In Defense of Girl Scouts and Leaders and Rules

Lately I’ve been doing my fair share of GSUSA bashing.  But if you hang around me long enough, you’ll know that I am a huge proponent of Scouting.  Sure, there are some things that I don’t like about the way things are going, but I still feel there’s value in it, and I’m hopeful that one day it’ll get back on track.  I sincerely do what I can to try to “right the ship” if you will.  Maybe not successfully, and I might even end up tipping the boat over, thereby dumping everyone out, but it is not my intention to do so.

It seems like Girl Scout bashing in the media has been the “in” thing for the past few years.  Some of it is self-inflicted, sure, but some of it is just jumping on the bandwagon in my opinion.

In this case, it’s the article from this past October by Rachel Zurer called “How The Girl Scouts Failed Me.”  It appears on the Backpacker website, which I’m assuming is an outdoor magazine or website.  I know you are in awe of my powers of deduction.  Samona posted this link on my Facebook wall back when it was first published and asked for my opinion.  I’m finally getting around to it.  Just a warning – I’m going to jump around the article, so quotes won’t necessarily be in order.  I also start off by raking the author over the coals, but in the end I soften up.  Consider this a strongly worded blog post.  As opposed to a strongly worded letter.

I’m not sure how old Rachel Zurer is, but she sounds like she’s about 10 years younger than me, which would put her in her early to mid 30s. I don’t know if she has kids.  She doesn’t sound like a Girl Scout volunteer.  Maybe she is, but most likely she would have included some kind of personal experience as an adult if she was.  Before anybody gets offended and thinks that I’m saying “people in their 30s with no children who are not Girl Scout leaders” cannot comment about Girl Scouts, then you’re wrong.

My immediate thought after reading her article was that she doesn’t understand how Girl Scouts works as a volunteer organization.  And by doing so, she’s putting the blame in the wrong place.  In fact, I don’t know that there’s really any “blame” to go around anyway.

First of all, the title “How The Girl Scouts Failed Me” and the subsequent “I tried outdoor experiences in Girl Scouts—and learned they were no fun. But thanks to new efforts, there’s still hope for the Brownies of the future” subtitle come across as very self-centered.  Rachel – so you did not have a good outdoor experience when you were a Girl Scout.  But saying, “…there’s still hope for the Brownies of the future” makes it sound like you are assuming that all Brownies had the same experience as you and insinuates that Girl Scouts fell down on the job for everybody.  Well, I had a great experience camping when I was a Girl Scout, and it did lead to my love of the outdoors.  But some of my fellow Girl Scouts hated it.  Have you spoken with every single woman that was in your troop?  Do you know for sure that they were just as miserable as you were?  How do you know that some of them don’t have fond memories of it?  Perhaps this perception was not your intention – I don’t know.  But that was the way I interpreted it.

Rachel, I am sorry.  I am sorry that your mother, in your opinion, did not do a very good job giving you “the boisterous joy and sense of adventure” that you find in the outdoors now.  If she’s like most moms and volunteers, she probably did the very best she could.  I’m guessing she wasn’t forced at gunpoint to take your Girl Scout troop camping.  So give her credit for trying rather than feeling sorry for her, especially since it was out of her comfort zone.  You go Mrs. Zurer!  You say that your mother is not comfortable with the outdoors but yet the Girl Scouts were supposed to take a square peg and hammer it into a circular hole?  You say she only had one night of training and then was “tasked” to take 7 year olds camping?  Tasked by whom?  Do you know for sure there weren’t other trainings available and she didn’t want to take them because as you say – she didn’t enjoy the outdoors?  Maybe she didn’t have the time to take them.  Who knows?  But how is that the Girl Scouts’ fault?  Should they have sent someone to critique her outdoor leadership skills since you believed they were sub-par?

You state, “Even enthusiastic, relevantly skilled leaders might have had trouble convincing me that the experience was more fun than an indoor slumber party. But my leaders weren’t convinced themselves. Their anxiety and discomfort tinged the very air.” Well, yeah.  Have you ever been around a Girl Scout leader that doesn’t get anxious at some point?  If you’ve met one, then she is probably taking something very strong and should share with the rest of us.  I love the outdoors.  I love camping and cooking over a fire and much more.  I especially love teaching girls and sharing what I know about it (which is admittedly very little).  But even though I had the training AND the love, I was a nervous wreck trying to plan my first camping trip.  Don’t believe me? Was it the Girl Scouts’ fault that I was nervous?  Would a week-long training session have kept me from being nervous?  Heck no.   Planning a trip for that many young girls is nerve-wracking – especially the first time you do it.  I am taking our Juniors camping at the beach at the end of April, and I am already nervous about it.

Rachel, have you ever taken ten to twelve 7 year old girls on a trip?  I get the impression you haven’t.  The first time around, I took eight 8 year olds, and like I said, I was very anxious.  But from what I could tell, the girls enjoyed it and had a good time – except for two.  One stayed up all night crying because she was afraid of being away from her mother, and the other because she ate too many Fritos and got sick.  Again, is it the Girl Scouts’ fault that the one who cried all night might hate the outdoors for the rest of her life because she associates camping with an unpleasant experience?  Would you say that it’s even my fault?

