Does Singing About Friendship & Self-Esteem Create Those?

At the risk of sounding unduly controversial, why are girls, of whom many will experience childbirth, are assumed to be overly delicate, high-maintenance, Ming vases? Nothing wrong with being downright dirty and smelly while romping outside or camping in the woods. Nothing wrong with them even playing with the boys.

How much more perspective are we robbing ourselve of? And how many skills are we unduly depriving girls of.

Even Home Depot, a warehouse home-improvement chain headquartered out of the State of Georgia, knows to cater to women by packaging and resizing tools to suit the smaller hands of women.

It’s high time that Girl Scouts and its chaperones within their ranks update their assumptions about girls. Home Depot did so for women.

@Highwayman–I’m from Canada, and we have Home Depot here too, but our Home Depots don’t sell “tools to suit the smaller hands of women.” Now, I know that Home Depot probably isn’t being sexist on purpose by making and selling these tools, because it’s a physiological fact–I have smaller hands and feet than most men my age. However, I’ve used regular, “androgynous” tools from time to time over the course of my life (as a child, spending summer days with my brother, making “improvements” on our treehouse out of scrap lumber, as an adolescent in the scant “shop” classes we had in school, and as an adult doing minor home repairs, or assembling a canvas during painting class in university), and I’ve never had a problem with them. The thing that bothers me about the idea of creating “smaller tools for women” is that implies that “conventional” tools are, by default, designed for men.

Anyway, I will admit to purchasing a “womanly” tool on one occasion, but that was because I had no other option. I was at Western, and I’d somehow managed to get a DVD stuck in my DVD player. I’d exhausted all other options, so my plan was to dismantle the DVD player and attempt to extract the DVD (in the end, that didn’t even work, and I had to replace both). So, I was planning on a trip to the hardware store to buy tools, when I found something else at the school store, where I’d generally go every morning for a post-workout “breakfast” of a Power Bar, a piece of fruit, and a diet pop, before heading off to rehearsal/painting class/whatever. Anyway, right near the Power Bars, there was a shelf of small hammers. Upon closer inspection, the hammers had hollow handles, with screwdrivers inside them, that could be “screwed” out for separate use, and then “screwed” back inside, like a lid on a glass bottle. Anyway, they happened to be decorated with flowers, painted all over the outside of the handle, but it was exactly what I needed, so I bought it. I don’t think buying a small, “dainty” flowered hammer made me any less of a feminist; it was just the best option available for the project I had in mind, and it saved me a trip to the hardware store.

The Daisy troop my daughter’s friend is in has has three “princess teas” this year and the tiger scouts who are the same age have gone on two winter hikes and worked with tools. I am looking into 4H Cloverbuds for my daughter for next year.

I am a Girl Scout leader of 2 troops. My older girls, now 6 grade, have learned how to cook(stove and campfire) lead a hike and start and manage a fire. They have been doing this for years now. My 3 grade troop is a bit tougher as they are very babied by their parents , but they will be doing the cooking and learning how to start a campfire this year. With Girl Scouts its up to the leader to decided which direction the troop will go in.

@Stephanie–Why is the Daisy group repeating the same event three times? Also, do the girls say they want to do all girly activities, or do they express wishes to go hiking, play outside, learn to make campfires, etc., only to get shot down?

The general philosophies of the organizations are quite different: the Girl Scouts expect to adjust, and be flexible to, the evolving needs of modern girls. The Boy Scouts, in contrast, feel they have a treasure chest that people will come seek. The first organization will change its appeal and its direction; the second believes it has very basic and essential offerings that have a timeless value and appeal.

Interesting that Peter Drucker, the old Austrian business guru, remade the Girl Scouts into a consumer friendly entity.

@Yan Seiner–Fair point; I wasn’t thinking about people who use tools day in, day out, in the context of a career, but more about just average people who keep a basic set of tools around the house in case something breaks. Actually, the flowered hammer/screwdriver set was pretty useful, and I wish I still had it, but it mysteriously went missing when I moved out of my townhouse after I finished at Western. But hey, maybe someone else moved into that house, found the set, and got some good use out of it.

