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Comment by themodelplumber | Hacker News Reader

Holy smokes! Reading this over, I'll bet there were more than a few injuries among the groups that practiced it.

Imagine sending your kid off for a fun weekend and then watching them come home Sunday morning with an acute elbow injury from an arm bar...

Scouting was dangerous enough without that stuff. You could get lost and even die in any number of unexpected ways. I watched a friend take a full swing of a wood axe to the top of his head. It didn't make any of us stronger or more interested in the outdoors. Plus everybody told us the Eagle Scout looked amazing on a resume when you become an adult, but they didn't mention that it could have the complete opposite effect depending on where you're applying...

Edit: I see the typical pro-danger, pro-learning-through-injury realism-posturing replies, but these quick takes are inappropriate for beginners, which merit-badge-earning scouts definitely are.

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Sheesh. Some of the best things I ever did involved the risk of getting hurt. And yes, I guess I could see someone very left-leaning hating on an Eagle Scout but it would still probably be rare thankfully.

Oh, you should see a right-leaning person screaming obscenities at a boy scout, if you're open to new perspectives.

You know they have been teaching Environmental Science since at least the '80s? I almost saw an adult fight break out because of that one.

Scouts always had randos protesting their indoctrination. Zone of the political spectrum depended on the contextual hot take.

What's the liberal complaint about scouting?

For the big ones, read about the history of scouting, including when BSP visited Portland OR. You'll understand right away.

That is the worst homework assignment ever: read the complete history of Boy Scouts, including when an unexpanded not-common acronym visited Portland.

Was a link asking too much?

https://scoutingmagazine.org/issues/0811/d-wwas.html I assume this is a reference to the political fracas that Baden-Powell encountered with a group of Socialists in Portland.

what's BSP?

I assume this is a malformed initialism for Baden-Powell, scouting’s founder.

i think it was the 90s or early aughts, there was a lot of media-heavy and forth about gay scoutmasters. and I guess gay scouts too.

There are certainly complaints to be made about the BSA policies as an organization but I wouldn’t hold that against someone who went through scouting.

From one side its overt religious bias. From the other it's being too inclusive by admitting girls.

Hmm yeah, one of those seems a lot more rational than the others... but I suppose if I were to say which one someone would claim that it's just my partisan bias.

Part of learning to defend oneself is getting injured along the way. It's part of the learning process. You can't learn to fight by reading a book about it. If you start to participate and learn through that participation, sometimes your efforts (or someone else's) will lead to injury.

> You can't learn to fight by reading a book about it

Just to say that this is untrue, as long as your opponent has not read any books or had any training. A lot of scouts or just bullied kids who visit the library will tell you that.

It’s not a quick take, it’s just modern infantilization of children to the point that many people in their 20s have difficulty with basics.

Everyone starts as a beginner and age doesn’t change that, except maybe by making things harder as you get older.

Do you object to the pacing or the starting age or are you imagining that the people teaching this were reckless?

At the time this was written, boys learning to face danger, fight, and possibly getting injured was considered normal.

Where did you apply that being an Eagle Scout counted against you?

The problem is that people who become Eagle Scouts tend to be successful enough individuals that the jobs they apply to don't understand why they would put such a low-grade achievement on their resume (compared to the other higher achievements they most likely have).

It's like putting that you won an Olympic Gold in gymnastics when applying to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Yes, it's impressive to everyone, but at some point it's not necessary.

I'd say the same applies to high school Honor Societies. If you're a member of one, chances are that it's never going to professionally benefit you.

I understand what you mean, but I think you chose a terrible example. I will never be in the Olympics, but if I was I would definitely have that on my resume.

Hell yes. If I were on the search committee, an olympic gold medal would make the candidate very interesting. It tells you you’re probably dealing with an extraordinary individual.

I disagree. It shows a track record of success throughout the life and that you are not just "one time wonder".

I'm an Eagle Scout (note the use of present tense) and I've had that on all of my resumes my entire adult life. When I got my Eagle, an uncle who was a senior executive at a Very Large Bank said that he would always give an Eagle Scout at least an interview.

Me too. It's an interest award I'm proud of, and it takes a tiny amount of space.

Not going to lie. If you submitted a resume for a job I was hiring for and you 1. Pass the HR check 2. Had some of what I was looking in skills 3. Had Eagle Scout on your resume

You are going to get an interview. Might not get the job but I would give you a chance.

Just like anything in life the Eagle Scout Rank is not the same to everyone. Not everyone put in the same amount of effort. They all should have met the same requirements but in the end what did you personally learn? Some scouts learn and grow in leadership others it was just a thing they did.

As an 11 year old scout I was almost immediately introduced to conflict resolution, setting and achieving goals, leading groups in small tasks. Looking back most of the lessons didn't really take root until years later when I got a real job. Then I had a group of concepts that some of my peers did not and I was able to take the early lessons and build on them more quickly.

Quickly?

When you look at the direct benefit over the course of your lifetime I agree the benefit of things like Eagle Scout of Honor Society are minimal, but I think that's missing the indirect benefits.

Speaking personally, I firmly believe that being an Eagle Scout and HS Honor Society student helped me get into a good college.

I frequently discussed being an Eagle Scout (and scouting in general, which I was deeply involved) during engineering internship interviews and the interview for my first job out of college. I do believe this contributed to starting off my career strongly.

