{"id":8359,"date":"2015-05-12T16:16:49","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T20:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=8359"},"modified":"2015-05-12T16:16:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T20:16:49","slug":"usa-today-boy-scouts-should-hang-tough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/12\/usa-today-boy-scouts-should-hang-tough\/","title":{"rendered":"USA TODAY: Boy Scouts Should Hang Tough"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"1970<\/a>

“Give us a strained smile,” said the photographer. From my final visit to Boy Scout summer camp, July 1970.<\/p><\/div>\n

USA TODAY<\/a>, May 12, 2015<\/h3>\n

Boy Scouts should stay tough, not pander to gender gap<\/h2>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n

Scout leadership is turning Boy Scouts into kale \u2014 nutritious, but blech<\/em><\/p>\n

The Boy Scouts are once again reforming themselves into oblivion. With falling enrollment nationwide, the Scouts are desperate for good publicity. Their latest politically correct gambit involves offering STEM programs for boys and including girls to help close the “gender gap.”<\/p>\n

The Boy Scouts are launching STEM Scouts to focus on “the frontiers of science, technology, engineering and math.” After conducting market research that supposedly proved that a “values-based STEM program” would rev up boys and their parents, STEM Scouts are debuting in a dozen Scout councils across the nation this Fall, with further expansion pending.<\/p>\n

Are the Boy Scouts behaving like a federal agency – adding a new mission statement goal in lieu of fulfilling their traditional purpose? More than 220 different federal programs now promote STEM education and schools across the nation are pounding the STEM pulpit with religious fervor. Though there is no shortage of STEM efforts, the Boy Scouts have jumped on this bandwagon.<\/p>\n

The Scouts, like plenty of government agencies, may be promising far more than they can deliver on STEM. My father was a scoutmaster, and with his Ph.D. in animal genetics from Iowa State, helped spur several troop members to pursue higher education. But it is rare to find a Scout leader equally comfortable with calculus and a compass. Most of the locales for STEM Scouts are in areas with well-known universities. The talent pool for adult leaders for such programs will be far thinner in most of rural America.<\/p>\n

The most radical innovation in the new STEM program is to bring in girls to a Boy Scout program in order to close the “gender gap.” Boy Scout chief executive officer Wayne Brock declared that the Scouts “hope to be part of the solution to the disparity between the genders in their representation in STEM fields,” bringing “into better balance” the number of male and female engineers and computer and math professionals.<\/p>\n

Should parents of boys in scouts worry that staff and resources will be diverted from traditional Boy Scout programs and into an affirmative action programs for girls? The Girl Scouts aren’t proposing a new program to enlist boys to close their “knitting, baking, and empathy gap,” so why should Boy Scouts worry about the STEM gap?<\/p>\n

Besides, the Girl Scouts already have plenty of robust STEM programs around the nation. Two Ohio Girl Scout troops recently attended a manufacturing and STEM workshop at the Scarlet Oaks Career Campus of Cincinnati. In March, the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts held an annual STEM conference and Expo in Framingham, Mass. In December, 300 Girl Scouts participated in the “Cyber Pathways for Middle School Girls” event at Cal State San Bernardino. A West Virginia Girl Scouts council is carrying out a “Imagine Your STEM Future” program.<\/p>\n

And the Boy Scouts also have ample STEM programs up and rolling. Scouts can earn merit badges for several STEM-related fields, including robotics. The Scouts launched a national STEM initiative in 2011 that seemed to be doing just fine. Eight hundred scouts attended the National Eagle Scout Association’s STEM Jamboree at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland last year. Last September, a Boy Scout council ran a program for Oklahoma boys to build and launch free model rockets – great fun though this particular expertise may cause Homeland Security and Secret Service agents to sweat.<\/p>\n

The skills I most enjoyed learning in the Scouts – building fires, camping in winter, shooting white water rapids in a canoe – involved getting your hands dirty and surviving bumps and bruises. While attending a National Scout Jamboree in Idaho, I also learned how much I dislike marching in step with thousands of other people. Scouting taught me to view minor hardships simply as transaction costs for great adventures.<\/p>\n

The Scouts are ill-advised to shift away from their rough-and-tumble heritage. The people who hate the Scouts will not be mollified by the latest STEM gambit, and some kids who might have joined will be put off by expectations of another dreary science class.<\/p>\n

“Join the Boy Scouts to help girls close the Gender Gap!” is not the snappiest recruiting slogan yet devised. Is the Scout leadership turning Boy Scouts into the equivalent of kale \u2014 something reputedly very nutritious that many people will not stomach?<\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

USA TODAY, May 12, 2015 Boy Scouts should stay tough, not pander to gender gap by James Bovard Scout leadership is turning Boy Scouts into kale \u2014 nutritious, but blech The Boy Scouts are once again reforming themselves into oblivion. With falling enrollment nationwide, the Scouts are desperate for good publicity. Their latest politically correct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[301,602,603,123,486,604,424,467],"class_list":["post-8359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-affirmative-action-2","tag-boy-scouts","tag-gender-gap","tag-public-policy-hooligan","tag-reform","tag-stem","tag-virginia-2","tag-warren-county-2"],"yoast_head":"\nUSA TODAY: Boy Scouts Should Hang Tough - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Boy Scouts' latest PR effort involves helping girls close the STEM gender gap. 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