Scouts may have been going downhill for some time. I was never attracted to them, despite a boyhood-long subscription to a scout-oriented magazine from my Grandfather, who had been a Scoutmaster for my Father in the 1930s. But in the early-1960s my younger brother made a short trial of the Boy Scouts, and found that as a ‘tenderfoot’ he had to teach the whole troop how to make a campfire – in Connecticut where there’s always the dead branches of a White Pine close at hand. Also there was something about smoking on Scout time…

Isn’t this the way with society in general? We are encouraged to make people feel validated, feel good and happy, all of which are good things, but it is done simply by saying so, not by discovering it.

If it’s any consolation, in talking with some of my sons’ former cub scout leaders, I recently learned that at their cub scout day camp in the summer, all they do is crafts and a lot of sitting around. It didn’t used to be that way–when my brothers were cub scouts 20 years ago, they did a lot more hiking and nature exploring at day camp and hardly any sitting around. I was really disappointed to hear that’s what the boys were doing. My boys never said anything to me, except hinted that they didn’t have very much fun. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth sending them back to day camp this summer. I do like the cub scout program here but that was a huge disappointment to hear about.

Maybe we free range parents need to organize some activities for neighborhood kids ourselves that involve more skill-learning, kind of like how girl scouts, etc. used to be? Or encourage our kids to do it–I remember when I was 9, 10, and 11, my friends and I put together all sorts of “clubs”, a sewing club, a hiking club, a bike riding club, etc., and invited anyone in the neighborhood to join. It was so much fun.

A lot of kids develop social habits in the course of “parallel play,” a term my daughter’s teacher used to describe my daughter. That is, they play next to each other, maybe doing two different things, with little or no interaction. They’re content without all the feel-good chit chat. It seems like they have good instincts, for the most part, if we just let them do their thing.

@Steve: Considering that their oath begins with: “I promise to love God” and that they say they “embrace Christian values” and condition their membership on believing that “the Holy Scriptures (Old/New Testament) to be the inspired and authoritative Word of God” pretty much puts them in the conservative religious organization corner, and not a scouting organization.

I looked into them as I thought their range of activities would be interesting but their beliefs and requirements that everyone toe the religious line drops them from my world.

I’d love to see an outdoor scouting organization for both boys and girls that’s not obsessed with God, gays, etc. but rather focuses on – surprise – the outdoors and independence.

Steve,
The “loving G-d” part might cause problems for atheists. Also, I’m Jewish, and I can honestly say that many things that Christians view as “neutrally religious” still have a very Christian bias. Now, as a Girl Scout, I participated in Christmas parties, decorated friends’ trees, and so on and so forth-I’m NOT one of those people that gets offended by casual invocations of others religions. Not once have I yelled at a person who has wished me a Merry Christmas.

That being said, a Christian organization, regardless of how inclusive they claim to be, is STILL a Christian organization, and it’s the million and one little things that make non-Christians uncomfortable or feel unwelcome. There are certain phrase-ologies that are associated with Christian prayer phrases that can make a “non-denominational” prayer a Christian prayer. There’s the knowledge that most Christians think I’m going to Hell. Things like that…

I’ve never heard of American Heritage Girls, but knowing that they’re a Christian-based organization, I highly doubt that I would let a daughter of mine join.

I hope that helps answer your question!
Rachel

People the oath above is not for:
Oath: Atheists, orphans, children of abuse, the anti-war, and Objectivists
Creed: Atheists, sex-positive people

There’s nothing wrong with an oath and a creed that isn’t for some. There’s nothing wrong with different organizations having different oaths and creeds. From what I’ve read here, one of the things that has done in the Girl Scouts, from a free-range perspective, is the belief that the organization must not exclude anyone – so it needs activities and beliefs that everyone can agree with. That’s silly – a big thing we need to teach our children is that it’s ok for different people to have different beliefs, and to act differently, join different groups, etc. – and that they can still be friends.

