With a bit of prodding from twojedis I took my 12 year old son to a different non-LDS scout troup last night. The contrast was beyond anything I expected.

Let me start by describing my experience going back to church with my boy on youth night only after we stopped attending church completely last July. My focus was to both socialize but also keep an eye on my boy while he was in scouts. I walked into the room with the 12 and 13 year old boys. There were about a dozen of them sitting around in chairs in one of the classrooms. There were two church leaders there in charge. I made a point of observing only. I was not going to step into any position of authority because I really wanted to see the interaction. I'll be completely honest, I was apalled. I could not believe the total lack of authority of these two leaders and the boys complete lack of respect. The boys talked the ENTIRE time! They were goofing off mostly, making snide comments both to each other and the teacher. The leader stood in front of the class and maybe got one or two of the boys to look at him as he attempted to get them to plan for the next two months. No boy in charge. No leader, really, in charge either. Just chaos. And me sitting there wondering what benefit this could possible have on my son.

Fast forward to last night.

I arrived at this non-LDS troop a few minutes late. I was shushed as I walked into the building as the troop had started it's flag ceremony. The gym has all the boys lined up (STRAIT) in 4 lines. The leaders are lined up on the side along with the parents who are all standing respectfully. The flag ceremony finishes. There was not a peep out of anyone. One of the boys, who has clearly had leadership training steps up and starts walking through the schedule for the night along with announcing other activites. He turns the time over to different leaders who also make announcements. The Scout Master gets up and everyone is listening. One of the older boys makes a comment to another one and he chastized them on the spot. There is complete respect from these boys and there were about 30 of them. The activity is merit badge work and the older boys are helping the younger ones tonight.

As the night progressed no less than a dozen of the leaders and parents come over and introduce themselves. I hear nothing but incredible things about the leaders and the parents who are super supportive. They have a scout master, SIX assistent scount masters, and a council of 12 adults!!! They are all enthusiatic about being there. What the hell!! I am sitting there wondering the whole time how effed up the LDS troop is. This is how it's supposed to run.

Anyways, twojedis wanted me to share that experience. We are never going back to the LDS troop ever again. I told some of these new friends where we were coming from and what it was like in the LDS troops and they completely unloaded on me about how disrespectful, unorganized, and unpassionate the LDS troops are. Just conscripts. How true now that I have seen them both.

That was my husbands experience also. He wanted nothing to do with LDS scouting. They are an embarrassment.

How did your boy react to this new group?

He was hesitant to go at first. It's been a rough transition out of the church, in some respects. We live in a small town, just one middle school and high school. My suspicion was that he would see some boys there that he knows from school. I was right, there were three kids that he knows. He was also impressed by the troop, and the way it is run. They are going bowling next week, which the LDS troop never gets to do, since all of the tithing money goes to the fat cats in SLC.

The thing that was really pissing me off about the LDS troop is that the focus really isn't on scouting. In our ward, they don't have scout meetings once a month because they go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. The ridiculous thing about that is that it's always on a school night, and they don't even arrive at the temple, an hour away until 6:45, putting our boys back home about 10:30-11:00 when they have early morning seminary and/or have to catch the bus at 6:30. It's not really a scout troop, it's an indoctrination trap.

Ugh!

something to the effect

I don't give a damn about Eagle Scouts. Our scouting program is to produce missionaries.

surprised no mention here of the famous LDS advancement by attendance process and all those paper Eagles.

I grew up in a small town with a very small LDS presence. The
Boy Scout troop I was in was sponsored by the local VFW.

After each troop meeting, which was held in the basement, I'd
call my parents to get a ride home. I'd go upstairs into the
bar, past the illegal slot machine, past the men drinking beer
to the phone behind the bar to make the call. While calling I
could check out the nude woman on the calendar.

My friends who were in LDS troops had a different experience.

When our oldest son was a scout, beginning in 1981, the LDS troop had a non-member scoutmaster his whole time up through eagle. The troop was like the non-LDS troop you describe! I was a merit made counselor, not called by TSCC but asked by the scoutmaster. Indeed, I was asked to in 1979, before joining TSCC in 1980. This apparently does not happen today.

We just took our son out of the lds troop as well. I have been so angry b/c he is a year behind. The way the church does it (by age) instead of by grade in school made it so my son is a year behind. He is having to play catch-up to be where he should be. Makes me think that this is another control technique.

