Girls Scouts vs. Boy Scouts

The Girls Scouts of the USA is mad at the Boy Scouts of America. The Girl Scouts are accusing the Boy Scouts of conspiring to poach their potential members: girls. A letter from the president of the Girl Scouts was sent to the president of the Boy Scouts accusing the organization of considering programs that will be open to girls, in order to please millennial parents and boost the BSA membership count, which has been declining. You will be forgiven if you thought that these were two sides to the same organization; they are not.

A Girl Scouts spokesperson confirmed that Kathy Hopinkah Hannan, GSUSA's national president sent the letter to BSA's national president, Randall Stephenson, and the entire BSA board.

"Through various means we have learned that BSA is very seriously considering opening their programs to girls and we have made repeated efforts to engage with them and talk about the implications," the spokesperson told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday.

"It's a potentially dangerous and bad idea," the spokesperson said, citing research supporting "single gender programming" which says that girls learn best in an all-girls environment when it comes to scouting.

The spokesperson or the letter did not specify what BSA's proposed programs for girls were.

Read the story and the entire letter at Buzzfeed.

(Image credit: Flickr user Dennis Carr)

What should the scout organizations do?




I had a friend in high school who was in the Boy Scouts when she was younger -she wanted to learn about hiking, camping and survival skills while the Girl Scouts in the area were just selling cookies and practicing traditional feminine skills like sewing. The organizations do totally different things and kids should get to choose what they want to do based on their interests, not their gender.
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I ditched the Girl Guides the moment Scouts Canada began letting girls in. GG taught me things I didn't care for, like hair braiding and table setting. Scouts was WAY more fun.
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My Girl Scout troop had a couple little brothers do everything with us. They said it was more fun than cub scouts. We learned astronomy, camping skills, and public speaking. Curriculum is pretty much up to the individual troop leaders. So how "girly" it is depends on that. My leaders were a couple of farmers' wives and allowed a lot of independent study with one on one attention with them. I was the only girl scout to achieve a computer badge in my troop (it was '86 so it mostly involved a calculator and BASIC).

Having worked at GSA at the state level, anyone can be a Girl Scout, no matter what age or gender. The only requirement is paying the yearly dues.

The Boys Scouts is very conservative organization with close ties to the US military and the LDS church. GSA on the other hand is very liberal at the National level but the autonomy they give to the troop leaders sometimes leads to a disconnect of values.
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