Leadership and Social Change: Boy

Leadership and Social Change: Boy Scouts of America

Oddly enough, the element of my adult life that incorporates service to the community is my work with the Boy Scouts of America. I say that this is odd because most people associate the Boy Scouts with boys doing service projects, but it also requires adult volunteer participation. While boys doing service projects is a huge part of the Boy Scouts, the reality is that the Boy Scouts could not function without adult volunteers. Boy Scouts of America can be considered a true community partner because it is one of the nation's largest youth-oriented groups. Boy Scouts works to help boys develop into strong young men. To do so, the Boy Scouts concentrate on developing character. They try to help young boys develop responsibility, promote good citizenship, and try to promote physical fitness. However, the Boy Scouts are involved with the community on multiple levels, because the Scouts interact with the community. On national holidays, some Boy Scout troops sell and place flags at residences and at businesses. To become Eagle Scouts, boys have to finish community service projects. Furthermore, Scouts and troops are involved with the community in different ways throughout the year. Depending on the troop, Boy Scouts might work with Habitat for Humanity, different Earth Day organization, Meals on Wheels, or other community charities to help give back to the community. Boy Scouts also teaches boys respect for the land, by teaching them not only how to camp, but how to interact with nature in way that preserves its use for future generations. Taken as a whole, with its emphasis on giving to the community and preserving the community for future generations, it is clear that the Boy Scouts plays a role in the community.

Because of its greater interaction with the community, the Boy Scouts provides great opportunities, for both boys and adult volunteers, to be servant leaders in the community. Boy Scouts are told to be obedient, and obedience is one of the less-discussed, but critically important aspects of servant leadership. One of the reasons that Boy Scouts provides a good opportunity for servant leaders is because of its emphasis on religion. It would be erroneous to say that Boy Scouts is a Christian organization, because it welcomes boys from all faith backgrounds and is not limited to Christians. However, it is accurate to say that the Boy Scouts is a religious organization. Boy Scouts stresses the importance of God in lives, requiring that Scouts be reverent. Given that servant leadership has been characterized in religious circles and that some of the best examples of servant leadership have a religious context, the fact that the Boy Scouts emphasizes reverence helps explain why it has been so useful in helping develop boys into servant leaders.

As a parent, I have been involved with different volunteer roles in the Boy Scouts. In the past, I have been a den leader of a Tiger Scout troop. I currently have a seven-year-old son who is a Cub Scout. While I am not currently a troop leader, I help out at the weekly events. Furthermore, I volunteer to help out at the different special events that the boys have. Boy Scouts are very focused on the outdoors, and much of my volunteer activity has been in outdoor activities and camping trips. Each outdoor activity offers a different opportunity for adult involvement. First, adults have to set up any of the activities that the boys do. A simple canoeing trip involves planning a location, ensuring that the location is reserved or otherwise usable for the boys, making sure that there are adequate supplies for the children, making sure that the appropriate adults are present, because there are rules about the adult to child ratio, and the presence of a first-aid trained adult at events. Therefore, even when I have simply been acting in the role of a parent-volunteer, this participation has taken a significant amount of time and energy. As a troop leader, the ultimate responsibility for the success of a venture, as well as the safety of the boys, rested with me, so I spent additional time not only setting up events, but ensuring that they would be safe.

I have also volunteered at the Pinewood Derby. To help conduct the Pinewood Derby, I had to take a training course which taught me about the origins and purposes of the derby, how to plan the derby, how to organize the derby, and how to conduct the derby. What is interesting is that the Pinewood Derby, which so many people associate with the Boy Scouts, is very different from many traditional Boy Scout activities because the boys compete with one another. Although the Boy Scouts emphasize the importance of doing one's personal best, the competitive event helps build character by helping boys create something of their own, promote family bonds because boys work with an adult partner (usually a parent) to create the vehicle, and teach sportsmanship as the boys race against one another and cheer on their pack mates through eliminations and victories. I particularly enjoyed working on this project, because so many aspects of adult life are both competitive and cooperative, like the Pinewood Derby, and I felt like it helped prepare boys for that part of life. One of the most difficult things for young people to learn is how to be competitive with grace and without animosity towards the people against whom one is competing. In the increasingly cutthroat atmosphere of children's sports and other youth-based competitions, it seems like very few adults are willing to model friendly competition, instead wishing to teach children that winning at any cost is important.

