Was never a scout but was in the Air Training Corps which is kinda like the teenage air military equivalent (at least in those with "Royal" in their name). It felt like "RAF-lite", and I think many of my corps ended up in the service after they completed school. Taught lots of skills including firearms, tracking, stealth operations, radio operations, flying, bridge crossing, capturing bases, teamwork, abseiling and how to march, follow orders, hierarchical teams, hospital corners and polish brass and shoes.

Also, a great place for a bunch of teens of all persuasions to hang out together and get together in some instances.

I was a scout. All the way from age 6 until around mid highschool, where I really fell off it. I think overall it had a positive impact on my life. I got to learn about nature and bushcraft and first aid and things like that. I think the worst part was that a number of adults really pushed the "military" shit. Like they wanted to larp as drill seargents to a bunch of 12 year olds. Having too much fun was generally looked down upon. As if we were camping with our friends for some other reason. When I heard the scouts were going co-ed, I thought that would be a push in the right direction. When I was going, most of the leaders were very old. Pretty much all white men. Many were great, but the entire place could use some diversity of thought.

It's an essential part of any battle. You need to get an idea of enemy numbers and movements before you formulate a strategy.

I volunteer with them here in the UK after being a youth member most of the way through. I know our respective organisations differ in some ways and I don't know a great deal about USA Scouts.

I think we do legitimately help young people gain life skills and care for others. If I had kids, they'd be on the waiting list well in advance of joining age.

I'm proud that we're an LGBT+ and neurodivergence inclusive space, by national policy as well as practical local example in many places. I have seen variations between groups though and I don't think we get enough training on that. I would also say we're pretty bad at race and class inclusion.

The biggest downside I feel is organisationally. We suffer from all the usual issues of a big organisation including internal politicking, shitty managers, disconnect between different teams, and putting the organisation's interests above its professed values.

Former UK beaver, cub and scout. I loved being in the scouts and don't have a bad word to say about it.

In hindsight though, its like it was set up to give pedos easy access to kids. I know they check the criminal records of adults involved but thats more of a box-ticking exercise. I don't know what the solution is.

Overall a positive experience, bit authoritarian, bit militaristic, but lots of useful skills, fostered a great appreciation of nature and wilderness. Principle seems sound, implementation has shown its flaws.

Honestly, I can see it being in a good place for a reinvention. Maybe socialist scouts or solarpunk scouts, maybe a whole slew of loosely connected (ideologically distributed even) scouts to give kids a choice. Could give it a chance to become more inclusive and safer. I'm using 'scouts' in a gender neutral form, applies to all genders and I see scouting as more exciting than guiding, which may appeal to all kids. Part of the diaspora could be each troop (and their parents) deciding where they stand on gender exclusion. Democracy scouts perhaps (direct at that scale).

I'm a former scout and current adult leader in BSA. It isn't for everyone, but for the kids who click with the program I have seen it be a very positive activity in their lives. Individual experiences can vary greatly depending on the immediate peer group and the environment set by the adult leaders.

I am very glad that BSA has opened up to girls and LGBTQ+ members, and watered down the religious aspects. The organization is late to change but moving in the right direction. I also appreciate the current focus on youth safety and abuse prevention, though like the Catholic church it's unfortunately too little too late for a whole lot of past victims.

it seems like the organization & movement as a whole has fallen by the sociocultural wayside.

Scouting in the US has been in decline since the 1970s. It didn't help that they kept trying to cling to tradition and conservative values as the world evolved around them. The BSA particularly looked like assholes in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale in 2000. Then the BSA's sex abuse cases started blowing up around 2015-ish. Then the LDS church closed all their scouting units in 2019, cutting the remaining BSA membership in half. It's been a rough couple of decades.

I am an eagle scout and I highly recommend people to join Scouting. It's boys and girls now and the nature of scouting is a little decentralized with how each troop does things. Troops vary in leadership culture, activities, etc so you might need to shop around for a troop you vibe with around you but I am all for getting outside and learning life skills.

Was one of the only organizations I knew of that was kid-run, with kids deciding what to do and how to do it. Great to get away from parents and go out camping once a month.

It seems good for people. Most people I've known who did it seem glad they did.

It's one of those things where I wish the governing body was more separate from the concept, and I feel for people who dedicated a great deal of time to a positive force in their life yet have to grapple with what the institution itself is.

I was a scout, I made it to life then stopped going to church around 15. Even though it was largely connected to church, I remember it fondly. Scout is some of my best memories.

I think it's a shame that they have fallen, however, I understand why it has.

my friends were Scouts but I was always too poor and my homelife was too unpredictable to be in any kind of organization with the kind of commitment requirements that Scouts required.

My friends in the early 90s that were in Scouts had a Scout Master that they all considered to be a creepy pedo. So its not anything new. Anytime there is young people and adults without proper supervision, this is bound to happen.

The priest that baptized me was a pedo and to make it even worse, he was moved away from a chruch when it came to light that he was molesting children

AND THEY MOVED HIM TO MY CHURCH. WHICH WAS ALSO A GRADE SCHOOL / JUNIOR HIGH

Let that sink in.

