Boy/Girl Scouts, Girls/Boy Scouts
The Boy Scouts of America announced yesterday that they will start accepting girls into their ranks starting in 2019, according to reporting by the AP.
Currently the Boy Scout programs including the Venturing Scouts and the Sea Scouts do allow girls into their programs. These programs are for older boys and girls.
This new program will still be single gender for their Cub Scouts, which is the smallest unit within the Boy Scouts, those genders will be either all-boys or all-girls. Once the Cub Scouts become large enough and evolve into what they call a pack is when they will have the option to remain a single gender pack or included both genders.
What are the children and their parents who believe they do not fit into either gender going to do now?
The question is why the Boy Scouts organization is doing this at this time. The Girl Scouts believe it has to do with financial reasons.
As of March,
- The Girl Scouts, founded in 1912, reported 1,566,671 youth members and 749,008 adult members. That is down from just over 2 million youth members and about 800,000 adult members in 2014.
- The Boy Scouts, founded in 1910, say their current membership is approximately 2.35 million, down from 2.6 million in 2013 and more than 4 million in peak years of the past.
The BSA’s chief scout executive Michael Surbaugh was quoted in the article stating:
We believe it is critical to evolve how our programs meet the needs of families interested in positive and lifelong experiences for their children, and the values of Scouting — trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind, brave and reverent, for example — are important for both young men and women
The president of the Girls Scouts, Kathy Hopinkah Hannan, has accused the Boy Scouts of attempting to covertly recruit girls into their programs while disparaging the Girl Scouts' operations.
Well it does not appear to be covertly any longer.
The Girl Scouts of America are not happy about this development and do not believe it is in the best interest of girls. They believe that at that age it is more beneficial to girls to be in a single sex group, essentially a better learning environment.
Now what is interesting is earlier this year the National Organization for Women, (NOW) had urged the Boy Scouts to allow girls to join their organization.
What do you believe is best for young girls: a single sex learning environment, a mixed sex learning environment or the option of belonging to a mixed sex group such as the Boy Scouts will become?
With boys and girls being allowed to be in the same pack soon we will be hearing about men and women actually sleeping together, when they become adults. God knows we would not want that to happen.
More From 1240 WJIM AM