Now about a decade removed from college I don't bring these topics up, but I do still feel the positive contributions they had on my trajectory. Not even to mention the benefits they had on my soft skills.

When multimedia was a huge thing in the late '90s and early '00s, you had a lot of small businesses with tight groups of graphic designers, illustrators, developers (full stack web + Flash & Director), and animators. Usually one of the creatives was in charge of hiring. It was totally obviously not a pro, and in many cases they'd make fun of it outright, or politely advise to take it off.

Well, sure. I was a quiz bowl captain, president of the national honor society, and placed yearly at the state science fair and I didn't list those on a professional resume either.

It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout. I completed all requirements including the community project aside from the board review before I turned 13.

Our scoutmaster suddenly quit on us to attain his MS in engineering (his employer surprised him by funding his education) right after I attained the final required merit badge and none of the adults wanted to take over, so it would have required me to go to another troop in the area: one was full of bullies, and one with a gigantic asshole of a scoutmaster. I decided to go fishing instead.

> It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout. I completed all requirements including the community project aside from the board review before I turned 13.

It really varies from troop to troop. Ours is old-school, by the book, multiple leadership positions required for half-year terms. No one got an Eagle who was under 15 and the projects are very involved with construction or logistics. Tearing down and rebuilding a long wooden fence at a women's shelter, constructing display cabinets at a nature center, working with a local charity to collect hundreds of food boxes. Someone built a real footbridge over a stream, which not only required decent carpentry skills but also driving rebar through 8x8 posts into the stony bank with sledgehammers. I got poison ivy twice while clearing brush to make a nature trail and rebuild a garden at a local temple.

These projects are often the first time many youths have ever picked up a power tool or project managed anything.

The bureaucracy associated with the service project and application was stunning.

This was also our troop. You couldn't make Life Scout before you were 15 thanks to the leadership requirements, and that meant that the earliest you could get Eagle was sometime at age 16. The vast majority of them got it just before they turned 18. The projects were intended to be ambitious and demanded that the Scout do the bulk of the planning and dealing with the bureaucracy.

Imagine my surprise when our troop went to SeaBase and ran into a bunch of other troops where everyone got Eagle at age 14.

That's the way it is for our troop. Most of the kids aren't able to get Eagle before they are HS juniors and are 16 or 17. A few just made it in before turning 18.

The bureaucracy is a mistake. I know why Scouting does it - BSA organizational culture, abuses in the past, trying to apply standards across local troops - but a lot of it falls on troop volunteers to and parents to nag scouts to death and fix the inevitable problems that crop up. It's not right.

that's me and my friend: we both made eagle scout at 17, and the ceremony for me was after I turned 18.

My first troop was very by the book, and the last eagle scout in the troop was the scoutmasters son, maybe 5 years before I joined. That troop disbanded, and I finished my award at another troop were it was a bit easier, but still a lot of work.

For me, earning Eagle scout required me to stay active in scouting through age 17, and do one (or maybe 2) extra weeks at summer camp to earn enough merit badges. Once I was older (16/17) and in my second troop, I already had the leadership requirements, so I just went to meetings and help out with the kids that were much younger than me while I planned my project.

Likewise. I was 15 when I finished and it was a monumental amount of work. The troop you're in matters a great deal.

I am an Eagle Scout. I would never put it on my resume, and I roll my eyes when I see a resume with it on there. Ignoring the always present "it was harder back then" (fwiw, in my day average ages started to plunge from 15/16/17 to 13/14/15), my point still stands.

I can see it being okay as a first job out of college or similar. I got my Eagle at 17, and I could imagine someone with no real work experience thinking that's something to help pad the books. But once one hits 30, 40, 50, beyond there's no reason having done an Eagle project should be cited as a major accomplishment in their life. At least not from the perspective of seeking employment. I'm 100% in favor of people feeling proud about what they did, the whole point of that project was to have done right by people.

Probably. I think I lucked out because my service project was clearing and installing seating and paths in a new, small park from land donated by a family who inherited it and didn't want to deal with the taxes because there were technically about 30 owners.

> It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout.

The actual requirements aren't that demanding for reasonably-intelligent kids. As in so many areas of life, one's work ethic and persistence matter a lot because of the time-in-grade and position-of-responsibility requirements for each of the upper ranks, namely Star, Life, and Eagle, and those requirements must be completed for each rank in series, not in parallel.

> I completed all requirements including the community project aside from the board review before I turned 13.

I was an assistant Scoutmaster, and then the troop committee chair, in my son's troop, which we think is the largest in the U.S. (some 250 boys and around 50 registered adult leaders during my time). The troop is known as an "Eagle factory," but the Scouts have to put in the work. Hardly any of them make it to Eagle before about age 15 or 16 because they also do sports and other activities and eventually get distracted by the scent of gasoline and perfume (as the saying used to be in the days of all-male Scouting). Not a few Eagle Scouts, including my own son, complete their final requirement, a Scoutmaster conference, with just a couple of hours to go before they age out at 12:00:00 a.m. at the start of their 18th birthdays.

https://www.boyscouttrail.com/boy-scouts/eagle-scouts.asp

Life for life?

This made me laugh. Many a scout has been 1 merit badge away.

As a Scoutmaster for 7 years I introduced the axe and other subjects to over 200 11 year-old boys without a single injury other than 2 semi-minor burns.

I, OTOH, suffered an ascending aortic dissection that terminates in my left iliac. I survived (obviously), but it did stop me from e.g. Philmont afterwords.

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