Right around the time that he "retired" one of my schoolmates just disappeared from school too. I have always wondered if that was connected.

Yeah, I don't go to Mass anymore. I don't do church anymore.

I was a Boy Scout some years ago. I think as a programme to get young boys interested in outdoor activities it worked pretty well. As for the paedophilia scandals, I think they were intrinsic to how the group is organised. Their decentralised model that relies on volunteer scoutmasters is very prone to infiltration by people who have no business being around children and difficult to police because they can't actually supervise each individual troop but are still legally responsible for them.

I also think they sort of lost the plot with their whole transgender nonsense and their pivot to the "Scouting America" brand. Their exclusion of transgender boys and heavy emphasis on religion indicated a severe failure to get with the times. Transitioning from the Boy Scouts of America to "Scouting America" is giving up on their core model of being an organisation that serves primarily boys.

Don't take this in a bigoted way, I'm saying this not because I think gender segregation is good, but their core customer base (if you want to call it that) is teenage boys, and there's an allure to that demographic in being a part of an organisation that is designed to serve boys, seeing that the Girl Scouts are also a thing. The Boy Scouts have a strong anti-radicalising effect because they teach boys to be accepting of others with differences and to be open minded and learn from them. And girls sorta know that Scouting America isn't really for them, seeing that 80% of its membership consists of boys and the membership of the Girl Scouts USA (which is practically 100% girls) outnumber the female members of the BSA 5 to 1. So what's left is an organisation which boys think isn't for them, and girls also think isn't for them. So who's it for, really?

I can't go this long without acknowledging that for every failure of the former Boy Scouts of America, there is a corresponding success of the Girl Scouts USA. The Girl Scouts is far more secular as an organisation to begin with, and they are also more progressive in that they accepted transgender girls over half a decade earlier than the Boy Scouts, who pretty much had to be dragged kicking into the 21st century. I remember in my Boy Scout handbook a line which said, roughly, that "the BSA is a secular organisation, meaning we don't tell you how to worship, however, we believe boys cannot be their best selves without finding their connection with God." And even 13-year-old me knew that was a load of doublespeak rubbish. The BSA was a deeply religious organisation. Boy Scout events had organised prayers and they said grace before every meal at the camps. There is a difference between acknowledging the religion of what may be a majority of your participants, and trying to nudge the remainder into it, and I think the BSA fell on the wrong side of that line.

So while I think the BSA was an imperfect organisation, I still think it's a shame to see its decline.

My kids have been on scouts in Canada for 2 years now. They love it. I'm an active adult helper and I really like it as well. I'm working on doing the training to become a part time scouter.

My experiences are with the Norwegian scouts organization, and it may differ in many areas from the American Boy Scouts.

I've been a scout since I was about 12 (joined late), and currently a leader for the kids. I, and they, learn so much in all aspects of life. Everything from leadership, respect, guidance, to survival, creativity, and ingenuity. The leaders provide resources, tasks and challenges, and the kids are given mostly free reign within reason of safety.

My scout group has always (also before I joined) had an inclusive setup, where traditionally there were more boys than girls, and the last time the group was purely boys was more than 60 years ago, I believe. Lately, completely organically, we have ended up with more girls than boys, somehow, and it works just as fine. The only noticeable difference is perhaps a bit more tidy camp grounds. We are a bit unique even among groups in Norway with having mixed gender patrols (kids aged 10 - 16, in groups of 5 - 8), but despite a lot of scepticism from other groups, it works totally fine. I can't even recall last time we had a gender-related issue. Issues are more related to the typical teenager bickering, especially the "they are only one year older, why can't I go swim without supervision?".

In regards to religion, the Christianity part of it was never more than simple tradition ever since I joined. We have some songs that are kinda reflecting christian values, but that's about it, as far as influence goes in the events and activities. We've had some scandals here and there in regards to inappropriate adults, sure, but that has never been blown out of proportion in a way that it hurt the entire organization, as far as I know. They are dealt with accordingly, and banned, that's it.

And a little promotion for those of you reading who don't have experience with scouting: We have trips all the time, and every summer we have a weeklong trip to some forest somewhere in Scandinavia. And every four years there's the national scouting camp (Landsleir) where around 10.000 scouts from the entire country + whoever else wants to join gather for a week in Norway. Another thing that happens every four years is the World Scout Jamboree, the next one being next year, and I'll once again join as an International Service Team member, making a great international event for about 40.000 participants. Last time was in South Korea, which was quite the adventure, first struggling with a heat wave, then having to evacuate due to a typhoon.

All this helps build great people, who respect differences across cultures and traditions, and I indeed think it objectively do kids good.

Scouts Canada is different I'd guess for history/reputation, not that I've looked into it. Wasn't any religious stuff at least in my experience.

I was a Cub and a Scout, didn't continue further. It was rather useful here since we learned winter survival and often did winter camping trips in Alberta. We'd hike out into a forest and set up camp, build tables/kitchen out of snow and stuff like that.