The values and skills that have initiated and sustained my service have been based in my relationship with my child. While people may be able to connect with their community without children, for me, having a child reinforced the idea that I am part of a greater community. Looking at the Social Change Model, the concept of citizenship refers to "active community participation as a result of a sense of responsibility to the communities in which people live" (Komives & Wagner, 2009). My sense of responsibility began with my responsibility to my child, as I realized that if I wanted him to have the experiences of childhood; I would have to do my part to help provide those experiences. As I became more involved with Boy Scouts, I came to the realization that many children lack parents who are able or willing to devote time to them, and that my obligation to them compelled my continued community service. Rather than allow myself to be resentful that some parents seemed unwilling to shoulder their share of the work involved in the scout troop, I tried to embrace the idea that I was in that troop to help those children, in addition to helping my own child. Because it encouraged me to change my perspective, I believe that my involvement in Boy Scouts has also helped develop my group values of collaboration and common purpose.

I realize that all of our school texts touch on the idea of servant leadership, but I still believe that Robert Greenleaf's description of the servant leader is probably the most concise and helpful description of servant leadership available. Greenleaf stresses how important empathy is to the servant leader. I believe that I have done a very good job developing my empathy. When I first began working with people, I would concentrate on the ideals. As a result, I found myself frustrated when people failed to live up to my expectations for how I thought people should be. I also found that my plans did not work as I had hoped they would, because I was planning for idyllic scenarios, not real life scenarios. The reality is that people are not idyllic, and leaders who wait for ideal conditions or people find themselves without people to lead and without occasions to lead. Rather than wait for the ideal, servant-leaders are expected to accept people as they are and work within the limitations of human imperfection (Greenleaf, 2002). It is in those scenarios that empathy is critical. Moreover, I believe that empathy helps a leader build community, and I feel as if another of my strengths as a servant leader is in my community-building capacity. Part of being empathetic is dealing with the fact that people are not always going to live up to their promises and obligations. Sometimes, this failure to meet an obligation is unintentional; a person experiences a death, loss, sickness, or other emergency that prevents them from meeting the obligation. Understanding those circumstances was always easy for me. However, sometimes the failure to meet an obligation seems to be the result of poor planning on the part of the promisor, resulting in more work for people who have relied upon them to do their part. Learning to be empathetic not only helped me deal with those occasions when they occurred, but also taught me to prepare for the reality that I needed to have backup plans in the event that someone was unable to perform their promised role.

However, while I see that Boy Scouts has helped develop my empathy and my planning ability, I know that I continue to struggle with my ability to frame concepts for a group. Servant leadership is not about asserting power, but about developing rightful authority. Rather than force a group to do the leader's bidding, a servant leader's role is to persuade people to follow the leader's path. However, it is not really the leader's path that he asks people to follow. On the contrary, because a servant leader listens to people, respects all members of the group, and considers short- and long-term consequences, the path that the servant leader proposes should be one that is best for the group. Of course, that path may not seem best to the group because of competing interests, short-term worldview, or the fact that every plan is going to have pluses and minuses for different groups. A servant leader's job is to show the group why a certain plan is the optimum one for a scenario. To do this, a servant leader must be able to adequately explain and define proposed actions to people, along with supporting reasons for those actions. I am not very good at putting my proposed thoughts into words. As a result, in my role as troop leader, I found that, on more than one occasion, our troop made a group decision that may not have been optimal, due to a lack of understanding about all of the possible alternatives. To grow as a leader, I need to be able to not only visualize solutions, but also adequately explain my thoughts to other people in the group.

Looking at my participation as an adult volunteer with the Boy Scouts of America, I have to say that I have very mixed feelings about whether or not I would consider the relationship one of reciprocity. I think that any parent who has been involved in a volunteer organization for children is aware that a minority of the parents do a vast majority of the work. In that respect, there is no reciprocity. However, when I look at the broader picture and consider whether my efforts in service to the community have been beneficial, I have to answer that question affirmatively. I know that my involvement with Boy Scouts has benefitted my child, which, in and of itself, would provide incentive to continue my involvement. However, I also know that all of the children in the pack benefitted when I was the leader and from my continued involvement in outdoor activities and the Pinewood Derby. For example, one boy in our troop had a father who is deployed and a mom with a newborn. She was not able to help with his vehicle, and I stepped in to the adult helper role for that child. I made a meaningful difference to a child in need; to me, nothing could build community more than being there for a child, especially a child whose father is deployed. Not only did I help that child, but I also reinforced his father's notion that he was fighting for a country worthy of his protection. Therefore, on a personal level, I felt reciprocity from my volunteer activities with the troop.

