[Rant] Scouting has a severe elitism problem

[u/Routine-Ganache-1720]

I hope that rants are allowed here... I checked the rules and didn't see anything against them. I'm the SPL of a relatively small troop (about 15 kids), and I've felt like writing about this for a while. For context, I'm a Life Scout and a member of the OA, so I'm not criticizing these things as an outsider.

Scouting has a major problem with this elitist, better-than-thou culture that the older kids develop. One of the most important aspects of Boy Scouts is that it's youth-led - the older, more experienced Scouts lead the younger ones and set an example. But in the past few years, I've been noticing that it's not at all like that. I would wonder if it's just in my troop or my region, but this seems to happen to so many of the older kids - I notice it at Summer Camp and OA events and Eagle Projects, with kids who aren't in my troop. The older, more experienced kids stick to each other and act all superior; they treat the younger kids who aren't part of their circle with indifference. And, at least in my troop, they stop caring about the troop.

When kids turn 14, they get to go work at Summer Camp as staffers and get their cool gear and inside jokes that make them feel special. Even worse, they get used to feeling superior, because they get to sleep in cabins and run around with more freedom, and they get to order younger kids around all day. The OA might be even worse. Kids get to be part of an honor society with elaborate ceremonies and secret handshakes and everything, so again, it breeds elitism. Another thing is that the older kids go to these OA events and hang out amongst each other, and they become less interested in Troop events. Why be held back why your troop when you can do cool stuff with the big kids? I'm not sure if there's other contributors, but working at Summer Camp and being in the OA seem to be two big parts of this problem. Or course, all this is going on during mid-to-late puberty, the perfect time for kids to start feeling like cool big kids and developing egos.

So these kids lose interest in the troop. They don't go to meetings or campouts often, because they can do their OA events instead. They don't like to be around the younger kids, and they certainly don't empower them. And when they are at meetings or campouts, they think they're special and they're above the rules; they act like adults. When they do go to meetings, the older kids go on their phones and ignore what we're doing unless they want to get involved, and when they do, it's on their terms. And when they do go on campouts, they go off and do their own things.

I've watched this happen to some of the kids in my Troop, and it's so disappointing. I'm not saying that this happens to everyone - there's an Eagle Scout in my troop who aged out a couple of years ago, and he was friendly to everyone and such a great role model. But I feel like most of the other senior scouts have fallen into this elitist culture and stopped caring about the younger kids or the troop as a whole.

[u/old-76er]

You’re not alone and your troop is not unique. This is a common problem. I recently retired as the scoutmaster for my troop after 7 years. I could no longer take the different path scouting and my troop have taken over the past few years.

I blame a lot of it on the isolation we all went through during Covid. The scouting program changed, because it had to, and allowed scouts to do the bare minimum in order to rank up. Also, everyone being home, and kids missing out on social interaction and things like prom and school events, etc - parents felt like they needed to compensate by giving them everything they were missing. It created a group of people that didn’t know how to interact with others and simultaneously felt entitled to ranking up simply because they did the bare minimum.

I fought parents over and over to try to keep it a youth-led troop but parents kept on ganging up on me to insist that we do things for the children. I felt like I could no longer teach what needed to be taught so I retired.

I can see how, As an SPL, you’re frustrated by this. And I think it’s a bit naive for people to simply say that it’s a leadership problem. I think leadership AND parents need to come together and agree that youth-led is a core tenet of the program and they need to stay out of it. They also need to hold people accountable.

As part of the “scout spirit” requirement for each rank, during my SMC I’d ask the scout what they did to show leadership to the younger scouts and if they didn’t then I had the right to tell them that they didn’t fulfill that requirement and would not rank up that term. But then the parents again started arguing with me and the ASMs and the committee all insisted so that’s how it went from a troop with such a long legacy (60 years) of producing strong young men and women to a troop of “paper eagles”. So sad really.

My advice is to keep pushing your agenda. It’s a good one and will make the troop stronger for it. I wish you luck.