Washington post: article link
Girl Scout response: article link
For the first time since its founding in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) will be fully inclusive for girls as well as boys. The BSA board voted on this decision unanimously, after years of requests from girls and families. Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh stated their goal to bring more families into the Boy Scouts, explaining that "the values of Scouting...are important for both young men and women." Girls have been previously allowed into some BSA programs, but not the most popular ones, like Cub Scouts. This new development will also now allow girls earn the Eagle Scout ranking, the highest achievement attainable in the Boy Scouts program.
In response, however, President Kathy Hopinkah Hannan of the Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) wrote a letter to BSA President Randall Stephenson, stating that "Girl Scouts believes in meeting the needs of America's youth through single gender programming by creating a safe place for girls to thrive and learn." The letter also accused BSA of making this move in order to increase their membership, which has been decreasing over recent years.
BSA has recently taken other actions to increase its membership, including ending the ban on openly gay scouts in 2013 and the prohibition on gay troop leaders in 2015. Earlier this year, they also announced that BSA would allow transgender boys to join.
What is your opinion on BSA's decision and reasoning? What is your opinion on GSUSA's response? Should girls be included in the Boy Scouts program, and to what degree?
7 comments:
Oh, fantastic! Heaven forbid we allow boys and men to have anything separate from women! In terms of social policies, I see myself as primarily liberal, but I have to call this out for the stupid pandering that it really is. The BOY Scouts of America is explicitly designed for boys. There is literally already an organization for girls, called the GIRL Scouts. What a shocker! Instead of having girls jump ship to the male exclusive organization, why not just make the girl scouts better? Wouldn't a simple implementation of the Eagle Scout program into the girl scouts or creating an equally difficult rank for girls be better than making girls join an organization meant for young men? Diversity isn't always good, and in this case, diversifying the Boy Scouts to include women would defeat the whole purpose of the organization, which is to give BOYS, no matter their sexual orientation or race, the opportunity to learn valuable leadership skills. I also doubt that the Girl Scouts are going to open their doors to boys, so so much for equality am I right?
Men and women are different, it's common sense. Yet today, when something wants to be "male-only," it's seen as sexist. Instead of holding girls and boys to the same standards, why can't we have male-only spaces and female only-spaces?
I agree with Josh, The Boy Scouts is the organization for males and the Girl Scouts is the organization for females. As a Boy Scout, I think it is very important to have these separate groups, because they are for developing leadership and outdoor skills, not for socializing among guys and girls. I think that allowing gay Boy Scouts was good. I am not in support of this mixing of girl scouts and boy scouts. And the Girl Scouts have their own award equal to the rank of Eagle Scout, called the Gold Award. This is ridiculous.
I believe that The Boy Scouts are allowing girls to join in response to their declining numbers of scouts in the recent years. So instead of addressing internal problems such as the misspending of money and child molestation reports, the Boy Scouts thought it would be perfect to just allow girls in. This will solve nothing and will cause a deeper hole for the Boy Scouts to get out of. I believe that the GSUSA response was appropriate. It's just sucking away membership numbers from a group that girls are only supposed to be in. What's next, boys in Girl Scouts? Girls should not be in Boy Scouts.
I kind of disagree with the comments above. While the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts do intend to teach youth leadership and outdoor skills, I still feel like the step the Boy Scouts took helped address the fact that a lot of these opportunities are not offered to both males and females.
I spent a good amount of time as a Girl Scout when I was younger, and remember always feeling upset that my friends who were Boy Scouts got to go on camping trips, where they got to learn outdoor skills, while we rarely ever got to do anything similar. In this sense, I feel like the Boy Scouts are just addressing these kinds of inequalities that exist in terms of opportunities and options offered to children and teenagers who are part of such programs. This isn't to say that all Girl Scout troops are like this, but it's just something to consider, because not everyone has access to such a troop that offers such activities.
For the most part, I think the GSUSA response was appropriate, but, like Josh suggested, I feel like there needs to be some reform that takes place with the Girl Scout organization. I think some moves have been made to remove some of the big differences in what each organization aims to do, but I'd really love to see GSUSA encourage girls, especially the younger ones, to do more of the activities Boy Scouts get to do.
To me, this was a panic move by Boy Scouts to counter their declining membership. Instead of finding a long term solution to deal with the dwindling interest in the scouting program in the United States, they decide on a temporary fix that might not even work: stealing members from another organization, rather than working with the Girls Scouts of America to appeal the interests of scouting towards the youth of America. This decision is ridiculous, as Boy Scouts has been designed for over 100 years to develop young men through outdoor and leadership skills. Lastly, Boy Scouts already has other co-ed organizations, such as Venturing and Sea Scouts, that also cater to the needs of developing young women, so why don't they focus on developing these programs further?
While I do think that the lifting the law for openly-gay and transgender law is a good thing. I don't think including girls to boys scouts association is going to make the organization any better. Mainly because It would defeat the main purpose of the association, which is to teach young boys both leadership and survival skills.
I agree with Justin that they should just further develop these programs to make the new generation interested in them more.
Okay, this is a surprisingly controversial issue for me. As far as I know the US is the only country that has two completely separate and totally different scouting organization. I my mind this decision by the BSA did not go far enough, I believe that scouting should be fully integrated just like everything else in life. In America I believe that we have an unfortunate condition of believing that the difference between males and females is like the difference between night and day, and that boys and girls need to have separate learning and extracurricular activities. In reality, especially at older ages, males and females are quite similar and the difference is much less black and white as it is in young children. I also believe that many of the differences we see between males and females are created and indoctrinated in children by society. In the modern world we should acknowledge that not only are male and female young adults are very similar and should be mature enough to handle the opportunity to be in the same program.
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