[HN Gopher] Master at Arms Badge for Boy Scouts (1925) [pdf]
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       Master at Arms Badge for Boy Scouts (1925) [pdf]
        
       Author : 83457
       Score  : 56 points
       Date   : 2022-05-11 19:00 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
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 (TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org)
        
       | kiernanmcgowan wrote:
       | I'm just thinking back to my time in scouting and can only
       | imagine what it would be like to teach a bunch of 14-16 y/os the
       | 1920s equivalent of MMA. Probably about 30min of fun until kids
       | just start hitting each other as hard as they can with sticks.
       | 
       | Still sounds more fun than the basket weaving merit badge though.
        
         | EVdotIO wrote:
         | Hey, basket weaving and leather work were super fun, and I have
         | all cool ones like shotgun, archery and rifle. The most boring
         | are probably your citizenship badges. Don't knock it till you
         | try it.
        
         | dctoedt wrote:
         | Former longtime adult Scout leader here (and Eagle Scout) --
         | you're absolutely right about the kids hitting each other
        
         | gcheong wrote:
         | I get it but when I took martial arts as a kid it didn't
         | devolve into a free-for-all so I guess it would depend on the
         | effectiveness of the teacher to maintain order.
        
         | kjanssen wrote:
         | Hey man, my first year at summer camp all I did was basket
         | weaving, leather working, and pottery. I originally planned to
         | do swimming and some other adventurous stuff but was too
         | overwhelmed by the swim test to be allowed in the lake and had
         | a bit of a meltdown before changing course. I spent the whole
         | week chilling in camp or the crafting grove working with my
         | hands - it was great.
         | 
         | A few years later I went to a different summer camp as a senior
         | patrol leader and finally got my swimming badge along with
         | canoeing and rock climbing - that was a great week too. Point
         | being: there's value in the "boring" stuff, maybe even more so
         | now that I'm established in my career and looking for a little
         | more peace these days. Lately I've been strangely interested in
         | weaving and am thinking of making a simple loom - maybe this
         | goes back to my basket weaving experience when I was 10?
        
           | ddoolin wrote:
           | I wasn't at all worried BEFORE that swim test, but afterwards
           | I can safely say that was legitimately difficult and pretty
           | terrifying. Especially when you realize the lake we did it in
           | was full of leeches, which was completely foreign to me at
           | the time.
        
             | nytesky wrote:
             | Ah summer lake leaches. Stuff of nightmares. My
             | understanding was as long as you didn't touch the mucky
             | bottom you were in the clear? I swam in New England lakes
             | for 20 years and never had one myself but saw several.
             | 
             | Probably why I did the mile swim several times, treading
             | water to keep leach free builds endurance.
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | Did you do basket weaving? Basket weaving was super chill and
         | could make you feel like an adult in some important ways. My
         | baskets were a disaster but talking to friends about favorite
         | video games while weaving them was like free therapy.
        
           | thaumasiotes wrote:
           | > but talking to friends about favorite video games while
           | weaving them was like free therapy.
           | 
           | This is backwards. Your friends aren't cheap knockoffs of a
           | therapist. Therapists are people you pay to pretend to be
           | your friend.
        
             | germinalphrase wrote:
             | This is bassakwards. A therapist isn't supposed to be - let
             | alone _pretend_ to be - your friend at all.
        
               | glowingly wrote:
               | No parasocial experience really is. However, intent of
               | the therapist may not be fully acknowledged by the
               | patients.
        
