Is that something universal for the BSA, or only for parts of it? I would believe, that troops with evangelical depencency would be very strict on religion. Others might differ, though I don’t know much about the BSA in total.

Either you were really into nature (minority) or you were really into the wrong side of WWII (majority).

BSA seemed to be far too much about performance, conformitiy and hierarchy for me. Once I stood at the side during a flag ceremony/pledge, that was done on every meeting. Felt awkward with that. For a typical german that stuff reeks like facism. In that meeting they did otherwise cool stuff, but my own scouting life seemed to be worlds away from theirs.

The cookie thing seems to weird from the perspective of german scouting. Like: Does everything american have to be bussiness? And for the boys the focus on merit for hierarchy is not something, that I would want to have for my future kids. One thing said again and again by parents here is, that we give an opportunity to do something without the kids having to perform. Most other organizations here are sports clubs.

Honestly, I believe we need both the family and the external youth organizations. When done way better, scouts can also prevent abuse happening in the family (or at least sounding an alarm). With all the abuse happening in the family context different places are also important.

I will give some international perspective. I’m an active scout in germany in my 30s. I started at age 7. Many years I was a group leader. For 3 years I was a chairman of our troop (no idea if that is the correct translation from the german “Vorstand”).

German scouts are very different from many other countries, especially the US. We have like 4 big scouting organisations and many small ones. Our structure and culture is very much influenced by history (if someone is interested, I can also write more about that) mainly the Third Reich and the takeover of the Hitler Youth.

Even the (in my view) more traditionalistic BDP (Bund deutscher Pfadfinder) would be considered pronounced demilitaristic. I’m part of the DPSG (Deutsche Pfadfinderschaft St. Georg), which is coeducational since the 70s and expressively LGBTQIA+ allied. It is important to us, that our official scouts shirt is not a uniform, because a uniform sounds too militaristic. We don’t get badges for personal achievements, but we collect badges from places and certain activities (like the Light of Peace of Bethelehem). In our organisational structure it is difficult for the people higher up to force anything upon local troops (apart from really big and important things, that touch our common ruleset), so in that sense it is somewhat decentralized. We have no “pledge of allegiance” or a flag ceremony (I have seen this once with the BSA, when I visited a troop at an international school in japan).

Our work is often like other youth work, helping kids and teenagers to develop and have a good stand in life. We add quite some meaning to our groups. In every age group the members get a scarf with the colors of the age group. Though at our local troop (this is different for every troop), we connect this with what we call a promise (Versprechen). The kids have to think about, what they want and what they feel for themselves and the group. In a nice ceremony they make their promise to the group and the group makes a promise to them. This can go rather deep for the teenagers and means a lot. Additionally the scouts are a good opportunity for kids and teenagers to experience time without their parents (as a rule we try hard not to have any of the parents being active in the work with the members, only as supports for keeping up our work).

We are directly connected to the catholic church. Their influence on our work is normally very low. Its more about the structure (like having the organisation levels attached to diozeses) and we do have things like church service. Though that typically plays only a small role in the troops. Our troop got mostly secular in the past 20 years, though we still honor our connection to the church. Here is also important, that the catholic and protestant churches in Germany are way less strict than most american churches and they are currently opening up more. The catholic church in germany has big influence (owning a lot of properties, church money collected through tax), though they are shrinking in numbers rapidly. There are also progressive grassroot movements like Maria 2.0. The church now is on the so called “synodal path”, which is a way to go more grassroots and change based on the people, not based on the vatican (which of course got our bishops scolded by the pope/curie). So even they are changing here, bit by bit.

The DPSG also has problems regarding youth wellbeing (abuse of power, sexual harassment and rape), though its not as big as with the BSA. This year the results of an independend study was published, analyzing the problems in the DPSG. Since the child abuse scandal of the catholic church (was very big here in germany), all group leaders (and now also every other adult in the troop, whos getting in contact with kids) has to do a training (at least 6h) and refresh that every few years (with at least 3h), to learn whats OK and what is not OK, but also to be sensitive to how child abusers work and how to spot problematic behavior. Now with the study results we are working to restructure our local troop life, to make it difficult for abusers to get to their victims. The study named the missing procedure to ensure child safety standards across the organization as a major problem. And also that locally often single individuals have too much social power through their passionate work and their reputation. I’m now older than nearly all group leaders and I have a good reputation. I myself have experienced, that this gives me social power and I actively decided to withdraw quite a bit to let the younger generation handle things, like they think is best. I’m only in a supporting, sometimes advisory position in the troop. It is important to be aware of your own social power and deciding good on when not to use it.

All in all the scouts like they are done here (in germany and locally for my troop) are a really great way to help young people develop social skills, life skills and life long deep friendships. We are doing a lot of good in the society. Many victims of abuse (in the church and the DPSG) have expressed, that it is most important, how the organization is handling the problems. I think our reaction is a good one and we work hard to change, what has to change for providing a more save environment. Every parent, that thinks about letting their kid go to a youth organization, should question that organization how they are handling this topic. Learn about how the local troop is doing things, how they handle their tradition and structure; then decide, if that is enough for you.