In addition, I believe that the pack has felt reciprocity from the community. Our pack has helped clean park space, package and deliver meals on wheels, and other activities that make it a vital and contributing part of the community. As a result, the pack is treated well by the community. Local grocery stores allow us to sell coupon books in their entry ways, local businesses donate money and/or services to the troop, and different groups call on us for help. The Boy Scouts are well established in our area and receive almost universal support from the community. There are some issues with older Boy Scouts being treated like they are nerds for continued participation in the group, but their treatment from adults in the community and other service groups generally grows more respectful and more into a peer relationship as Boy Scouts age. As a result, I cannot really think of any ways to improve the Boy Scouts interaction with the community. Perhaps this relates to my problems with conceptualization, but I do not really see an area for improvement in our social relationships with other service organizations. The one area where I perceive an injustice is not really a social service issue.

Despite the fact that I feel the Boy Scouts ties to the community are very strong, I would be dishonest if I did not feel that there is some inherent social injustice in the organization. I have heard estimates that 1 in 10 people are homosexual, and the Boy Scouts are vocally prejudiced against gays. The biggest issue is that Boy Scouts of America prohibits gay troop leaders, and, that much of their reason for doing so perpetuates the myth that gay males pose a threat to young boys. Homosexuality and pedophilia are not correlated, and it is disheartening to have a national organization seemingly perpetuate this stereotype. I do understand that many people think this is a way to protect young males from troop leaders who could be predatory; however, my understanding of pedophilia and child molesters is molestation is about power and control, and really has nothing to do with sexuality. In other words, a married, straight male is as likely to molest a child as a gay male. To suggest that gay males do not have valuable lessons to teach boys about becoming community leaders reduces a person to his or her sexuality. I understand that many religions believe that homosexual behavior is a sin, and I have no interest in changing a person's religious beliefs. However, those same religions view extramarital or premarital sex as a sin, think that divorce is a sin, but the Boy Scouts does not forbid divorced fathers or men who have had premarital sex or extramarital sex from being leaders. In fact, from a religious perspective, it would be impossible to find a troop leader that had never sinned, and it bothers me that the Boy Scouts of America take the approach that being homosexual is somehow more of a moral defect than other sins that are defined as equally negative in the holy texts of most religions.

Even more disturbing than the fact that the Boy Scouts refuse to allow gay troop leaders is the fact that the Boy Scouts also excludes young gay males. This seems absolutely ridiculous. Even if I were to take the approach that gay people are somehow morally lacking, how could excluding these boys from a group whose purpose is to build character and moral strength, be the right thing to do for those boys? For many gay teenagers, the depression and ostracization that they experience is so overwhelming that a large number of them contemplate suicide and think that life will never improve. In fact, there is a huge publicity campaign currently aimed at this very population to tell them that life will get better and offer them hope. Excluding them from a group that promotes so many strong and healthy things for young boys seems almost needlessly cruel. Moreover, the fact that they are excluded teaches the straight boys who are in Scouts that it is okay to discriminate against people on the basis of their sexuality. Instead of standing up for a homosexual boy who is being bullied, Scouts may feel like doing so would somehow betray the group morals or values that they are supposed to have as a Scout.

Despite my feelings that the Boy Scouts are perpetuating a social injustice, I have been very reluctant to speak out about my feelings. Furthermore, I have to say that I think I would be reluctant to discuss those feelings now. The fact that the Boy Scout's position towards homosexuals is fairly well publicized means that many parents who are involved in the troop have slightly homophobic attitudes. My child will be attending school with their children for the foreseeable future, and, honestly, I fear that if I speak up about the treatment of gays in the Boy Scouts that I am going to make my son a potential target for bullies. I think that fear helps explain why I think that the Boy Scout's position is so damaging, even to straight boys. While I would like to say that I have developed a way to address that injustice, I simply have not.

While I will discuss the idea of the social change model of leadership, one of the components of the model is that it is value-based. In this society, especially in today's divisive political climate, homophobia is seen as an acceptable family value. I am not suggesting that people should abandon religious beliefs that teach that homosexuality is a sin; however, I am suggesting that people should respect the individual's right to embrace or reject that teaching, just as they respect the individual right to embrace or reject other teachings. After all, premarital and extramarital sex are forbidden in almost every religious tradition, but the Boy Scouts do not prohibit troop leaders with "taboo" heterosexual relationships from leading the troops, or deny continued membership to sexually active straight boys. I simply do not understand the role of intolerance in an organization like the Boy Scouts. The Girl Scouts have taken an approach that all girls are welcome in their organization and permit homosexual troop leaders, as well, without experiencing any negative repercussions. I would like to approach their leadership and talk to them about how they made the decision to embrace all girls, to see if that approach could work for the Boy Scouts.