       | jvanderbot wrote:
       | I really love this.
       | 
       | I am a firm believer in everyone studying _some_ martial art
       | (player's choice).
       | 
       | For the following reasons:
       | 
       | - It teaches an insane amount of respect when two people have to
       | hold themselves back to practice
       | 
       | - It teaches self-discipline, mostly in the long-forgotten art of
       | keeping yourself from becoming so angry you cannot function with
       | form.
       | 
       | - It gives a crazy amount of confidence to know you are at least
       | a little bit prepared for bad situations
       | 
       | - It removes a lot of the panic instinct in all kinds of
       | intimidating situations, from actual fights, to presenting to a
       | review board.
       | 
       | - You quickly learn to operate through pain and discomfort and
       | intimidation, even if you are not being actually injured (e.g.,
       | not actually sparring).
       | 
       | - Everyone should feel that they are legitimately _their own_
       | first line of defense. Even if that defense is to create space
       | and get away.
       | 
       | My sport was boxing. I'm a knowledge worker, still.
        
         | leephillips wrote:
         | All excellent points. And, in addition, you get many other
         | beneficial side effects: improved sense of balance and body
         | awareness, situational awareness, realistic appreciation of how
         | dangerous fighting is and how easy it is to get hurt, stamina,
         | and more.
        
           | VWWHFSfQ wrote:
           | Not to mention a little bit of humbling.
           | 
           | Mike Tyson had a very famous quote "Everyone has a plan until
           | they get punched in the mouth."
           | 
           | It's good way to learn about your own limitations in the most
           | primitive form.
        
         | throwawayboise wrote:
         | I could support kids learning boxing if it was limited to body
         | blows. With what we are learning about concussion, it seems to
         | be more and more understood that blows to the head are never
         | OK. Maybe you still need to teach defense against head blows,
         | but they should probably not be allowed in competition. Getting
         | battered in the head until you cannot stand up or respond
         | should be right out.
        
           | leephillips wrote:
           | Although, according to the pamphlet, "Every boy who is worthy
           | of the name has an inclination to know something of the art
           | of boxing."
        
             | throwawayboise wrote:
             | I saw that too and it made me smile. I think it can still
             | be done. Just cut out the brain damage.
        
               | leephillips wrote:
               | Totally agree. And some other sports, especially soccer
               | (football outside the US) are also risky for the brain,
               | because practice involves repeated heading.
        
           | slowhand09 wrote:
           | Boxing outside of competition is almost always done with head
           | protection gear. And supervision to prevent violence rather
           | than sport.
        
           | amalcon wrote:
           | There are martial arts where even in competition, concussion
           | is relatively rare. E.g. grappling sports like Brazilian Jiu-
           | Jitsu don't usually involve impacts of that intensity, to the
           | head or otherwise.
        
           | mastazi wrote:
           | The problem is that out of this concern, some martial arts
           | disallowed head blows in competition, only to fall out of
           | grace due to how "unrealistic" they are in terms of self
           | defence.
           | 
           | A large number of people who start practising martial arts,
           | does that out of a self defence concern, maybe they have been
           | bullied at school etc.
           | 
           | I don't have a solution to this problem (possibly head gear,
           | but recent studies seem to indicate that it's not effective
           | and might even make things worse)[1].
           | 
           | Of course one possible solution would be to mainly promote
           | grappling-based martial arts, like BJJ or amateur wrestling,
           | but then in a self defence optic you would still need some
           | striking practice, at least in order to learn striking
           | defence.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/olympic-boxers-arent-
           | wearing-h...
        
           | jvanderbot wrote:
           | One of the biggest misconceptions about boxing training is
           | that it involves repeated blows to the head.
           | 
           | Boxing _competitions_ may. But boxing _training_ involves
           | form, combos, reflexes and defense drills, and lots of
           | conditioning. The most contact is "touch" drills, where you
           | may touch your glove to someone with no force behind it.
           | These drills are for intermediates to prepare for sparring,
           | and I've never seen someone get hit too hard there.
           | 
           | Imagine if karate involved untrained people just kicking
           | eachother hard enough to injure themselves / someone. That
           | seems silly, yet that's what we imagine with boxing.
        
             | throwawayboise wrote:
             | Thanks for clarifying. I don't have experience with boxing
             | myself, but yes I was mostly talking about competition
             | (i.e. fight to knock-out) and it makes sense that training
             | is more about the skills you mention.
        
