Context: I was a Boy Scout for a number of years, making Eagle in 2020 right as COVID was really kicking off.
It was right afterwards, however, that the CSA scandal started popping up everywhere (which thankfully I was never exposed to or involved in during my time), and lately it seems like the organization & movement as a whole has fallen by the sociocultural wayside.
I would say that my time as a Scout did me objective good; I learned a decent amount about first-aid & survival-craft, participated in a number of volunteer & civic projects, and it generally made me a more well-rounded person. However, there’s no denying the impact that something “bigger than the Catholic Church scandal”, as I’ve heard it described, has on an institution such as this.
I’d like to get the community’s opinion, however; were any of you Scouts? How was your experience? What is your opinion of the institution today?
Mid-2010s Eagle Scout here. I think Boy Scouts as a whole did teach me a lot of genuinely important skills, both physical and mentally, but that was mostly due in my opinion to my troop being more unconventionally scout-ran compared to the other troops in our council, which leaned more adult-ran. We had pretty much free reign over our itinerary and direction as a troop, so if decided we didn’t want to do something or we wanted to, but didn’t plan for it, it didn’t happen. The inverse with stuff we wanted to do and then it happening was also true. That taught me a lot more about life than any merit badge or rank advancement could.
Unfortunately being an Eagle Scout isn’t something I always bring up when talking about myself. I think part of it is all the scandals that went public like you said, but also another part is, again in my experience, “Boy Scout” carries a message about my ideals and politics that aren’t actually in line with my ideals and politics. Either you were really into nature (minority) or you were really into the wrong side of WWII (majority).