A fascinating article by the Beeb comparing Baden-Powell’s Scouting advice to modern advice, which is made even more amusing by the comments which wonderfully suggest that old-school Scouting adventures made “real men”. Apparently, teaching kids to jump into icy lakes to retrieve lost loved-ones instead of calling the emergency services, or indeed teaching juniors to fight bears, would solve all societal ills including, but by no means limited to, shootings, stabbings, anti-social behaviour, and the existence of David Beckham. It’s clearly a delusion of my Guardianista liberal-mindedness that the latter isn’t the greatest threat to society of modern times.

Next week: Sending kids down coal mines “separated the men from the boys, and killed off the weak, useless, criminal scroungers who are the scourge of today’s society”.

Thank goodness the modern Scouting Movement isn’t run by these people.

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Sending kids down coal mines “separated the men from the boys, and killed off the weak, useless, criminal scroungers who are the scourge of today’s society”. True! So your point is?

» This comment was received at 20:19 on 01 August 07

The American frontiersman Davie Crockett, legend has it, “killed him a bear when he was only three.”
When I was in Cub Scouts (the junior Boy Scouts) we were told the way to graduate to being a Boy Scout was to “make a Brownie” (junior Girl Scout).
Today the scouts are out of favour in many places because of outdated ideas including trying to bar homosexuals from scouting (Supreme Court prevent that).
Today the in thing is to belong to a street gang and learn how to sel and use dope.
The gangs even have sort of junior gangs for the “little gang bangers”.
They actually do their drive by shootings on a bicycle (except in rural Oklahoma where they use a horse and bow and arrow).
I wasn’t in the scouts long. i just did not fit in. As a youth I was only interested in radio communications and photography.
I made it my life’s work and did not do too badly, but I was considered the equivalent of a “geek” today.
On the other hand, many of my classmates had photos of the famouse sexy female movie stars of the day posted on their walls. So far as I know, none of those fellows ever actually even got close to any of them.
I had pictures of Leica and Rollieflex and Linhoff cameras and Drake and Colins shortwave radios on my walls. I have owned, used and yes, even slept with and caressed, all of the above.
A highlight of my life was when, as a young newspaper photographer I got to take a photo of one of the kids who had tormented me in school as he was being led away by the police to the wagon for the trip to Sing Sing, New York’s maximum security prison at the time. Some of the cops were friends of min, so they let me get really close and say, “Hi,Billy

» This comment was received at 18:35 on 04 August 07

I’m slightly concerned that you’ve owned, slept with, and caressed cameras and shortwave radios. Is that healthy?

» This comment was received at 15:42 on 05 August 07

Simon, Have you ever heard of anyone getting an STD from holding a radio or a camera?
Honestly, I did not do drugs, or alcohol, not even sex (well, not too much, anyway) when I was growing up.
I just wanted to be a newspaper photographer.
My heroes were the photographers on newspapers like the New York Herald Tribune.
I followed their work like most youths followed the baseball and football players.
When I actually got to work at the NYHT and work with those people, it was like if a youth in Denver, Colorado got to play footbal with John Elway.
Very few people get to live their dreams.
I may be a decrepit old man now and perhaps a bit senile, but no one can take away my memories (though I sometimes loose them for a time) and I may not be rich in terms of money. But I had a good life.

» This comment was received at 00:29 on 06 August 07

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