Related material on Subject from this board

[skeptic]

My interest was simply peeked by the stats on which religions were most heavily represented. Granted, in our country, Christianity is the number one; but the other religious groups are fully represented, it appears, world wide.

 

Really does not matter. Most units are pretty flexible in this regard, even though a few would say otherwise. We generally only hear from a very small percentage of people in regard to these subjects. And far too often, the ones from whom we hear are skewed in one direction or another and tend to display obvious inflexibility and bias; and they also seem to be overly zealous in their approach.

 

JMO of course.

[frank10]

SSScout: you can find the info at http://scout.org/en/around_the_world/countries/national_scout_organisations/some_statistics

 

But as I stated above, the data for the US only covers the BSA.

[ScoutLass]

Any clue how the numbers are calculated for the BSA? I poked around but didn't find anything. I'm wondering about accuracy. For example, our pack's CO is a Methodist church, but there is only one Methodist in our group of boys. The pack is about half and half, with half Christian and the other half from non-Christian faiths. If numbers are figured based on the CO, the numbers are way off (though I'm sure Christian membership is still the highest percentage in the US) Not trying to split hairs, I'm just genuinely curious about this.

[acco40]

When Nixon visited "Red" China back in the day (1974?) there were lots of news snippets about what life/society was like in that country. Lots of uniformed Chinese children were shown marching - and the public reaction was about the "Godless, centralized, communist state" emphasizing the "state" over the "family."

 

I recall a really interesting counterpoint that was shown too. It was a similar type snippet made by the same USA news organization that portrayed American society. They showed bunch of Cub Scouts marching in a parade carrying flags. Really the same images as the Chinese video but since it was not foreign to us, we took away a much different connotation.

 

Don't forget, most WOS organizations do not have a religious litmus test like the BSA.

 

In totalitarian states, they want to be the disseminators of values, not an organization that they don't control. Therefore, they may have something "like" Scouting but state run (Hitler youth?).(This message has been edited by acco40)

[Mr. Boyce]

I don't care so much about the religion stuff here, but my interest is piqued by seeing so many Asian/Oriental nations having large scouting programs. . . when one initially believes such nations might be poorer, or their peoples wouldn't be able to afford scouting.

 

And in these countries, is the public much more certain about the value of educating youth along moral lines, and find this in scouting, as opposed to other nations that don't consider moral development an issue?

[sherminator505]

"...my interest is piqued by seeing so many Asian/Oriental nations having large scouting programs. . . when one initially believes such nations might be poorer, or their peoples wouldn't be able to afford scouting."

 

Values are not hard to afford (they're free). Neither is the game of Scouting as it was meant to be played (that's cheap). Now it is hard to imagine people in these countries being able to afford the heavily marketed and merchandised Scouting that we do here in the States today (that's nuts!).(This message has been edited by sherminator505)

[NJCubScouter]

Yes Sherm, I suspect that in the Cambodian Scouting program, they probably don't sent out catalogs with $100 Eagle Scout paperweights and other such items.