         | mistrial9 wrote:
         | not sure how anyone can recommend boxing now ; all those
         | interactions require the right social environment, things can
         | go wrong quickly. I reflect on learning about places in the USA
         | where they take wrestling seriously, which at the time seemed
         | like low-income, blue collar sort of places.. but now I realize
         | that the social interaction between men there was rugged, but
         | they had norms and ways to regain equilibrium. Meanwhile multi-
         | cultural urban school, really a bad idea to have regular and
         | repeated situations where students strike others, IMHO.
        
         | moron4hire wrote:
         | In principle, I want to agree. In practice, I think the vast
         | majority of martial arts schools are nothing more than
         | glorified day care facilities with a side of calisthenics.
         | 
         | They don't constructively do anything to actually teach those
         | issues of control and discipline to the students. It's not
         | enough to give people the skills and then expect them to learn
         | from experience the restraint necessary to not use it. They
         | don't do anything at all to prepare their students for the
         | realities of what it means to use violence against another
         | human being. It is an emotionally traumatizing experience.
         | 
         | Nothing like that was ever mentioned in any of the schools
         | across multiple styles that I attended. All that was discussed
         | was the potential of an "unfair" legal ruling if your attacker
         | decided to press battery chargers against you. There was always
         | an implication of "be careful when looking for a place to use
         | these skills", not "avoid it completely, except on completely
         | unavoidable threat to life and limb."
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | nimbius wrote:
       | Broke: I want to enter my son into a child fighting ring.
       | 
       | Woke: My boys earning his arms merit badge in the boy scouts.
        
         | motohagiography wrote:
         | Grew up playing hockey and just assumed the point of having
         | children was to set them against one another for sport. It's as
         | though nobody here is from Canada. Did you not have lawn darts,
         | potassium nitrate, and licorice cigars? I was a generation or
         | so late to get a duelling scar, but grew up about 20miles from
         | the site of Camp X (where we invented the CIA), and it seemed
         | the american kids were given guns willy nilly where here it was
         | just expected you would use the tools at hand to plan a night
         | mission take them yourself in the event of an invasion. I'm a
         | bit out of the loop as I have only recently become an uncle,
         | but presumably a boy today can at least still have a pet
         | bobcat?
         | 
         | Between all the sugar cereals and cartoons, it's a wonder the
         | people of the US aren't speaking Canadian...
        
           | totierne2 wrote:
           | Border poll?
        
       | corrral wrote:
       | See also:
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canne_de_combat
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartitsu
       | 
       | (related to the first link--it's a martial art Sherlock Holmes is
       | familiar with, in the Doyle stories)
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlestick
       | 
       | The photos at the tops of the the second two links are great. All
       | the sailors in the last one, facing off in lines with their
       | stick-swords, and the dudes in boater hats posing with their
       | sticks like they're LARPers who accidentally put on a costume for
       | the wrong setting, at the second link.
        
       | irrational wrote:
       | 1925 in Great Britain? So, this was published just a few years
       | after the end of World War I. I presume it was written by people
       | who actually fought in the war. I wonder how much of this
       | reflected the skills they had learned or used as soldiers in that
       | war?
        
         | Dlanv wrote:
         | I'm not sure they fought with quarterstaffs or rapiers in WW1.
         | 
         | The boxing and jiu jitsu perhaps.
        
           | ch4s3 wrote:
           | Ehh... a quarter staff is a good approximation for a lot of
           | weapons of convenience. It also teaches gauging distance in a
           | way that translate to boxing.
        
