By Mark Hancock for AMERICAN THINKER
When Roger Krone, CEO of Scouting America, said, “Our number one job is to get kids into this program,” he was likely speaking candidly about the pressures facing his organization. Membership has plummeted, finances have been strained, partnerships have faltered, cultural and political crosswinds are real, and government relationships are at a breaking point.
“Getting kids into the program” matters, but if recruitment becomes the highest priority, something deeper suffers, because the primary responsibility of any character-forming institution is not recruitment. It is formation. And formation requires something recruitment alone cannot provide: moral steadiness.
Recent pressure from Washington over diversity initiatives tests the mettle of resolve in Scouting America — change who you are, or risk funding. It’s a similar place to where they found themselves in 2013 when they began a radical departure from their timeless values and membership standards. It is not an enviable place to be an organization known for abandoning convictions.
Scouting America has announced that they have elected to concede to some of the Pentagon’s demands… sort of. They announced they are discontinuing their new DEI-centric merit badge, Citizenship in Society, which was a badge required for Eagle Scouts, while simultaneously reassuring their leaders that nothing is changing and that the content in that badge has been worked into the program elsewhere.