Singing about friendship and self-esteem reminds me of education and the emphasis on talking about critical thinking, democracy, and other things that cannot be learned by talking. You cannot teach democracy by standing in front of a classroom and forcing people to memorize its virtues for a test. You cannot teach critical thinking by talking about why it’s important.

Actually, it all reminds me very much of the worst educational experience I have had – my EMS and fire training. Some classes were great, and some teachers were great. Some were less so. For instance, my critical care class was taught mostly by a rotating group of instructors who simply read powerpoints. What was ironic was that the lead instructor was a great teacher, yet he seemed ok with letting the other numbskulls into his class. The issue, though, is that the curriculum for anything – from a 2 hour awareness seminar to a paramedic program – seems to include a very long portion on the importance of having classes on the subject, the requirements for such classes, and other things that have no place in a classroom. The epitome is the awareness level classes, which teach little else other than these topics. That and a history of the teaching of the subject eats up most of the class, with the conclusion being “and remember, the point of this class is that this stuff is scary and you should call for someone who knows the subject to come.”

So, it seems that what happened is that the ethos of this sort of CYA pseudo-vocational training penetrated education, at the same time that some good ideas, like emphasizing critical thinking (although I hesitate to call that a good idea – where have you been for 200 years?) made their way into education – and the resulting mixture was a potent dose of nonsense. That ethos, then, penetrated the general society, particularly things for kids, since those can always claim to be doing right by imitating the state of the art in education.

Am with JJ on this one – really, without a lot of adult help, I cannot imagine taking 5 year olds into the bush, or camping in tents. Maybe I am missing something here…….Do the Daisy girls ‘go bush’ with older girls? Our girls do a fair amount of camping, but not at that age. They do do a lot of crafts etc from 5 to 6.

This is why my daughter is leaving Girl Scouts…she watched her older brother in Boy Scouts (and even participated in some family events), and always wondered why the girls “got to” scrapbook, learn to SAY NO, and cook over a campfire (but not use a knife). I’m almost ashamed to say I was her troop leader, but when you try to follow the parameters of the manuals and make sure they earn their petals or other badges, it’s hard to give them both kinds of experiences…So we provide opportunities for her to use tools, hike, camp, etc. with our family…

Maybe my own experience is an outlier but I was in Girl Scouts for about six years in the 70’s and we rarely (maybe once a year) hiked or camped. We did all other kinds of activities–we had a newspaper, we leaned dances, did crafts. In retrospect it was so corny but I loved it. My point is why are we assuming that Girl Scouts central purpose *should* relate to camping, etc. when At leart in my experience it hasnt been in at least 40 years. The vast majority of the time you are meeting in a church basement or something after dark, anyway sometimes in the middle of the city without any green soace near. By necessity the activities need to focus on indoor stuff. Also we shouldn’t compare it to Boy Scouts. They are completely different organizations.

I must have missed something…when did singing become so evil?

Sounds boring as.

This reminds me of a party my daughter was invited to as an elementary school kid. The invitation said it was a “Cheetah Girls” party, and the girls would learn about self-esteem by listening to the songs of the Cheetah Girls, and participating in activities to boost their self esteem. My daughter went because a BFF was hosting the party, and when I asked her how it was, she said it was okay, she was mostly interested in the food, but she already knew she was a good softball player so she didn’t need the songs. I agree with the others who say that doing, not talking, is what creates good self-esteem. For several summers, our daughter ran a lemonade stand on our street corner, and to hear her talk, she was a lemonade tycoon, although she probably never made more than $10 in an afternoon. My 10 year old, who has significant developmental disabilities, thinks he’s awesome because he can buy his own Tru-Moo at the gas station without any help from me in conducting the transaction. In my opinion, there’s no song in the world that can accomplish that.