Another scouting thing.... A good friend (and TBM) has three boys in scouts and they are not well off (paycheck to paycheck). The LDS troop in our ward has the boys rotate who brings meals to overnights. This family that has no extra money was assigned to bring food for the entire troop. They have a boatload of money in their account and this family has to pay?? I told her to submit her reciept.

I think that's actually against church policy. They always have sign ups to bring things to ward dinners rather than asking people to do certain things, and it's just for the reason you describe. I'd just have her tell the bishop they can't afford it.

I'd tust the non-mos who like serving since they weren't roped into it by a bish who told them they had to do it or God would be angry.

This has been my observation as well. The biggest problem with LDS scout troops is that you can't volunteer to lead them, and instead the leadership is completely decided by a non-scouting religious authority, whether or not these scout leaders have any desire to be part of scouts whatsoever. As a result, a good chunk of the leaders don't even want to be there, and men who would like to be scout leaders are planning Sunday School lessons instead (not that you shouldn't be able to do both).

Then again, with the bigotry against gays and atheists, I don't exactly support the BSA anyway.

During my very short experiment with being and LDS scout leader in Maryland, I had the same experience when going on a winter campout with other non-LDS scout troops. Some of our guys came without even sleeping bags or warm clothing. Our troop had no common gear or anything, and seemed to not want any supervision or planning. All the other troops were all organized, in uniform, had fires going, food cooking, etc. I vowed then and there, no more. I was so embarrassed, particularly when one of our vans drove up and somebody groaned, "God no. More Mormon scouts."

I grew up in Utah Valley and only knew Mormons as a kid. Of course I was a Boy Scout. Moved out of Utah after leaving the church and was driving down the road here in Maine. Saw an LDS church and commented on it to my wife. I had thought there weren't many Mormons out here and she confirmed this. Then we saw some Boy Scouts. I said there must be enough Mos out here for a scout troop. She is puzzled and says "Not all scouts are LDS." I say yes they are, they're a Mo organization. She laughs and informs me otherwise. I'm a smart guy but had always assumed they were a Mo group. I sheepishly concede to my wife once again.

Our scout troop is mostly LDS boys and two non-LDS boys.

The non-LDS boys are quiet, eager to help, do merit badges on their own, and even built and maintain the troop website on their own iniative. One of them is our Senior Patrol Leader.

The LDS boys have a competition to see who can be the biggest show off .

The difference?

The non-LDS boys want to be there. They want to be Boy Scouts with all that entails.

The LDS boys? Just one more thing the church and their parents require them to do.

Sad.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2012 10:34AM by rutabaga.

I had no idea. Well, maybe a little bit because the church WAS the Boy Scouts in my area.

Thank you for the information, I appreciate it

I lived out in gentile lands. When I became Scout age, I wanted to be in the troop some of my school buddies were in. To my parents' credit, they at least took me to check it out. It was very cool, just like in my older brothers' manuals. Everyone, including the leaders, was in uniform. They worked on various outdoor skills. They talked about an upcoming campout.

But my parents decided I should be in the ward troop, of course. It was lame, of course. Just clowning around in the basement "Scout Room."

Whenever we went to Scout camp or area-wide events organized by the non-Mormon Scouting world, it was obvious we didn't even qualify to be called Boy Scouts. Unequipped, unprepared, unskilled... But we had the priesthood, right? We knew how to do the sacrament. That'll keep you alive in the woods.

The scouting program in my experience in the LDS church is way too informal. I was most recently an 11 year old scout leader just before I resigned. Another guy was the 12-13 year old scout leader who was just useless.

Often times we found ourselves with the other groups playing basketball in the gym, I started to get them to do the flag break ceremony once or twice a month, but it was awkward because I didn't have a key to the cabinet with the flag, so I always had to hunt someone down. And the young women and young men were never in the same place twice, so we always got booted from room to room week after week so I could never have anything set up in advance. I could never plan on whether I could use the gym or not, and where I live, the weather is so unpredictable, we get a ton of rain, so I can't reliably plan outdoor activities.

The church's lips are near the scouting program, but their hearts are far from it. Emphasis is really more on the YM/YW programs, and scouting is almost more of an excuse, or a cover page for their weeknight activities.

It's not all bad however, because some of my greatest memories as a child were the annual "super activities" that we would do, like week long canoeing trips, west coast trail, mountain climbing etc. However, the Tuesday evening scout meetings were basically a useless waste of time. Disorganized. There were always bullies, and bullies would keep on bullying. Never get kicked out, rarely disciplined. (On a side note, one bully in particular I'm thinking of got shot in the head and killed a few years ago, gang related).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2012 11:05AM by Mormoney.

