Stop smashing the Scouts

I was a Boy Scout. Now, before you start judging me as your typical conservative Christian moral preacher, let me get a few things straight.

I am not conservative, nor anything close to conservative. I regularly watch MSNBC and think Rachel Maddow is one cool cat. I also support health care reform, gay marriage and all the other things any other socially informed person would support.

I am fiscally moderate, so I guess you could call me a libertarian, but really political labels don’t matter that much to me. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

Next, I am not a Christian. I was born and raised Catholic, but I’ve since realized that connecting to God or whatever deity is floating up there in the Crab Nebula doesn’t require eating stale bread and drinking small amounts of cheap Chardonnay every Sunday. I don’t mean to dig at Catholics, I’m just saying it’s not my cup of tea.

So now that I’ve cleared that up, I want to talk about the Scouts. I’ve noticed they’ve been getting a bad rap for quite a while now. When I tell people I was an Eagle Scout, their first response is usually along the lines of “Can you start a fire with two sticks?” or “That’s really lame.” Well guess what. I can start a fire with two sticks, and I think that’s pretty freaking awesome.

The Boy Scouts, despite the tacky uniforms and helping-the-elderly stereotypes, teach some pretty cool stuff. I would venture to say I learned almost more practical knowledge through Scouting than I did in my AP classes.

While trigonometry has all the real-world application of an accordion on a hunting trip, my merit badge classes in personal finance and entrepreneurship have stuck with me longer than most of my Kelley classes. To boot, they were taught by some of the top financial advisers in Indianapolis.

However, it was the weekend camp outs where the real life lessons kicked in. There were two big lessons I can remember.

First and foremost, don’t whine or complain. No one likes that kid. He usually sucks at hanging out with the guys and almost inevitably ends up as the social outcast. If you’re looking for mental image, think Piggy from Lord of the Flies.

Secondly, try to volunteer for stuff. As a leader in the troop, I always liked the kid who went out of his way to make my life a little easier. Besides, sometimes you get kickbacks if you’re in the right place at the right time.

These lessons actually helped me more in college and my internship than anything I learned in high school. The real beauty of Scouting isn’t the moral lessons but rather the social wisdom that comes when one works together with a group of guys to achieve a common goal.

I’ve made lifelong friendships in Scouting that I wouldn’t sacrifice for anything. Perhaps if Scouting focused a little more on that, along with the nifty pocketknives, they could seem cool again.


E-mail: halderfe@indiana.edu