Scouting is unique to the troop. If you want your girls to participate in camping, crafts, fishing, science experiments, or something else that’s not being done, you have options. Offer to head a few meetings, become a leader or a co-leader yourself, do a family activity, offer a non-scout outing in which families participate.

(About tools and hands – I used to date a guy with smaller hands and feet than I have. I’m a woman with relatively though not freakishly large hands and feet plus wide shoulders and….a giant head! I actually wear “men’s” shoes a lot of the time (Converse, penny loafers) because they’re better made and, as a woman’s size 10 I take a men’s 8. There are lots of women who wear women’s 9 and 10 and even 11 shoes and women’s large – xl gloves…and whose hands and feet are therefore on the small to medium end of the “men’s” size spectrum. And there are certainly short or small-boned men who wear men’s 6 or 7 size shoes and smaller gloves. There’s a lot of overlap in body size and body strength between men and women – the idea that men are virtually always bigger and virtually always stronger is ideology, not fact. (When I worked in Asia and had to buy some shoes, I took the biggest men’s size they had, but that didn’t mean that Asian men are less manly.)

My point is that it makes much more sense to market tools in two sizes rather than in two genders….especially since IME most of the “women’s versions” of things are cheaper and break more easily.

Although I also wonder – just how much of this “women need tiny tools for our tiny hands” is really true? When I was a kid and had actual tiny hands, I did a lot of woodworking with my grandfather using his tools, and I had a whale of a time. It’s not that people shouldn’t have tools sized to fit their hands….but I’d want to do some really good comparisons about the experience of using tools in different sizes before getting all carried away.

I am still a registered life time member of the Girl Scouts. My mom was a leader for ages – well after my sister and I aged out and went to college. What eventually led her to quit was a combination of the parents and the aforementioned lack of focus in the program. However, for her the parents were the worst of it. When I was in scouts we went camping constantly, in tents, cabins, whatever, cooked on open fires, worked with knives and axes, did archery, etc. Enough adults came for insurance purposes, but otherwise, the grownups were as hands off as possible. Now, every parent wants to come, because they don’t trust anyone to look after their little darling without them standing right there. The moms are all “Ew! Dirt!” and so their kids learn that getting messy is bad. The girls are allowed by their parents to bring cell phones, even when expressly forbidden, and the parents have a fit when the leader takes them away. My mom finally threw in the towel. She loved the girls, but the parents were more trouble than they were worth – never willing to help, always willing to whine.

I was blessed with boys, so I am a cub scout leader. I have seen some dens that do very little hands on stuff. Others (like ours, I am proud to say) are in it for the hands on experiences. I warn parents when sending them in full dress uniform is a bad plan because food/mud/paint will be involved. I’ve taught my boys to use knives, bake desserts, start fires, sew buttons on, demonstrate Bernoulli’s principal, and do woodworking, among other things. I have been very fortunate to have parents who were willing to let go and not hover and that has made all the difference.

I’d like to see someone start teaching kids (and adults) the sorts of skills that would come in terrifically handy if some of our large-scale corporate providers disappeared.

Part of why no one learns mending anymore is because we discard clothing so quickly. We feel it’s cheaper and easier to replace it than to patch or repair it. The same goes for all electronics and most everything else in our throw-away economy.

So. Mending, mechanical skills, a basic understanding of electronics, growing food (especially permaculture), and, I must say, cooperative communication skills and empathy would come in handy too, if we all need to start sharing more in the future.

I’m not so sure how much I care about “camping” and “hiking” per se, I do believe that outdoor experiences have merit, and that most of us are severely nature-deprived. In terms of building a sense of confidence and competence, though, it would be nice to see time devoted to building a skill set that would actually be serving kids… if there is any possibility that they might not inherit the abundantly comfortable world we live in now.

I know exactly what this poster means! I joined the brownies gosh, 24 years ago now, because I saw the ads for Boy Scouts on TV hiking through canyons and I wanted to do those things. We learned how to properly set the table (with a ruler to make sure the dinner plate was 1″ from the edge!) and did lots of crafts. I hated it and quit after a year. I had hoped things had improved!