Kolobians segregate kids by age (in two year brackets) as a way of inculcating conformity and hive thinking.

goodness you can't have 15 year old SPL (who actually attended a weeklong leadership NYLT program) actually leading a group of youth across the age spectrum. The kids might actually start following him instead of referring every little issue to adults.

When we are on trips with new scouts, they always think they have to come to me. Sometimes I just write on my palm, ask your PL. After a while, they know not to come to me with their petty little problems because I don't care about their petty little problems.

But I digress. AxelDC once mentioned that the Varsity scouting program was created so that the kolobians could have yet another age tier in their indoctrination-to-missionary program that they call scouting.

Scouting was designed so that older scouts would gain important leadership skills by working with and teaching basic scout skills to the younger scouts. When you take that out of the mix, all you have is, well, kolobianism.

I think the biggest appeal of a non-LDS troop is that you don't have to be there. I was in Scouts, and I enjoyed it and made Eagle. I took it very seriously, and I had a great time. I have letters from Richard Lugar and Dan Quayle, my senators at the time, congratulating me on my Eagle award, and I'm very proud of that.

My son, however, is not like me. He doesn't want to be in Scouts, and the whole thing sounds awful to him. Plus he's an atheist, and that's just not going to work. So, I'm not making him do it. If we were in the LDS Church, it would be a different story.

You, sir, are worse than Stalin.

I know. I've tried to get him into Satan Scouts, but he refuses to sacrifice any chickens. He does have a cool Goat of Mendez neckerchief slide though.

A demoncopter? That is so metal.

So glad to hear that your non-LDS scouting experience was positive!

I remember both of my brothers being involved in scouting at various times. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized scouting is not an exclusively LDS thing - it was so thoroughly enmeshed and wedded to TSCC in Utah.

Today I think of it as just another way the morg practices (with perfection) the old "bait and switch"

We pulled our son out of the church sponsored troop when I found out his rank was first class but he couldn't even recite the Scout Oath.

We enrolled him in a troop that my wife found when going to the bank. This troop was sponsoring a blood drive. We figured that a troop engaged in community service was probably a troop that had good grounding in scouting principles with good adult leadership.

We had our son start over in scouting because it was apparent that he was promoted in rank without any real effort on his part, a problem endemic in LDS troops.

It was one of the best things we ever did.He enjoyed scouting as it should be. Community service projects aimed at real community service, not as a cover for missionary work for the church. He went on real campouts over entire weekends and earned the rank of Eagle Scout.

I compare his scouting journey to that of several of his friends at church who barely made Eagle before their 18th b-day and whose parents pushed through the paperwork with very little effort on the kids part. The saddest one involved one kid who had no uniform, hadn't had any meaningful involvement in scouting since hitting HS, but whose parents pushed through the paperwork and had him do a project that took about 2 minutes to conceive and one Saturday to do.

Did we get grief for pulling our son out and putting him in a non-LDS troop? Yep. Was it the best thing we ever did? A resounding "Yes!".

While I am glad that you had a good experience with a Boy Scout troop (really, I am), don't forget that they are still an organization which still discriminates against homosexuals and has hid child abuse in the past.

LDS or non-LDS, this is still the case.

we operate in flagrant violation of the national policy and no one does a thing about it.

We do have issues with that. As a matter of fact, sithlord's employer no longer donates to the BSA because of that.

You know, the group that is even more hated by the religious right.

Before my son went to scouts the leader was really good and did lots of scouting activities. Then he was promoted to stake counselor or something prestigious like that. By my son's 2nd year they still hadn''t found a leader who would stay- the first leader was promoted to elder's quorum by christmas or somewhere thereabouts.

Since these are all volunteer positions and as a female i couldn't volunteer there wasn't anything i felt i could do. Scouting activities were things like playing video games or basketball (which wasn't too bad in and of itself). Many nights we'd get a call an hour before scouts saying it had been cancelled. Finally, frustrated, i asked the yw leader if my ds could join the young women program as they actually did stuff. She told me that she was told in ward counsil that since none of the parents had complained about the scout program they weren't going to do anything about it's lack! My dh worked nights so he wasn t able to volunteer either. DS finally left scouts and did cadets instead.