BoyandGirlScouts.com – News, Opinion, Advice

admin Says:

4 September 2008 at 2:28 pm.

You’re the only one I’ve been able to get any reassurance from. Why is the GSUSA dribbling out the details on this? What is so difficult to develop? Why can’t we clearly see what the new program will look like? The GSUSA is bungling the PR on this change. I do appreciate your info.

» Girl Scouts National Geographic Diversity Says:

6 November 2008 at 4:23 pm.

[...] big deal. We can give it a swing, but it’s not required for anything. Now rumblings are that it will supplant the old program. All of these program changes come down from the mysterious realm of the national [...]

Jill Says:

14 November 2008 at 2:37 pm.

My co-leader and I have really examined the Daisy Journey Leadership (1st book). With the news Daisy program now two years, they needed something more. The Daisy year was personally one of our favorite years because it was so open ended, we could do whatever we wanted, tie whatever we wanted into learning those laws and understanding the Promise. So we weren’t too thrilled with a more structured program.

Both of us have an education background, so putting fun lesson plans together was something we both enjoyed and missed. However, that’s probably not the case for most Daisy leaders who, 1) were probably not Daisies themselves 2) work outside the home 3) Might not have the time or feel comfortable putting together lessons.

In our opinion, the new Daisy Leadership book will be beneficial to both leaders and girls. There are loads of suggestions for stretching the central theme or law and presented in a manner that will help busy parent leaders to step right in and get their troop going. AND you can extend it to go way longer than 6 weeks.

HOWEVER, this first book, in our opinion, is not suited for Kindergartners. It is much more developmentally appropriate for first graders, and even then, I wouldn’t suggest the girls buy their own books. Instead, we’ve been telling leaders in our area to buy just the leader and girl book for the troop, and work from there.

First, the story is long, which is okay, but it needs to be broken up with more pictures. These girls cannot read, and that’s a long time to be listening to the story and staring at one picture (2 pages of reading for one pic – makes me wonder if GS looked at a lot of books for the K/1st grade level before producing this one).

The girl book is attractive and fun to look at, but not very practical for girls who are at the beginning/emerging readers stage. Plus, the lines for them to write their own thoughts in are way too small. I’m a firm believer in creative spelling at this age group, and encouraging them to write, but the lines are like college rule – 4th graders have a hard time writing in lines that close together.

However, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised with the program, and look forward to seeing the older age groups. We have a multi-age troop, and I think we’re going to start in Jan. ‘09 with our Juniors. We’re asking them to buy books. If they can’t, we’ll purchase them with troop funds, but they cannot write in them and must return them.

Gus B Says:

2 June 2009 at 7:40 pm.

Friday, 29 May 2009 01:46
The Girl Scouts’ new curriculum is rife with eastern mysticism, New Ageism, feminism, moral relativism, and communist and lesbian role models.Girl Scout cookies may still be sugar and spice, but the same can no longer be said of the organization itself. This is owing to a new curriculum adopted by the Scouts called “Journeys” — a fitting name, as it’s a real trip to the dark side. Chelsea Schilling at WorldNetDaily reports on this new curriculum, writing, “When many parents think of Girl Scouts, they imagine young girls in uniform selling Thin Mints and Tagalong cookies – not learning about stone labyrinths, world peace, global warming, yoga, avatars, smudging incense, Zen gardens and feminist, communist and lesbian role models.” Yet this is precisely what Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA) is now pushing.This New Agism on steroids is, not surprisingly, attended by a de-emphasizing of Christianity. As to this, Schilling quotes former 20-year GSUSA member Patti Garibay, who resigned from the organization for this very reason and explained, “. . . mandates were made against Christmas caroling, praying at meetings and singing hymns. I had a true moral dilemma and felt that I could not uphold the GSUSA’s rules and remain a Christian never denying my Lord.”Schilling also illustrates how GSUSA has transitioned from a demoting of Christianity to the exalting of paganism. For example, she writes of a “Journeys” book entitled “Amaze: The Twists and Turns of Getting Along,” in which, “. . . girls from the sixth to the eighth grade will read a quote from Buddha and be encouraged to explore mazes and stone or dirt labyrinths – symbols rooted in pagan mythology and popular within the New Age movement as meditation tools.” Thus, it seems that in the GSUSA’s universe, all religions are equal, but some are more equal than others.Without a doubt, the ostensibly tolerant “Journeys” certainly takes sides, and it’s never the right side. In the GSUSA text “Your Voice Your World: The Power of Advocacy,” Garibay says that “Men are not seen favorably but, rather a force to diminish and avoid,” and women of faith are hardly mentioned. Yet an assortment of communists, lesbians and hard-core feminists (why do I feel like I’m repeating myself?), such as Simone de Beauvoir, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Betty Friedan and Martina Navratilova, are exalted. In other words, to paraphrase Pat Buchanan, the curriculum is reminiscent of the bar scene in Star Wars. This isn’t surprising, though, as WorldNetDaily reports that “. . . roughly one in three of the Girls Scouts’ paid professional staff is lesbian.”Generally speaking, “Journeys” instills girls with a sense of grievance and is designed not to build character, but activists. Worse still is that all this strong ideology is served up with the self-delusion of moral relativism. And I call it self-delusion for good reason. In 1993, the GSUSA decided to make God optional in its program, but does it make protecting the environment and “female empowerment” optional? Leftists may roll their eyes here, but I’m not just being cheeky. The point is that every curriculum takes certain values for granted; every organization has certain explicit dogmas and many more implicit ones. As G.K. Chesterton said, “In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don’t know it.” And the problem with the modern man is not just that he so often has the wrong dogmas; it’s that he often doesn’t even know they are dogmas. This leads to immaturity in debate.What I mean is, modern man is intensely aware of dogmas he doesn’t like just as an oyster cannot ignore the grain of sand in his midst. He then protests against making them the stuff of indoctrination, saying that not everyone agrees that God exists, or whatever the case may be, and that it’s wrong to “impose” values on others. But this settles nothing. It doesn’t yield value neutrality — which exists only in fantasyland — and cuts off at the knees the most important debate we ever could have: that about what our dogmas should be.Thus, modern man still imposes dogmas, only, without the awareness that they actually are dogmas; he is blind to his own biases. Sure, the dogmas may be popular, such as the notion that we all have a duty to reduce carbon emissions. But eugenics and slavery have been popular in various times and places, too. The modern man may be sure his dogmas are correct, such as the idea that feminism is a good thing. But such assurance was shared by communists in 1917, Nazis in 1933 and the Taliban today. Everyone is sure of his dogmas; that’s why they’re called dogmas. But if we’re not even aware of our own biases, correct or incorrect, our lack of self-knowledge is striking indeed.Lastly, even if we played the devout relativist, we’d still have dogma. For the statement “All values are relative” is a dogma. Moreover, even if we were to say that you could view matters as relative or absolute, as your fancy inclines, we would be operating based on the implicit dogma of “Whatever works for you.” And, in any case, the advocacy of relativism certainly involves the corollary that absolutist creeds, such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam, are not the Truth, as they claim.Of course, you could just say with respect to values, “I don’t really know anything; in fact, I don’t even know that there is anything to know,” but then you don’t have a curriculum. You just have a lot of confused looks.Really, the biggest problem with the GSUSA and most of the modern world is not that they may be wrong, for we all can descend into error. It is that they fail to honestly search for what is good, for Truth. And while it may be excusable to be wrong, far less so is the failure to search for what is right.

Author of this article: Selwyn Duke