First, unless you buy only organic and all natural foods and NEVER buy store bought cookies girl scout cookies aren’t made of “crap” as Jennifer suggested and they aren’t “forced” on anyone – if you don’t like them then don’t buy them. I agree that after looking at the American Heritage Girls site they are a religious group.

That said, “girl scouts is what you make of it” is only true to a point. With all of the time it takes to conform to the guidlines to earn badges, even if you alter them to be “better” it is very hard to fit in more stuff and the GS regulations and rules for everything are over the top. I’ve been a leader for 5 years and it really isn’t what I expected it to be. There is more talking and crafts than doing of anything. You can camp but that is not the focus, if I had to say what is the focus I’d pick community service. You spend a lot of time trying to find community service projects for the girls to be involved it. Overall, boy scouts do learn more useful skills and I would like to see ore of that in girl scouts. They recently completely overhauled the girl scout program and I don’t really think it was a good change.

It’s interesting to hear the comments about community service. I was a Boy Scout in an era in which no one, no school, forced youth to do community service.

So for me, the whole concept was new and mind-boggling! I remember one thing we did was to reset cemetery markers in a old forgotten cemetery. Heavy stuff!

@Lollipoplover,Donna,Sue and others – fair enough points. Yes, five year olds are capable of doing many things, including hiking and looking after horses etc. I was feeling a bit cynical yesterday, imagining myself as usually happens, one adult in charge of 25+ five year olds, many of whom I can’t trust to go to the toilet by themselves without attempting to escape the environs we’re in.

Obviously you would have a much higher adult/child ratio if you were doing exciting outdoor activities, and this could be the issue with the ‘Daisies’. I doubt, Sue, for example, that you would be teaching 20+ kids to groom horses at once. Though, seriously, maybe you have more relaxed horses than I’ve met…

My own kids were camping/bushwalking/riding (the riding occasional – darned expensive around here!) at that age. The difference being that I had a group of three to six max to keep an eye on at once….

Take a big group of other people’s kids out bush or camping without heaps of help – no way, unless I owned a couple of good sheep dogs 🙂

I think the comparison to Little League is apt. When you join Little League, you know you are going to play baseball. Various teams may be more or less competitive, or more or less inclusive. Some coaches may be more or less skilled and more or less organized. But, at the end of the day, every group still plays baseball. You don’t have one Little League team that plays baseball and one that does arts and crafts and one that does community service and know way of knowing until after you’ve joined which group you will be a part of.

Cub/boy Scouts seems equally single purpose. Of course, you have well run troops and troops that suck, but everyone still has the same general purpose. If you join the Boy Scouts, you’ll be doing outdoorsy stuff. Maybe well and maybe badly, depending on the troop, but outdoorsy stuff nonetheless.

I’ve never been a Girl Scout, but from everyone’s descriptions here it runs the gambit from manicures to rappelling down a mountain. There is no central purpose. No way to determine if Girl Scout activities, in general, are something that you want to do since there are no general activities. And a whole lot of “Scouting is unique to the troop,” with no acceptance that no other organization is run that way. I can’t think of single other organization that seems to have gone so far in the way of inclusiveness that anyone can join and do whatever they feel like doing and still claim to be part of the organization.

I don’t have particularly care as to whether Girl Scouts wants to be a group that does community service and arts and crafts or camping and outdoors activities, but it should pick one or the other. I have no interest in letting my daughter join any Girl Scout troop because I have no idea what she will be doing. Is it going to be something I want her doing or something she will enjoy? Who the heck knows since I have absolutely no idea what Girl Scouts is supposed to stand for. And I don’t really have the time or energy to devote to trying every Girl Scout troop in the area to determine which are doing manicures and which are going camping. I should be able to tell that from the name of the organization.

As a dad with two daughters approaching “Daisy” age, I would love to find a hard-core Girl Scout troop that would take the girls camping, have them learn to hike, boulder, and raft, show them how to tie knots, and do all kinds of outdoor things. I already to those things with them, but being part of a troop would be much more fun.

