A Culture of Fear

[prairie]

Great post Beavah!!!

Watching too much TV would have a person afraid to get out of bed in the morning, cept if they don't they might get fatal bed sores.

We were the land of the free and the home of the brave, now we may become the land of the nanny state and the timid hiding at home. But not in the kitchen cause thats the most dangerous room in the house!

 

[BrentAllen]

I'll repeat it here in this thread, because I think it warrants repeating.

 

Sense of humour, that is being able to see a funny side to even a dangerous or unpleasant situation, is of the highest value to a man in going through life.

 

I deplore the modern tendency to place "safety first" before all else. A certain amount of risk is necessary to life, a certain amount of taking risks is necessary to the prolongation of life. Scouts have to be prepared to encounter difficulties and dangers in life. We do not, therefore, want to make their training too soft.

 

"Safety first" is too readily adopted as a fetish and as a screen by the more timid and lazily inclined.

[evmori]

But Brent if little Billy learns to tie knots without leather gloves on he might get a rope burn or if he starts that camp stove without a welders suit on he might get burned! Golly! Little Billy might no be safe!

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[Eamonn]

A week or two back I started a thread about "Controlled Risk".

I think that there is a difference between risk and fear.

When I take the Sea Scouts out on the water, I'm aware of the risks, I don't fear them because we have tried to find out what the risks are and are ready to deal with the situation should it arrive. We spend a lot of time on training and learning skills to avoid the risks and a lot of money on making sure we have the safety equipment needed in case something should go wrong. Could something still happen? Yes! But that's a risk I seem willing to take. A risk the parents of the Scouts also seem willing to take.

At the risk of sounding egotistical. I feel very honored and enjoy the trust they place in me! I hope I never abuse or misuse that trust.

Scoutings core values can be found in the Scout Oath and Law. While we have in this forum discussed at great length discipline, rules, regulations and that sort of thing and I don't really want to revisit that discussion!

But with the Oath and Law as my guide I don't find the need for a big book of rules.

We are all at times going to mess up.

Hopefully when we reflect on what we have done, we will see where we didn't go right.

Back when I was a Boy Scout leader one really hard thing to do was to keep a bunch of Scouts busy from that time after supper until bedtime.

Very often "Wide Games" got way out of hand with Scouts getting hurt and fights broke out.

The Scouts who didn't get hurt or didn't get hit thought these games were great fun! I however at times thought I was living "The Lord Of The Flies". Over time we got better at planning these games and were able to avoid most of the hazards.

While some might see the snipe hunt thing as all being good fun? I see it as not being kind and because it is a waste of time falls short of the Scout is thrifty.

The good Lord knows that at times I'm anything but politically correct and at times miss the Scout is kind by a very wide mark.

Still at the end of the day, even when I have done something that isn't very popular with the Scouts or at home with OJ, I like to think that they know whatever I have done is because I care deeply for them, this might be called fear?

But I see more as a matter of trust.

Ea.

 

[Hunt]

I'd like to try to separate three ideas that seem to be mixed up a bit here. One is tolerance of risk, another is what I would call "toughness," and the last one is the place of pranks.

 

As far as risk goes, I agree that many parents have gotten far too risk-averse, and a certain level of risk is inherent in the kind of outdoor activities involved in Scouting. While good Scouting includes understanding and managing risk, it wouldn't be worth much if it avoided all risks. So on this, I agree with most of the posters.

 

With respect to "toughness," I think Scouting does help develop a positive kind of toughness in boys--the kind that comes from enduring and overcoming challenging circumstances, like hiking with a heavy pack, camping out in the cold, trying to get a fire started in the rain, etc. I think it would be a very bad idea to try to take this away. Again, some parents have trouble understanding the value of this.

 

With respect to pranks, I have a different view. I think too much emphasis on pranks teaches a boy not to trust his comrades, and to be always looking over his shoulder to see if somebody is going to put one over on him. While that is a useful skill for many areas of life, I think Scouting should be a setting in which that kind of attitude is not necessary, because a Scout should know that his comrades are trustworthy. I'm not against humor, or kidding around, or even pranks per se--but I am against pranks that fail a simple test--are they consistent with the Scout Law? I see that there's a bigger discussion of this on the Summer Camp board, but I thought it was worth mentioning here, because I wanted to emphasize that opposing snipe hunts is not the same as opposing rock climbing, cold weather camping, etc.