Back to “[e]ven enthusiastic, relevantly skilled leaders might have had trouble convincing me that the experience was more fun than an indoor slumber party.”  Rachel, have you ever considered that maybe you were a brat, and therefore, the leaders couldn’t have convinced you of anything?  I don’t know – maybe you were a sweet girl.  But could it possibly be that your perspective is skewed because you were a young child?  I’ve found that my memories and perceptions of things when I was young were sometimes off-base because I didn’t know the whole story.

“My memories of our troop camping trips contain none of the boisterous joy and sense of adventure I find outdoors now or that I imagine most Boy Scouts experience.” So you’re assuming that Boy Scouts experience “boisterous joy and [a] sense of adventure.” Romanticize much?  I’d be having boisterous joy too if I could kick back and have a few drinks around the fire with adults.  But I don’t take girls outdoors so that they can necessarily find those things.  As a leader, I hope that I can share some of what I know and expose them to different activities whether it be woodworking, camping, science, art, or even jewelry making – and most importantly – what THEY want to do.  They all won’t enjoy every activity.  But at least they get a little taste of it.  They might even realize that something they thought they would like turns out to be something they don’t.  That’s valuable too.  Who knows what a brief exposure will turn into in the future.  THAT’S what Girl Scouts is all about.  If  it turns into a sense of adventure – then that’s great.  But what speaks to one girl won’t to another.

It’s unfair to hold Girl Scouts as a whole to an idealistic standard just because you didn’t have fun doing something then that you do now.  Do you feel like you missed out on something?  Have you considered that you probably appreciated different things ten years later when you tried the outdoors again, and therefore, that affected the way you experienced it?  Have you thought that perhaps the girl you were growing up wasn’t ready for the outdoors at that time in your life?  When I was in school, I couldn’t stand to write.  Hated it.  I still may not be very good at it, but this blog is an outlet for me now.  Never in a thousand years would I have imagined that I would write for pleasure.  So did Mrs. Brewer back in 5th grade “fail” me because I hated something then that I enjoy now?  Well, she didn’t literally fail me – I did get an A. 😉

You say, “I remember chore charts, three-basin dishwashing, and rules, rules, rules.”  Chore charts?  Again, I’m asking if you’ve led a group of young girls.  What do you think happens if you don’t have expectations and split up the work so that they have responsibility for a certain area?  Or just leave it up to them to figure out what to clean up?  Yep, YOU get to do it all.  Have fun with that.  Have you ever thought there are rules for camping because you’re dealing with young girls, and they don’t know that it’s probably not a good idea to run around the fire ring because they might trip and fall into said fire and turn into Girl Scout flambé?  Or maybe that there’s a rule that only certain people (as designated by the chore chart) can tend to the fire because ten to twelve young girls all poking at it could lead to bad things happening?  There’s another rule that you can’t have food in your tent because you might get an unwelcome night-time visitor.  Things that are common sense as a (sober) adult are in fact, rules for kids.  And guess what Leave No Trace, the standard of standards for the outdoors, is all about?  Yep – rules.

“On our earliest outings, we weren’t allowed to roast marshmallows because that was an advanced cooking skill, officially out of reach for us 7-year-olds.”  Unless someone can provide me with a late 1980s or early 1990s Safety Wise book as proof, I’m calling BS on this.  Rachel, that might have been your leaders’ rules and not necessarily the Girl Scouts’.  [I’ll take this back if I get proof.]  Perhaps it was because your troop was obnoxious and wouldn’t follow the RULES and therefore, they didn’t trust you.  By the way, there’s a rule that I hammer home about roasting marshmallows – if one catches on fire, you can’t wave the stick around vigorously trying to put it out, because it might sling off the stick and burn someone’s face.

To Rachel’s credit, she does admit that “[w]hile some Girl Scout troops take treks that inspire a love of nature and backpacking, others end up like mine, constrained by the limits and fears of their leaders.”  Rachel, I’m sorry you feel that you drew the short end of the stick when it came to troops.  But again, how are the limits and fears of some leaders the Girl Scouts’ fault?  To a certain point due to lack of training – perhaps – but it’s a fact that some volunteers can’t stand the outdoors and enjoy doing more “girly” activities.  I’m not one of them.  If my girls choose to do those things, then okay, but I don’t seek them out.  Some may disagree, but I just think there are troops that are a better fit for some girls than others.  Each one has its own personality and yeah, a lot of it has to do with the leader.  I don’t care how much additional outdoor training you offer, there are going to be some leaders who don’t take it – because they don’t want to.  And that’s their prerogative.

Do I think councils should offer additional outdoor training?  Yes, absolutely.  In fact, our service unit is going to have an outdoor refresher course because our council doesn’t offer something like this, and the leaders in our SU asked for it.  It’s a council’s responsibility to focus in on what their volunteers need.  What volunteers need in one council isn’t always exactly the same in another.  To Rachel’s credit again – she quotes a volunteer trainer saying something along those lines.

Before anybody comments about camps closing and GSUSA forsaking the outdoors in lieu of other areas, I’d like to point out that Rachel’s experience happened in the late 80s and 90s when those camps were open and Girl Scouts was considered healthy, at least compared to today’s volunteer perceptions.

I’d like to end this commentary by giving Rachel props for not only pointing out that anybody can be a Girl Scout Volunteer but also including a direct link to the Volunteer Sign-Up page.  Rachel, you submitted your volunteer application too, correct?  It sounds like you’d be a good one.  😉