
I think the 11 year old separation is church-wide though, not just via local leaders.
Two concerns not expressed:
1) Friends of Scouting: In Utah, the LDS church is the primary funder of the Boy Scout Professional Administration via the Friends of Scouting program. Technically, you go to everyone living in ward boundaries, but non-members perceive FOS as an LDS program, and don’t contribute. I think that FOS should be done more broadly in Utah. Lots of people confuse the purpose of FOS, which I think is purposely kept vague. I also see no transparency or accountability for those funds. I have asked and was given the brush off.
2) Adult Scouters: This is quite an odd bunch in my experience. I’m not talking about the local people called to serve in local units. I’m talking about the men and women who get involved at the District and Council level. There are some sharp ones, and some others for whom this is their life, their escape and frankly there are some strange ones in the ranks. I have not been favorably impressed, in general, with the professional scouters either.
3) I think the whole, pseudo-military, uniformed dress, outdoor skills thing has passed its prime as an attractant to many boys. Most kids now in my experience are in scouting because they are forced to be and not because they want to be. So many kids in the Utah church can’t get their driver’s license until they get their eagle.
I for one will be interested to see if scouting remains as the activity branch of the church, once several of the high level backers are gone. Maybe 10 years? Maybe 20?
As one who has been involved heavily in Scouting (like Brian) from both a boy scout, and boy scout leader perspective, I echo what Brian has said. Especiallyat the 11-year old Scout level. It simply doesn’t work well in the church at that level. It is being shoe-horned in. I would go a step further. I think, given the duty to God award, and the newly placed emphasis on it, I really think the LDS church should get out of the business of scouting (of course this would seriously hurt the BSA generally). And I will say that this saddens me, because I LOVE scouting, and I think it’s great for young men. But I think it drives a wedge into people’s feelings about the church, and I think it’s horribly unfair to girls, as well as the rest of the world outside the U.S.
In my last ward, where I was the 11-year old scout leader, we had a guy in the ward bring his boy to our troop to “check it out.” He was LDS, but wanted to compare our troop with the non-LDS troop. He came 2 times, and never came back. I think LDS troops are often limited by program rules and other restrictions.
When I was a youth 13 years ago my experience was very different from what you are describing. The young womens leaders were really great and the young mens leaders were good too and they worked together really well. There is no way that money from the young women would go to the young men. The young women did fundraising to mitigate the cost for their girls camp and the boy scouts did some too. One year the young women in my Ohio ward did a trip to Utah for two weeks. One year the boy scouts did a week long trip canoeing the boundary waters of Minnesota. The treatment of the two groups were very equal. I think that it would be good for the church to separate away from the boy scouts of america. I understand that the church has done this in most other countries. When the leaders first amped up the duty to god program I thought that was the direction that the church was heading towards. I don’t think that it’ll happen while Monson is in charge. From my experience, the young women had just as good if not better activities and learning opportunities so there is no reason the young men couldn’t do the same without boy scouts. I never would have participated in boy scouts if my friends at church weren’t doing it.
Perhaps my experience is not typical, but I hated the Scouting program. In many of my wards, Scouting got the cold shoulder, while Girl’s Camp was talked about incessantly. As a teen, I had terrible scout leaders, and had no desire to go. I even remember one particular scout leader invited me to scout camp (after years in which I had lost complete interest in Scouting), and I didn’t want to go. He decided to convince my dad to get me to go, and my dad said “he doesn’t want to go, and I’m not going to make him!” So, I’m sorry that the young women in your ward seem to be getting a worse experience than the boys, but in some wards, the opposite is true. I know the girls always got the nicer campgrounds; perhaps the boys were supposed to “rough it” more, but it was a real turn off for me. It always seemed like the girls seemed more enthusiastic about Young Women activities than the boys were about Young Men’s. Do any of you remember the time when President Monson, back when he was an apostle, was given a scouting aware, I think during General Priesthood Meeting? It’s been a number of years ago, but I distinctly remember it. The award was presented by a non-LDS National Scout person and after the presentation, President Monson saluted the National Leader using the Boy Scout salute. I remember some of the local scout leaders cringing, because in scouting, you only salute the flag, not other people. Anyway, I echo that scouting will be a part of the church as long as President Monson is around, but after that, it’s anyone’s guess. Scouting and the church is a weird church/non-church alliance and difficult to mesh with the church programs. The only other example I can think of for a weird church/non-church alliance is the Stake Lagoon Day thing along the Wasatch Front. Maybe I’ll start a new topic on that!!
Fwiw, I have had two Stake Presidents who are staunch supporters of Boy Scouts ONLY when implented “properly”. One even said that we have to stop equating the YW Personal Progress award with the Eagle Scout. He said that the YM Duty to God award is the equivalent, and if a YM gets one or the other it should be the Duty ot God. I’ve seen it said here and elsewhere that the church only implements part of the BSA program, and I’m confused. As far as I can tell, the BSA program is camping, hiking, fishing, hunting, pseudo-militarism (rank, uniforms, respect for authority) and that’s about it. What other parts of the BSA program are there that the church doesn’t implement? Living in a highly urban environment from the time I was born, I had no real interest in the outdoors activities the BSA was partial to. During my brief time in boy scouts, I focused on earning the “non-outdoors” merit badges, such as music, computers, and citizenship. IIRC, those badges took a long time to earn, unlike the outdoors badges where one could earn 10 of them over a weekend camping trip. I guess my beef with the current setup is that all boys are shoehorned into scouting whether it’s a good fit for them or not. It’d be nice for the church to develop an alternative program for boys who aren’t interested in scouting, but I don’t see anything like that ever happening.
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