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?
In brief, it’s a good program under the jurisdiction of an awful organization. Even if the abuse incidents never happened, there are fundamental aspects of the experience that I find quite objectionable, to the point that they’re hard to overlook in favor of the positives, but I don’t think I can adequately convey the nuance of those feelings without literally writing an essay.
That said, there IS a lot of merit to a community teaching practical, social, and civic skills to young people, even if the institution of scouting has too much baggage to be the one to do it