The Silent Majority and The Lessons Which We Can Learn From The Collapse of Traditional Scouting

Growing up, The Boy Scouts of America were easily one of the two most important outside influences in my life. The other was my church youth group. It grieves me to see the shell of Scouting which exists today. The Boy Scouts of America failed to remember what it did best. The BSA was developed in order to teach young men leadership. Like public schools in the United States, they wondered off into the weeds, forgot their mission, and never came back. The consequences to our Nation due to the loss of traditional Scouting have been enormous.

For the lack of a better term, I am going to refer to pre-woke scouting as traditional.

Common themes of traditional Scouting were self-governing units led by the scouts themselves, community service, camping, active lifestyles, training in various skills(merit badges), rank based on achievement, fellowship, travel, and the overall development of boys into young competent young men. Scouts could travel to Philmont in New Mexico, attend Order of the Arrow Conventions, go to summer camp, attend camporees, participate in Klondike derbies, and more. Scouts were expected to complete service projects. All of this was to grow young men, and to help them grow into young men and cultivate leadership skills.

During the 1970s, the Boy Scouts of America had roughly 4,750,000 scouts. As of 2023, it had fallen to around 1 million(or below). During 2020, it got so bad they had to do the unimaginable. They filed for bankruptcy.

How did we get to the point where an organization rich in tradition, overflowing with resources, and filled to the brim with willing participants…..just fell apart?

Strike One. By far the biggest mistake the Boy Scouts made was not reporting child abuse among their ranks by scout leaders. To be clear, 99.9999% of scout leaders were not involved in this. Most scout leaders did fantastic jobs. It was national leadership which didn’t act when they should have acted. They shoved it under the rug, and hoped it would go away. That foolhardy strategy worked until the boys (who were abused) grew into adults and could articulate what had happened to them. How many scouts were harmed due to the silence by national leadership? The brand was irreparably harmed by inaction.

Strike two. When you go woke, you go broke. Some in this nation failed to see the value in raising strong young men. The term “toxic masculinity” became a thing. It shouldn’t surprise us that in a nation which couldn’t delineate between two genders…the organization which was excelling at training one of those genders collapsed.

Alternative lifestyles were embraced a little bit at a time. Parents wanted their children to go to scout meetings to learn about camping, hiking, fishing, wilderness safety, and leadership. They did not want human sexuality to be part of that. Most think those were conversations best left to parents and families. Those were not conversations that had any business in scouting.

Quite simply, the Boy Scouts of America forgot to listen to the people who underpinned it. As numbers began to decline, a controversial decision was made. It was one that would cause the decline in membership to accelerate at alarming rates. Girls were embedded into troops with boys in 2019. I don’t have anything against women – so let’s not go there. I worked as a man in elementary school for over 20 years. I was the minority gender in every building that I worked. Sometimes, I was the only male teacher in the building. However, the Boy Scouts of American performed a unique task which was to raise our young men to be leaders, and it was a mistake to forget that mission. The very name of the organization reflected that foundational mission.

National leadership of the Boy Scouts of America forgot their mission. Membership cratered.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints(which had been a major supporter of scouting) left the organization altogether in 2019. Russell Ballard stated quite profoundly what many of us had sadly observed.

“The reality there is we didn’t really leave them; they kind of left us,” said M. Russell Ballard, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “The direction they were going was not consistent to what we feel our youth need to have … to survive in the world that lies ahead for them.” ~ Russell Ballard

People will vote with their feet if the product is subpar. Scouting had lost its salt. It had lost its flavor. It became lukewarm. It forgot its mission. When COVID arrived, people headed to the doors and never came back. The silent majority left scouting. The BSA lost 38,000 units(troops) in just four years. The number fell from 79,630(2019) to 41,553(2023). And that was already after a significant decline.

Trail Life USA would grow to partially fill its place. Trail Life is attempting the heavy lift of replacing scouting.

In the absence of traditional Boy Scouting, the young men of our country are suffering mightily. How many boys and young men could benefit from tenets of the BSA law? A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. How many could benefit from living out the oath?

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

We said these before every meeting. We sang our troop cheer. It still echoes in my ears – I still know every word of it. Unfortunately, the BSA forgot its own oath and its own law. It forgot to protect the children in its care, and instead, protected grownups who were egregiously in the wrong. They forgot their conservative values, and went Left.

In nation where many of our young boys and young men are growing obese, depressed, isolated, ostracized, and lack purpose….traditional scouting is still needed. In a nation where we lack strong male leadership, we could certainly benefit with the return of traditional scouting.

ProTip: There is no third strike. The silent majority speaks with their feet and at the ballot box. Families left scouting in droves. The staggering decline is a reminder that when leaders forget their organization’s mission(and begin to serve national special interest groups), organizations will falter. They failed to protect their young men from criminal activity, and they failed to protect their young men from Leftists. Conversations about human sexuality were not part of the foundations of Boy Scouts nor should they be now. Those conversations should 100% be reserved for parents and the families of Scouts. In traditional scouting(at least in my troop) there was no litmus test about human sexuality. You just signed up and you were part of our troop. We didn’t talk pronouns. We didn’t care what neighborhood you were from. We just wanted to camp, hike, learn to tie knots, and learn to be in the woods safely. None of the rest of that mattered. Most of us knew there were Scouts in our midst(who might be gay), and we simply didn’t care. Nobody made a big deal about it. I am sure there are exceptions to those positive experiences, but really the kids had already worked it out. We were a brotherhood, and that is all that mattered. It was the grownups running the national organization who screwed it up.