Boy Scouts: More than Just Fun and Games

I believe that Boy Scouts helps build character and certain skills and values that help you in life. Despite being a bit tedious, I believe that boys should join Boy Scouts because it helps create leaders that have the potential to world leaders like President of the United States. Because it leaves you with a foundation that is better than most people.

Through the system of ranks that Boy Scouts implements you gain character. You start off as a scout when you join, which is the lowest rank in the system; you get a book to track, which requirements you have and still need to do in order to go to the next rank. Getting the ranks is like a race, where you start off slow but slowly build up speed to get to the finish line. After you finish all the requirements for Scout, you get the rank of Tenderfoot. Tenderfoot is where you start building character as it is basically the starting line in a race. After Tenderfoot, you earn the rank of Second class, which is the first stretch of the race. Then the next rank is First class, which in the race is a bit farther down the line but not to the finish line yet.

The other three ranks are the most important because that’s you will have a good foundation and character that’s finished when you get the last rank. Star Scout, the rank after First class is when you really start to get involved in helping other people and really start to put the skills you learned to be a leader to the test. One requirement to be a Star Scout is to have a leadership position within the troop for at least four months. During that time, you are put to the test on how well of a leader you can be.

Now after you make Star Scout you still have to go through the Life Scout rank in order to try to get the last rank. Now Life Scout is basically the same as Star scout but with a few differences. One of the differences is that one of the requirements requires you to teach a younger scout one certain skill using the EDGE method. Now the EDGE method means: Explain, Demonstrate, Guide and Enable. Now onto the Final rank there is in Scouting, the Eagle Scout rank. The Eagle Scout rank is the highest rank you can get and if you do manage to get the Eagle Scout rank you get a letter from the President congratulating you on being in the 4% of Boy Scouts who actually become an Eagle Scout. In Scouts we have an Oath in which we follow, the Oath tells you which skills that one should possess. The skills that the Oath say you should have are: being physically strong, mentally awake and morally strait.

To keep myself physically strong means taking good care of my body. Being mentally awake means to learn what you can, and be naturally curious about things, and asking questions about things you learn or if you don’t understand something. The last part of the Oath says to be Morally Straight and what that means is to live your life with honesty, to have clean actions and to keep your language clean, and to be a person with a very strong character.