Interestingly, the original Girl Scouts were very different from what some of the comments describe. The founder of the Girls Scouts, “Daisy” Gordon Low, was a tough girl, through and through — she bucked convention and got girls (in Savannah, GA, no less) to defy the turn of the 20th century standards of ladyhood. The original Girl Scout handbook taught girls how to cure hams, tell the time by the stars, tie up a burglar with a rope, and other crazy things. (See Shana Corey’s new kid’s book on Low). It’s too bad the current version has fallen so far from the original ideals…

Let Her Eat Dirt
http://www.lethereatdirt.com
A dad’s take on raising tough, adventurous girls

@Let Her Eat Dirt – why don’t you start one? Seriously? If the regulations involve needing a woman to be the ‘frontman’, there must be a woman around somewhere who could be the token ‘head sherang’ while you organised all the fun stuff you’re talking about. It sounds really cool.

Part of the problem with organising any of these groups is, as discussed before on another thread, getting leaders. We have enough trouble down here, and we have a culture and economy based on ‘volunteership’ (put at $5 billion + per annum a few years back) as well as fewer restrictions on who qualifies as a leader.

You should give it a go (the troop leadership, that is). Sounds like you have the skills for it.

There were an awful lot of arts and crafts when I was in Cub Scouts, which didn’t start until 3rd grade at the time. We did some hiking, but only 5th graders could go out camping. (There were optional summer camps for cub scouts run by the council, but kids went individually, it wasn’t our whole pack going at once.)

But program differs greatly from pack to pack and from troop to troop. Even in Boy Scouts, there are some troops that run multiple weeklong trips in remote areas during the summer, and go camping every month and all that, and other troops which only go camping once in the summer (at the council camp where meals are provided) and focus on getting kids the merit badges they need to advance.

Caught that one Grant.
Its so arrogant and then asking for background checks.
Now they’re singing about friendship and self-esteem!
You can’t make this stuff up.

@Dana. My son has attended weeklong COTEF programs twice and had a blast walking barefoot in the forest and being able to carry and use a real knife. He can make fire without matches, camouflage into the field, hike blindfolded and find his way, build his own shelter and sleep in it. He is a very active Boy Scout but this was even better. The best part was meeting other kids that had the same interest. They are based in NJ but their summer program runs in Holmes NY.

@Tsu Dho Nimh–I’ve always opted out of the “fall backwards and let someone catch you” activity, either by putting my foot down as I fall, or just refusing to do it in the first place. First of all, I wouldn’t let a stranger put their hands on me, let alone “shove me over backwards,” and second of all, no matter how much I trusted the people I came to the session with, there’s still the simple fact that I’m bigger than the average woman. I’m no longer morbidly obese, like I used to be, but I’m around 5’10”, and big-boned. So, I wouldn’t want to fall backwards and “trust” someone to catch me, because I wouldn’t want to hurt them.

P.S., I also agree with B. I’ve never been involved with the Girl Scouts in the States; just Guides in Australia and Canada, but……sheesh. Australia is fine, but Canada background-checks and screens every applicant within an inch of their lives, to the point where, in the interest of “building self-esteem in girls,” they make the prospective adult volunteers feel like criminals, for daring to want to give their time to help.

hineata…maybe not 20 but during camp 6-10 at a time, and on a regular lesson basis any where from one to four in a lesson plus older kids free riding in the ring. i like 3 ring circuses[smile]

I have a daisy and junior troop. For my daisy troop, trying to get 20 five year olds to do anything as a group can be a little like herding cats. I hope to do more with them as they get older but now we are limited because I only have so much time to commit, trying to schedule anything around my family’s schedule, and trying to get enough other adults to take the girls anywhere. We were going to take our junior troop camping last year and of the ten or so girls, one wanted and/or was actually available to go.

Surprise! You actually covered this subject well. Are there other alternatives that i will must examine out?