Thanks to Judy Warner for sending along this article from today's Washington Post, about eleven boys from a single Boy Scout troop who have all made Eagle Scout together, a feat that Scout leaders think may be unprecedented in the organization's history. The boys, who called themselves the Viking Patrol, were initially a bunch of whiners and losers, "ninnies" as one of the leaders called them, lying down in the middle of the trail along one of their first hikes, a gentle three-miler.
The article doesn't give too many details about what transformed them. A couple of things do stand out, though. The leaders seem to have responded to the boys' sissiness by making things more difficult for them, not easier. The turning point came when, on a hike in Alaska, the boys didn't want to pitch their tents, didn't want to hang their food up so as not to attract bears, didn't want to set up their latrines, and so on. So the leaders left them to themselves. The result was that they did organize themselves after all; they formed a team, and got the jobs done. After that, they were on their way.
The article mentions, without delving into it, that a couple of the leaders were ex-military men; and it does seem that the leaders had especial fondness for pretty rugged hikes, hunting, mechanics, and suchlike. They didn't have the boys do macrame. And yet, because the boys were amongst themselves, and didn't have to care what anybody looking over their shoulder would think, they seem to have grown interested in things gentler than shooting moose: planting butterfly bushes, for example, or talking about Bergman films.
It's pleasant to see that the Post did not sniff in contempt at any of this, though there was the requisite (and discouraging) allusion to the precipitous fall in Boy Scout membership, from 4.3 million about 35 years ago to 2.9 million in 2006, a drop that is only partly explained by demographics. And the article does allude to the only press the Boy Scouts now get, namely when the organization has to divert many millions of its dollars from hikes, canoe trips, table saws, and chartered buses, to lawyers to help them fend off plaintiffs of various sorts who really do detest what the organization is about, because they are not fond of the creatures whom the organization is dedicated to help.
But there's a lot to read between the lines here. It's clear, even from this pretty sketchy story, that the boys developed both personally and intellectually; and I don't think that the development is attributable to a couple of years of growing taller. I teach nineteen-year-olds for a living, remember. You can hardly say it without inviting a chorus of jeers, but the history of the human race simply does not show that boys, after a certain age, develop their full intellectual potential, or anything close to it, under the primary tutelage of women. That doesn't mean that they can't have some women as teachers -- as I've written many times. I know plenty of women who are excellent teachers of young men. What these women all have in common, though, is a deep appreciation for them as young men, and not just as generically young people. And they'd also be the last women to claim that the young men could get everything they needed from them.
Another politically incorrect truth that the account illustrates is that, for the male, difficulty, whether intellectual or physical, brings hope; there are bruises that feel good, because they are the bruises of a real life, a real struggle. I'm not making any claim about young women here, except that I don't think that they die inside without some kind of arena, some agon, where you can win or lose, but at least lose fighting. There's a bitterness in the easy, the silly, the pointless, and it's all the more dispiriting when it is combined, as it is in a lot of the school assignments I see, with imbecilic drudgery. A boy is that odd creature who, if he can't clear the low bar, needs to have it raised higher. But that counterintuitive challenge can only be issued under certain circumstances, by people who are motivated by love, and who know what they are doing. Usually that means you need a gang of boys, not just one, and a leader who knows more about them than he can even articulate, because he was once one of them. There are all kinds of lessons here, too, for attracting more young men to the ordained ministry.
One more point. I'm thinking of Burke's comment that there is nothing colder than the heart of a confirmed "metaphysical" politician, wickeder than the passions of men because it is closer to that unmixed intellectual evil below. What if a man like Mr. Obama could set aside the metaphysics of the Left, and notice, as a plain matter of fact, that the Boy Scouts work. Such a man could then say, to those who would harry the organization out of existence, "Leave it alone. I don't agree with some of their principles, but I don't see anything else on the horizon that works as well as they do. By executive order, I will funnel as much money as I can to cities and counties to work with the Scouts, because I care about one thing and that alone: to save as many boys as I can from the gangs, the gutters, and the grave. I want results."
If Mr. Obama were to say that, in his own words and with a comparable degree of candor, I would likely choke to death on my morning tea while reading of it.
