Pride & Value

Written by Charlie Durgin

The Boy Scouts of America turns 100 this year. Just as impressive, the Girl Scouts turn a spry 98 in 2010.

I participated in Boy Scouts up until my junior year of high school, and enjoyed the campouts and survival training immensely. I have a hard time visualizing today’s technology-dependent youth enjoying the appeal of Scouting.

The Boy Scouts of my youth were considered high-tech if they had Mag-Lites or maybe a small radio that got past the eye of the Scoutmaster. One aspect of your status in the troop was the quality of your pocketknife.

Scouting was founded by Lord Baden Powell, who, at the time, was a military general who wanted to incorporate the principles of “military scouting” into “peace scouting.” He thought that young men could benefit from general scouting skills, and so he tested his theories of “peace scouting” on a group of boys at an island camp called Brownsea Island, located in a harbor in South England. As 100 years of history indicates, that first campout was a hit.

Distractions and entertainment probably consisted of staying warm and dry and learning how to tie trick knots. History tells us that Brownsea Island was the first place a group of boys learned that most valuable of maxims—Be Prepared.

A Scout today has a different Swiss Army Knife, and being prepared probably means remembering the charger for your Smart Phone, right? That’s the primary tool of today’s youth right?

This tool has a different set of blades. This one combines the features of a TV, telephone, camera, music player, communications device, and flashlight. If any company builds one with blades and a fish scaler, watch out, iPhone.

Have I become the old man shouting about “walking uphill both ways in the snow just to get to school?” Are today’s Scouts as capable, interested, and tough as those of yesteryear?

Local businessman and former Scoutmaster Bryan Batey thinks so.

“I think there are more challenges and ways to get sidetracked from being an Eagle Scout today, and it makes the accomplishment more impressive,” the father of three Eagle Scouts said.

And he would know, having earned the rank of Eagle Scout himself. I asked Batey if he thought kids still cared about camping and the great outdoors as much as I did.

“That was the part of Scouting that was important to you,” he answered, “but there’s more than just camping to the Boy Scout experience.

“If you narrowly define Scouting as a 50 mile backpacking trip, you are missing the bigger picture,” he said. “It’s served our family very well. Our eldest son just graduated from Cal Poly in three and a half years, so the hard work and focus involved in achieving Eagle Scout has served him well. And he got a job right out of college, and I have to attribute some of that to people recognizing the value of an Eagle Scout.”

Batey’s middle son, James, benefited from Scouting in a way that was more consistent with my vision of “old school Scouting.” He’s pursuing a career as a firefighter and has already worked a summer with the Bureau of Land Management as a wildland firefighter, and graduated from the firefighter academy at Allan Hancock College.

Batey’s other sons are benefiting from the Scouting experience in a more transcendent way. They are gleaning the benefits of proximity to an organization that values thoroughness and duty.

Longtime Bakersfield resident Aron Vietti never attained the rank of Eagle Scout, but he still benefited from his Scouting experience and thinks today’s youth have plenty of lessons to learn.

“It puts you in an environment where you can have adult supervision that isn’t necessarily your parents...and it gives you space to find yourself and find who you want to be. And that’s timeless. Every young person wants to figure themselves out, and Scouting provides the environment and challenges to make it happen.”

Indeed, through Scouting I discovered that while I was the runt amongst my cousins, I was much more adept at staying dry, packing the right food to make it through the weekend, and sharpening my knife so that I could shave with it (when I finally started growing whiskers at the age of 20). I wasn’t the biggest and strongest; that honor went to my cousin Jeff. I wasn’t the smartest and craftiest; that designation sat on my wheeling and dealing cousin Billy’s shoulders, who would have all the Scouts at camp in debt by the end of the trip by selling them bulk-purchased candy at a premium.

But Scouting has never been just a boy’s club. Hoping to encourage young women to find their own place, Juliette Gordon Low gathered 18 girls in March of 1912 to form the Girl Scouts. She wanted to give girls the same opportunity to discover their potential.

Ranessa Paquette says Girl Scouts does just that. She’s the leader of Girl Scouts Troop 103 in Bakersfield. She became involved after her daughter, Samantha, expressed interest in trying new things.

“Samantha happened to fall into Girl Scouts,” Paquette said. “She brought home this flier and we said, ‘If you really want to do Girl Scouts, we’ll sign you up.”

Samantha lost her leg three years ago in an off-road vehicle accident, “and she was hoping to find a way to make new friends,” Paquette said.

When Samantha needed help, they gave it to her. Which is at the core of today’s Girl Scout experience.

“A lot of our girls are pretty comfortable and well off, and they feel entitled to a lot of stuff,” Paquette says.

So Paquette and the other adults in Troop 103 ensure that the girls learn about service.

People are what make Scouting work or not work. People, more than emerging technologies and glowing distractions, will make or break the Scouting movement.

“Parent participation is the only thing that keeps them involved, and there’s a time commitment. We have weekly meetings, and if the parent or another concerned adult isn’t invested, then the child won’t be either,” Paquette said.

For all of his sons’ resourcefulness, Batey knows they couldn’t have done it alone. “I’ve never met an Eagle Scout who was able to do it themselves. They have either outstanding Scoutmasters or parents.”

This may be the biggest hurdle for young people in Scouting. To my surprise, it isn’t the video games. It might be our faster, busier, two-parents-at-work, lifestyle.

Many things in this life come down to money and affordability. But Scouting requires that most precious of commodities: time; in exchange for other precious commodities like wisdom and experience. Not a bad trade.

As I started my research, I was sure that I’d find a reason to vilify the media industry for making our children lazy and disinterested in more wholesome activities like community service and Scouting. But I was dead wrong. It isn’t the video games as much as it’s our time-pressed lifestyle. Scouting takes time.

But what do we do about the video games and iPhones? How do we fix those? Paquette has a solution.

“The parent can turn off those video games and turn something else on in their children,” she said.

But what if they protest and dig their heels in?

“Oh, you mean when they say ‘you are mean, I don’t like you?’ I laugh and say, ‘then I’m doing my job. It’s not your job to like me, it’s my job to be your parent and help you make the right decisions.’ ”

Just like Scouting does.

Article appeared in our 27-1 Issue - April 2010