Then there were summer and winter Jamborees where troops from across the prairies competed in various activities. My favourite was capture the flag in chest deep snow in a field after dark, that was so much fun. They'd also bring out staff from Space & Science centers with telescopes or radio guys with portable radio stations. Besides the fun there was more in depth survival training at jamborees too like how to stay warm or warm up somebody else who is freezing, competions on starting fires without matches/lighters. On and on.

Of course there's the badge earning and indoor regular meetups too but my memory is foggy there, too long ago. Sometimes involved carpentry. I still have a wooden chest I made in a school gym with a wolf head crudely drawn into the top with a soldering iron containing a bunch of old model rocketry stuff from when I was that age.

Also did the wooden model car races. At first it was cars and then later we built semi-trucks including the trailers. I've kept all of them my dad and I made.

Bottle drives and selling caramel popcorn and shit for funding too.

Only positive for me, my leaders weren't pedos or overtly religious thankfully. I don't really remember much about them except one guy going on a passionate rant about how only the first "The Matrix" film was good. I think Reloaded had just come out. Other kids were mostly fine. Didn't really befriend them but also no bad blood. Edit: Oh I forgot to mention our troop was unisex, we had girls join too. Given what I remember Alberta being like in the 90's - early 2000's that seems progressive of them.

I think that scouting helped me in a lot of ways, although the whole "help people with a smile on your face" has caused some major difficulties in my life w.r.t. self-care. I did OA stuff, Silver Moccasin one year and then followed up teaching at the next year's event, and submitted my Eagle paperwork on my 18th birthday (late 2000s). I was openly an atheist, but my scoutmaster and many of the other adults in the troop (we had 50 kids and 100 adults) were very understanding, and I was able to pass my eagle board of review by talking about how I was still a spiritually active person.

I had a pretty ideal experience, and I'm glad I participated. I still use stuff that I learned, and scouting helped me discover that my limits were much further than I thought.

I'm sad that something which had the potential to be helpful turned into a nightmare for so many kids. If I had kids I might still look into some of the local troops, but I'd have to be heavily involved in order to feel comfortable.

My best friend was a scout and my older brother was, too. I never joined, I've never been a joiner. I never heard a thing about any abuse.

I did learn a lot from my friend and brother, and I read parts of the BS handbook (or whatever it was called). Learned about navigating with a compass, building a lean-to, building fires, first-aid, etc. from that book. It was all interesting because we used to go camping for summer vacation.

I bought a plywood kayak kit from the scouts, and built it, as did my friend. We had fun paddling around a reservoir with them.

Context: Historically there were two separate types of scouts: Mormons and everyone else. The two programs were only tengentally related. Mormons made up around 50% of the numbers. For Mormons 100% of the teen boys were enrolled in the program (whether they wanted to or not). The scout leaders were voluntold to run the program usually with zero experience. Parents did fun things like make rules they had to have their eagle scout before they could drive. etc... So let's just say, it was a complete and absolute clusterfuck.

I was forced to be in the Mormon version. I had zero interest in it. I thought the whole merit badges and stuff was bullshit so I never completed any of them.

One of my fondest memories was the jamboree I got to go home early from because I was kicked out. Apparently a snipe hunt, unauthorized bonfire, a hatchet throwing contest against the main lodge, and flipping off the camp leader and walking away was a no no. Before I got the boot, I did win all sorts of contests like knot tying, fire building, and first aide (had a bit of practical experience for some reason). That was the last one I had to go to for some odd reason.

Scouting experience really depends a lot on the local troop (and council to some extent)

I had reservations about BSA (now just SA I guess :), but my son decided to join some years back, and I supported him, even eventually becoming an assistant scoutmaster in his troop.

I would say the program has a lot of great aspects, and I have seen first hand many kids really benefit from it, helping them overcome various challenges and grow into better and more independent people, including my son who also benefited from it greatly.

I do disagree with some of the policies, especially at the national level - I am an atheist, and the insistence on essentially not allowing atheists to participate openly is regrettable. I am glad they decided to allow girls and gay kids participate however.

Our troop was the first one in my area to allow girls to join. At the time we joined, the troop had a great group of kids (boys and girls) and parents which had the right attitude, and were generally looking for the right things from the program, focusing on what I think are the important aspects (for example religion played almost no role in our troop) and everything worked really well. I have definitely encountered other troops that I am pretty sure my son nor I would be able to stay with more than a day however. Also as kids age out, and new kids and parents join, the vibe of a troop can shift as well, so it's a bit of a crapshoot. My son aged out, and I have transitioned out, but the last year in the troop things weren't as good as when we first joined.

The scandals of the past are obviously terrible. However, other than having to do all the extra training and strict emphasis on rules designed to prevent such stuff from happening again in the future, I haven't really seen any of that type of stuff during my time with the scouts - no creeps, and all parents and volunteers I interacted with were generally quite on board with following the rules and working together to keep the environment safe. But I suppose as with everything, a lot depends on your area and specific troop.

I'd like to send my kid to Scouts/Cubs but I'd have to be chaperoning. Too many horror stories from evil kids and evil adults.