To Do My Duty, To God and My Country

Last year was the one hundredth anniversary of the founding the Boy Scouts.  This year, the centennial anniversary edition of the Scout Handbook, which was originally titled The Official Handbook for Boys, was published.  In the Fall Edition of the Claremont Review of Books, Kathleen Arnn compares the original handbook to the current handbook--the 12th edition which was published in 2009--and finds that "decades of aggressive political correctness have had their effect, and the Scouts have lost some of the confident American boyishness that loves heroes and makes for heroes." 

Here is Arnn on the virtues of the original handbook:

The handbook doesn't shrink from invoking shame to motivate Scouts. For example, under Courage: "It is horrible to be a coward. It is weak to yield to fear and heroic to face danger without flinching." There are examples, like the dying Indian who "faced death with a grim smile upon his lips and sang his own death song" and the cowardly knight who fled the battle of Agincourt, much to the disappointment of his lady at home. The original handbook teaches through heroes, providing Scouts with a host of manly examples to emulate. Above all, it cultivates spiritedness, teaching Scouts to defend their honor, their friends, and their country like the great men of the past who "were accustomed to take chances with death" for the sake of the things they loved.

The original handbook assumes that one must know something about the United States to be a citizen of it. The chapter on Patriotism and Citizenship is long and impressive. Several pages detail the first singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, the meaning of the stars and stripes, and rules for flying, folding, and retiring the flag. Much of the chapter is a lesson in American history, covering the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the gradual conquest of the frontier.

 On the changes in the 12th edition of the handbook:

Its discussions of character and of citizenship are very different, too. Character formation is still a top priority for the BSA, but the latest handbook has largely replaced the traditional language of virtue with the progressive language of leadership, and this is not an improvement. The chapter on Chivalry has been completely removed, and the chapter on Leadership, which is presumably meant to replace it, has little to say about moral virtue beyond the Scout Oath and Law. Instead, it presents the EDGE method of teaching (explain, demonstrate, guide, and enable), describes the difference between short term and long term goals, and lists tips for using the internet to become a leader in your community. These may be tools of leadership; but tools are useless or worse in the hands of the wrong people and, compared to the original, the new handbook does little to explain how not to be the wrong kind.

Boy Scouts are still taught to follow their consciences: do the right thing, even though it may be difficult, which is sensible advice as far as it goes. But it does not go far enough. The old handbook treated the subject as if the conscience needed to be formed before it could be followed. Scouts needed to be habituated to the virtues through study and practice, dutifully doing the right thing until it became second nature. This was a stern discipline. Many would not succeed at it; those who did could be proud.

This is too bad as I was a Scout myself.  At that time, I had no idea of the implications I was absorbing from this deadening of virtue and loss of manliness described by Arnn.  Although it seems that the BSA has somewhat succumbed to political correctness of the current day, it still teaches, albeit more indirectly now, about virtue and the idea of absolute truth grounded in a Creator--much welcome lessons that are in contradistinction to most of what education has to offer today.  But as Arnn ominously notes in the last paragraph, "In this and in many other ways today's Boy Scouts are as good as ever, and better than their handbook. But their handbook suggests what their leadership believes, and foreshadows what they may become."