Yes Or No?

[John-in-KC]

Dan,

 

Considering there is a hyperlink to nothing at your History of Scouting thread,

 

It became a uniform for PARLOUR SCOUTS when some idiot who knew nothing of the outdoors chose poly/cotton for the shirt. Doesn't retain warmth, except in summer, and doesn't help wick sweat at all.

 

It became a uniform for PARLOUR SCOUTS when the fit, fabric and finish for the pants won't withstand a single weekend of car camping, let alone a week in the backcountry. There are better designs, better fabrics (the cotton duck and the light cotton duck of Philmont Columbia shorts come to mind), and better finishes for this garment.

 

Supply Corporation can do much better, if they chose.

 

I still have, 40 years later, my youth trousers. I WORE THEM on campouts. The bloody things wore like iron. I outgrew them with height (first, girth came later). I have my Cubbing shirt still ... the heavy all-cotton twill. Even being all cotton, it hangs out its wrinkles and looks sharp on a young 8-10 year old.

 

My thoughts. Obviously we disagree. That's OK. Uniform METHOD is part of Scouting. The current uniform is utterly obsolete.

[Beavah]

Yah, Meech.

 

I get where you're comin' from.

 

But wouldn't scouting be a lot more fun and effective if all your friends weren't turned off by the uniform and other silliness, and therefore joined up? We'd reach more kids, you'd have more friends to do cool things with in the woods.

 

Is the cloth really worth holding on to if it loses you the person to wear it?

 

 

[dan]

As you can see from the picture I wore the old uniform and know the new one, if I was going on a hike, I would prefer to wear/pack/carry the new uniform than the old one, the old one even though it did wear well, it was very heavy cotton, I remember that thing getting wet! It took forever to dry! The new poly cotton blend is lighter and drys faster.

When I was in scouts, the uniform was wore on every outing, campout, when did this change? It seem it was about 1970 if my memory serves me correctly.

I do purchase my uniforms at least one size larger than I need, this seems to help with the wearing out factor.

 

Oh yeah back to the topic!

Some people say that they would support it but just replace it with a troop uniform, does this really support no uniform?

 

I would support the no uniform! Than I could wear my camo tank top, and cut off blue jeans to meetings and campouts, along with black socks and sandals!

[Meechgalanne]

Its not just the uniform that turns off youth, its stereotypes too. Things that ive heard people say are like, Boy scouts are gay, or scoutmasters are pedifiles, or that all we do is sell cookies and stupid things like that

[SWScouter]

But the Buckskin idea seems like something worth looking into.

 

The way people seem to complain about the current uniform, I don't want to imagine the complaints with buckskins. The expense would be more, they're either too hot or too cold, and they're a lot more difficult to clean. Plus, I think we'd have to change from patches to beadwork.

 

SWScouter