           | irrational wrote:
           | Apparently swords were used in the war.
           | 
           | http://www.militarian.com/threads/use-of-the-sword-in-
           | ww1.70...
           | 
           | Hitting each other with sticks seems like something people at
           | war would do ;-)
        
         | dctoedt wrote:
         | > _I wonder how much of this reflected the skills they had
         | learned or used as soldiers in that war?_
         | 
         | Even today, Marine recruits are trained to fight with pugil
         | sticks and padding -- part of the idea is to get them
         | accustomed to being hit without losing focus on the mission.
         | 
         | https://rp.marineparents.com/bootcamp/mcmap.asp
        
       | ilamont wrote:
       | Some merit badges involve strenuous physical challenges, such as
       | hiking (multiple long-distance hikes including a 50-miler). The
       | canoeing MB requires learning how to get back on an overturned
       | canoe while in deep water, which is bloody hard.
       | 
       | They still have badges for shooting and archery, too.
       | 
       | There are also some badges that were unexpected - plumbing,
       | fixing farm equipment, computer game design.
        
         | mistrial9 wrote:
         | canoe merit badge here
        
         | graywh wrote:
         | there's no 50-mile hike requirement -- all the hikes are to be
         | done in a single day and 20 is the maximum length for good
         | reason
         | 
         | the sum total of all the required hikes is 70 miles: 5, 10, 10,
         | 10, 15, 20
        
           | ilamont wrote:
           | You are correct. I was thinking of the "50 miler" badge.
           | 
           | https://www.scouting.org/awards/awards-central/50-miler/
        
         | fishtoaster wrote:
         | I remember getting my computer badge- in the late 90s, iirc. I
         | had to write up a document in a word processor, create a simple
         | spreadsheet, and one or two other things I'm probably
         | forgetting. Even then it felt a bit basic and behind the times,
         | but I was happy to get an easy badge!
        
         | MisterBastahrd wrote:
         | Ah yes, the canoeing merit badge. Accomplished by yours truly
         | and one other scout because I found an underwater stump in the
         | Sewanee river and told him about it. LOL.
        
       | themodelplumber wrote:
       | Holy smokes! Reading this over, I'll bet there were more than a
       | few injuries among the groups that practiced it.
       | 
       | Imagine sending your kid off for a fun weekend and then watching
       | them come home Sunday morning with an acute elbow injury from an
       | arm bar...
       | 
       | Scouting was dangerous enough without that stuff. You could get
       | lost and even die in any number of unexpected ways. I watched a
       | friend take a full swing of a wood axe to the top of his head. It
       | didn't make any of us stronger or more interested in the
       | outdoors. Plus everybody told us the Eagle Scout looked amazing
       | on a resume when you become an adult, but they didn't mention
       | that it could have the complete opposite effect depending on
       | where you're applying...
       | 
       | Edit: I see the typical pro-danger, pro-learning-through-injury
       | realism-posturing replies, but these quick takes are
       | inappropriate for beginners, which merit-badge-earning scouts
       | definitely are.
        
         | eckmLJE wrote:
         | Where did you apply that being an Eagle Scout counted against
         | you?
        
           | jimbob45 wrote:
           | The problem is that people who become Eagle Scouts tend to be
           | successful enough individuals that the jobs they apply to
           | don't understand why they would put such a low-grade
           | achievement on their resume (compared to the other higher
           | achievements they most likely have).
           | 
           | It's like putting that you won an Olympic Gold in gymnastics
           | when applying to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Yes, it's
           | impressive to everyone, but at some point it's not necessary.
           | 
           | I'd say the same applies to high school Honor Societies. If
           | you're a member of one, chances are that it's never going to
           | professionally benefit you.
        
             | depaya wrote:
             | When you look at the direct benefit over the course of your
             | lifetime I agree the benefit of things like Eagle Scout of
             | Honor Society are minimal, but I think that's missing the
             | indirect benefits.
             | 
             | Speaking personally, I firmly believe that being an Eagle
             | Scout and HS Honor Society student helped me get into a
             | good college.
             | 
             | I frequently discussed being an Eagle Scout (and scouting
             | in general, which I was deeply involved) during engineering
             | internship interviews and the interview for my first job
             | out of college. I do believe this contributed to starting
             | off my career strongly.
             | 
             | Now about a decade removed from college I don't bring these
             | topics up, but I do still feel the positive contributions
             | they had on my trajectory. Not even to mention the benefits
             | they had on my soft skills.
        
