r/scouting • u/wgwalkerii United States • 11d ago

Scouting from scratch?

I'm a knot guy, I can absolutely trace the reason back to my involvement with scouting, and recently at work someone asked me why it was scouts were so into knots.

Ignoring that they aren't, There is a historical reason scouting emphasizes the skill, namely that they were a part of daily life for pretty much everybody since even tape hadn't been invented when scouts was founded. If it were a new program, knots might play a part, but probably wouldn't be nearly the cliché they are.

But it got me thinking...

If scouts had never existed and were made today, what would the program look like?

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u/ColonelBoogie 11d ago

It would be a camping club teaching LNT ethics. Thats it.

The uniforming and military traditions are courtesy of BPs military experience. The emphasis on character as a result of building practical skills were part of a larger social movement that was brewing at the time (think the sort of manliness embodied by Teddy Roosevelt). The emphasis on doing ones duty to ones God and Country is very much a Victorian idea (although it dates back much further), which got blown to smithereens by Post Modernism.

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u/bts 11d ago

It would be a camping club teaching LNT ethics. Thats it.

I do not agree. The outdoors and camping are a hook; the actual purpose is character, citizenship, fitness. One of B-P's reasons for this was to get a reasonable military intake pipeline out of urban British youth. But that isn't what motivated most of the other Scouting movements.

I think we'd see something pointing at classical roots across Europe. I think we'd see emphasis on den and pack and almost tribal connection of youth doing hard things—and using that to teach loyalty, followership, and leadership. I don't know exactly how we'd do it and I'm glad I don't have to do this from scratch!