Honor. What is it? What does Honor mean to a Scout?

[walk in the woods]

Well, maybe based on this discussion, I was privileged to witness honor in action this past weekend. A young man in my troop is working on his Eagle project. He is a baseball player at the HS and his project is coordinating the rebuild of the dugouts at the HS baseball field. Saturday was the work day to lay the blocks for the dugouts. He invited the troop and the baseball team. At 7am when the masons were ready to start laying block the troop was there and a venturer from the young man's Jambo Crew was also there (after an hour drive). We laid block for about 2 hours when the baseball team showed up with the coaches. The team and the coaches putzed around the infield for a while doing anything but hauling blocks. We all ate lunch at noon, then the baseball team and coaches dispersed. I had a couple of adults comment on the work ethic of the scouts helping out their fellow scout. Is that honor? It certainly looked the part to me. Not that I'm proud or anything of my boys .

[ScoutingRediscovered]

And yet there is "honor among thieves." Honor is no indicator of good or bad. There is no moral connection to honor. A lot of people would like to think there is, but as organized crime and gangs realize there must become some code of honor to make the group/community work.

I think you are right. In itself, honor is neither "good" or "bad". Honor points toward and drives a person toward the values of whatever group it is in. We associate honor so much with morally right things because in the culture that we are a part of, honor points to the values summarized in the Scout Oath and Law.

[qwazse]

Well, maybe based on this discussion, I was privileged to witness honor in action this past weekend. A young man in my troop is working on his Eagle project. He is a baseball player at the HS and his project is coordinating the rebuild of the dugouts at the HS baseball field. Saturday was the work day to lay the blocks for the dugouts. He invited the troop and the baseball team. At 7am when the masons were ready to start laying block the troop was there and a venturer from the young man's Jambo Crew was also there (after an hour drive). We laid block for about 2 hours when the baseball team showed up with the coaches. The team and the coaches putzed around the infield for a while doing anything but hauling blocks. We all ate lunch at noon, then the baseball team and coaches dispersed. I had a couple of adults comment on the work ethic of the scouts helping out their fellow scout. Is that honor? It certainly looked the part to me. Not that I'm proud or anything of my boys .

Yep. Son #2 was ASPL and he and SPL performed as expected at camp this year. We had an older group of guys, so there weren't too many hiccups. But since thenI have been getting reports from their church and school youth leaders (different schools, different churches) about how hard-working yet nurturing both boys were in various different environments.

 

Now that I think about it, same sort of thing happened with Son #1 (although he was never SPL or PL, he was crew president). Outside of scouting folks would come up to me and say "he gets stuff done."