             | aketchum wrote:
             | I understand what you mean, but I think you chose a
             | terrible example. I will never be in the Olympics, but if I
             | was I would definitely have that on my resume.
        
               | leephillips wrote:
               | Hell yes. If I were on the search committee, an olympic
               | _gold medal_ would make the candidate very interesting.
               | It tells you you're probably dealing with an
               | extraordinary individual.
        
             | e9 wrote:
             | I disagree. It shows a track record of success throughout
             | the life and that you are not just "one time wonder".
        
             | dctoedt wrote:
             | I'm an Eagle Scout (note the use of present tense) and I've
             | had that on all of my resumes my entire adult life. When I
             | got my Eagle, an uncle who was a senior executive at a Very
             | Large Bank said that he would always give an Eagle Scout at
             | least an interview.
        
               | arnmac wrote:
               | Not going to lie. If you submitted a resume for a job I
               | was hiring for and you 1. Pass the HR check 2. Had some
               | of what I was looking in skills 3. Had Eagle Scout on
               | your resume
               | 
               | You are going to get an interview. Might not get the job
               | but I would give you a chance.
               | 
               | Just like anything in life the Eagle Scout Rank is not
               | the same to everyone. Not everyone put in the same amount
               | of effort. They all should have met the same requirements
               | but in the end what did you personally learn? Some scouts
               | learn and grow in leadership others it was just a thing
               | they did.
               | 
               | As an 11 year old scout I was almost immediately
               | introduced to conflict resolution, setting and achieving
               | goals, leading groups in small tasks. Looking back most
               | of the lessons didn't really take root until years later
               | when I got a real job. Then I had a group of concepts
               | that some of my peers did not and I was able to take the
               | early lessons and build on them more quickly.
        
               | totierne2 wrote:
               | Quickly?
        
               | wespiser_2018 wrote:
               | Me too. It's an interest award I'm proud of, and it takes
               | a tiny amount of space.
        
           | themodelplumber wrote:
           | When multimedia was a huge thing in the late '90s and early
           | '00s, you had a lot of small businesses with tight groups of
           | graphic designers, illustrators, developers (full stack web +
           | Flash & Director), and animators. Usually one of the
           | creatives was in charge of hiring. It was totally obviously
           | not a pro, and in many cases they'd make fun of it outright,
           | or politely advise to take it off.
        
             | MisterBastahrd wrote:
             | Well, sure. I was a quiz bowl captain, president of the
             | national honor society, and placed yearly at the state
             | science fair and I didn't list those on a professional
             | resume either.
             | 
             | It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout. I
             | completed all requirements including the community project
             | aside from the board review before I turned 13.
             | 
             | Our scoutmaster suddenly quit on us to attain his MS in
             | engineering (his employer surprised him by funding his
             | education) right after I attained the final required merit
             | badge and none of the adults wanted to take over, so it
             | would have required me to go to another troop in the area:
             | one was full of bullies, and one with a gigantic asshole of
             | a scoutmaster. I decided to go fishing instead.
        
               | dctoedt wrote:
               | > _It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout._
               | 
               | The actual requirements aren't that demanding for
               | reasonably-intelligent kids. As in so many areas of life,
               | one's work ethic and persistence matter a lot because of
               | the time-in-grade and position-of-responsibility
               | requirements for each of the upper ranks, namely Star,
               | Life, and Eagle, and those requirements must be completed
               | for each rank in series, not in parallel.
               | 
               | > _I completed all requirements including the community
               | project aside from the board review before I turned 13._
               | 
               | I was an assistant Scoutmaster, and then the troop
               | committee chair, in my son's troop, which we think is the
               | largest in the U.S. (some 250 boys and around 50
               | registered adult leaders during my time). The troop is
               | known as an "Eagle factory," but the Scouts have to put
               | in the work. Hardly any of them make it to Eagle before
               | about age 15 or 16 because they also do sports and other
               | activities and eventually get distracted by the scent of
               | gasoline and perfume (as the saying used to be in the
               | days of all-male Scouting). Not a few Eagle Scouts,
               | including my own son, complete their final requirement, a
               | Scoutmaster conference, with just a couple of hours to go
               | before they age out at 12:00:00 a.m. at the start of
               | their 18th birthdays.
               | 
               | https://www.boyscouttrail.com/boy-scouts/eagle-scouts.asp
        