Posted by: Nick Milne | January 19, 2008 at 02:07 PM
As an ex Scout, ex-Assistant Troop Leader, and ex-Scout Camp Counsellor, I was very much discouraged by the direction Scouting took about the time I finished my association with them (in the late 1980s). I still think the program has been watered down, but in comparison with the Girl Scouts (two daughters through Senior level), the Bpy Scouts remain a paragon of youth formation. The Scouts are far more bureaucratized than in my day (today, we'd not only be sued, but prosecuted for child abuse), but in comparison with the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts are freakin' libertarians.
However, a good leader can make lemonade out of lemons, and so it was with my daughters' Girl Scout Troop, whose leader was. . . a MAN! And not just a man, but a retired Navy SEAL captain (just recalled to duty to serve as senior SEAL leader in the new USAFRICOM). He was incredible--he not only thought up the most amazing trips and projects, but he made the girls do almost all the organization and work themselves, as a result of which they became incredibly self-reliant and self-confident. Without him there, the troop is shot to hell.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | January 19, 2008 at 05:35 PM
Per Aspera ad Astra... What does that mean?
Posted by: Kyle Eastwood | January 19, 2008 at 11:14 PM
Mr. Koehl,
Like the changes we're seeing in the Church, I'm seeing some movement back to the traditional in the Boy Scouts. The best part is that the BSA has not lost any battles with the ACLU. I was a Girl Scout leader too, before it was determined that my 60-strong troop was "too small" to continue, and that it was wrong to allow young women to determine how they wanted to run their troop and program. The
GS have a long way to go before they become relevant again.
Posted by: d | January 20, 2008 at 02:10 AM
Mr. Koehl,
Like the changes we're seeing in the Church, I'm seeing some movement back to the traditional in the Boy Scouts. The best part is that the BSA has not lost any battles with the ACLU. I was a Girl Scout leader too, before it was determined that my 60-strong troop was "too small" to continue, and that it was wrong to allow young women to determine how they wanted to run their troop and program. The
GS have a long way to go before they become relevant again.
Posted by: d | January 20, 2008 at 02:10 AM
Kyle- it means "Through adversity, to the stars".
Posted by: Mairnéalach | January 20, 2008 at 05:33 AM
That motto pairs in my mind with my high school's, Nihil Sine Labore -- Nothing (worthwhile can be achieved) Without Effort. Together, they comprise a worthy ideal for Scouting.
Posted by: Michael D. Harmon | January 21, 2008 at 12:23 PM
Dr. Esolen,
I wonder how you understand the "fight" for Adam before the fall? How do we not identify the fight with the curse of toil? Where does the goal of "rest" fit it? What is the fight in heaven, or is the meaningfulness of the fight only supposed to be temporary?
If the fight before the fall was to subdue the Earth, how do we avoid the meaning of life (the fight), or at least A meaning for life as a kind of sham like someone who comes up with challenges for himself to keep from being bored.
All this might boil down to the same question in the end. I look forward to your thoughts.
Posted by: Peter Swanson | January 24, 2008 at 05:54 PM
Peter,
Those are excellent questions.
I think we have to assume that innocent man would have found the world delightfully challenging, eliciting his creativity, his strength, his perseverance, and his sense of beauty and proportion. Man would have been under discipline, but the discipline of a cheerfully obedient son. Man would have been an ascetic, for the sheer delight of abstaining from a good -- as sometimes we love to behold a prospect from a distance, rather than always to be in it. Man would have been a fighter, if only because the angels themselves are fighters; after all, the fallen angels would not cease to exist, and neither would the possibility of a fall. But I wonder whether we more accurately define a soldier not by what he fights against, but by what he fights for: and that would mean that the Lord himself, who is a man of war, according to Moses' hymn, would be the pattern of a fighter, not just because he has conquered sin and death by his cross and resurrection, but because he has celebrated in triumphant obedience the will of his Father in heaven.
And what does that warfare or that obedience bring us, but joy in the very obedience? A friend of mine has recently reminded me -- because I'm prone to some dark moods -- that peace is, as Augustine most wisely put it, "the tranquillity of order." We feel some measure of that peace here on earth, not just when we are happily resting after work, but when we are happily working, at work which is inherently good and beautiful, and in which we join others in the task, a communion of saints with picks and axes. It is the kind of earthly peace I often miss ...
Posted by: Tony Esolen | January 24, 2008 at 06:48 PM