               | themodelplumber wrote:
               | It sounds like the audience for your memoir is being kept
               | waiting, but in the meantime, keep pointing out us False
               | Scotsmen. :-)
        
               | ilamont wrote:
               | > It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout. I
               | completed all requirements including the community
               | project aside from the board review before I turned 13.
               | 
               | It really varies from troop to troop. Ours is old-school,
               | by the book, multiple leadership positions required for
               | half-year terms. No one got an Eagle who was under 15 and
               | the projects are very involved with construction or
               | logistics. Tearing down and rebuilding a long wooden
               | fence at a women's shelter, constructing display cabinets
               | at a nature center, working with a local charity to
               | collect hundreds of food boxes. Someone built a real
               | footbridge over a stream, which not only required decent
               | carpentry skills but also driving rebar through 8x8 posts
               | into the stony bank with sledgehammers. I got poison ivy
               | twice while clearing brush to make a nature trail and
               | rebuild a garden at a local temple.
               | 
               | These projects are often the first time many youths have
               | ever picked up a power tool or project managed anything.
               | 
               | The bureaucracy associated with the service project and
               | application was stunning.
        
               | freedomben wrote:
               | Likewise. I was 15 when I finished and it was a
               | monumental amount of work. The troop you're in matters a
               | great deal.
        
               | MisterBastahrd wrote:
               | Probably. I think I lucked out because my service project
               | was clearing and installing seating and paths in a new,
               | small park from land donated by a family who inherited it
               | and didn't want to deal with the taxes because there were
               | technically about 30 owners.
        
               | omegaham wrote:
               | This was also our troop. You couldn't make Life Scout
               | before you were 15 thanks to the leadership requirements,
               | and that meant that the earliest you could get Eagle was
               | sometime at age 16. The vast majority of them got it
               | _just_ before they turned 18. The projects were intended
               | to be ambitious and demanded that the Scout do the bulk
               | of the planning and dealing with the bureaucracy.
               | 
               | Imagine my surprise when our troop went to SeaBase and
               | ran into a bunch of other troops where everyone got Eagle
               | at age 14.
        
               | ilamont wrote:
               | That's the way it is for our troop. Most of the kids
               | aren't able to get Eagle before they are HS juniors and
               | are 16 or 17. A few just made it in before turning 18.
               | 
               | The bureaucracy is a mistake. I know why Scouting does it
               | - BSA organizational culture, abuses in the past, trying
               | to apply standards across local troops - but a lot of it
               | falls on troop volunteers to and parents to nag scouts to
               | death and fix the inevitable problems that crop up. It's
               | not right.
        
               | wespiser_2018 wrote:
               | that's me and my friend: we both made eagle scout at 17,
               | and the ceremony for me was after I turned 18.
               | 
               | My first troop was very by the book, and the last eagle
               | scout in the troop was the scoutmasters son, maybe 5
               | years before I joined. That troop disbanded, and I
               | finished my award at another troop were it was a bit
               | easier, but still a lot of work.
               | 
               | For me, earning Eagle scout required me to stay active in
               | scouting through age 17, and do one (or maybe 2) extra
               | weeks at summer camp to earn enough merit badges. Once I
               | was older (16/17) and in my second troop, I already had
               | the leadership requirements, so I just went to meetings
               | and help out with the kids that were much younger than me
               | while I planned my project.
        
               | jghn wrote:
               | I am an Eagle Scout. I would never put it on my resume,
               | and I roll my eyes when I see a resume with it on there.
               | Ignoring the always present "it was harder back then"
               | (fwiw, in my day average ages started to plunge from
               | 15/16/17 to 13/14/15), my point still stands.
               | 
               | I can see it being okay as a first job out of college or
               | similar. I got my Eagle at 17, and I could imagine
               | someone with no real work experience thinking that's
               | something to help pad the books. But once one hits 30,
               | 40, 50, beyond there's no reason having done an Eagle
               | project should be cited as a major accomplishment in
               | their life. At least not from the perspective of seeking
               | employment. I'm 100% in favor of people feeling proud
               | about what they did, the whole point of that project was
               | to have done right by people.
        
               | acrobatsunfish wrote:
               | Life for life?
        
               | arnmac wrote:
               | This made me laugh. Many a scout has been 1 merit badge
               | away.
        
         | colechristensen wrote:
         | It's not a quick take, it's just modern infantilization of
         | children to the point that many people in their 20s have
         | difficulty with basics.
         | 
         | Everyone starts as a beginner and age doesn't change that,
         | except maybe by making things harder as you get older.
         | 
         | Do you object to the pacing or the starting age or are you
         | imagining that the people teaching this were reckless?
        
         | throwawayboise wrote:
         | At the time this was written, boys learning to face danger,
         | fight, and possibly getting injured was considered normal.
        
           | troon-lover wrote:
        
         | prometheus76 wrote:
         | Part of learning to defend oneself is getting injured along the
         | way. It's part of the learning process. You can't learn to
         | fight by reading a book about it. If you start to participate
         | and learn through that participation, sometimes your efforts
         | (or someone else's) will lead to injury.
        
           | themodelplumber wrote:
           | > You can't learn to fight by reading a book about it
           | 
           | Just to say that this is untrue, as long as your opponent has
           | not read any books or had any training. A lot of scouts or
           | just bullied kids who visit the library will tell you that.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | UberFly wrote:
         | Sheesh. Some of the best things I ever did involved the risk of
         | getting hurt. And yes, I guess I could see someone very left-
         | leaning hating on an Eagle Scout but it would still probably be
         | rare thankfully.
        
           | themodelplumber wrote:
           | Oh, you should see a right-leaning person screaming
           | obscenities at a boy scout, if you're open to new
           | perspectives.
           | 
           | You know they have been teaching Environmental Science since
           | at least the '80s? I almost saw an adult fight break out
           | because of that one.
           | 
           | Scouts always had randos protesting their indoctrination.
           | Zone of the political spectrum depended on the contextual hot
           | take.
        
           | micromacrofoot wrote:
           | What's the liberal complaint about scouting?
        
             | convolvatron wrote:
             | i think it was the 90s or early aughts, there was a lot of
             | media-heavy and forth about gay scoutmasters. and I guess
             | gay scouts too.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
             | From one side its overt religious bias. From the other it's
             | being too inclusive by admitting girls.
        
             | themodelplumber wrote:
             | For the big ones, read about the history of scouting,
             | including when BSP visited Portland OR. You'll understand
             | right away.
        
               | micromacrofoot wrote:
               | what's BSP?
        
               | atdrummond wrote:
               | I assume this is a malformed initialism for Baden-Powell,
               | scouting's founder.
        
               | mikestew wrote:
               | That is the worst homework assignment ever: read the
               | complete history of Boy Scouts, including when an
               | unexpanded not-common acronym visited Portland.
               | 
               | Was a link asking too much?
        
               | atdrummond wrote:
               | https://scoutingmagazine.org/issues/0811/d-wwas.html I
               | assume this is a reference to the political fracas that
               | Baden-Powell encountered with a group of Socialists in
               | Portland.
        
             | gcheong wrote:
             | There are certainly complaints to be made about the BSA
             | policies as an organization but I wouldn't hold that
             | against someone who went through scouting.
        
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