Camp in general is like a completely foreign concept to me. I’ve never been to anything that could even be considered close.
Like Why would I join Marching band when I could work stage crew and build sets and avoid pep rallies and such by hanging out on stage. WAYYYYY less discipline. Way more time getting into minor trouble, summers I could spend on the beach or hanging out in Arcades (Wildwood still had those then)
Of course I didn’t like the shore that much in late middleschool, early high school, cause it kept me away from D&D and video games.
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What is this weird land where you get to take band as one of your scheduled class periods? For us there was just “band class” as an elective. If you took it, that meant you were automatically in concert band, and that’s what was practiced in class. It wasn’t mandatory for marching band members either, although 95% were in both.
Out band camp was 5 days in August, 8AM to 9PM, usually as one of the Middle Schools where we’d be the only people there. All summer, and until end of season, we had Monday and Wednesday practices from 6 to 9. We were a top-tier band, and after my freshmen year changed circuits to be in the super-competitive league, as opposed to the lame one we participated in that year.
It definitely had its share of cult culture though. Wasn’t much in the way of punishments for sucking, though it did happen every once in a while. I recall 100 calf raises for the whole band being a common occurrence. Still have those monster calves to prove it.
There were also music theory classes, a full set of choir and drama classes, and so forth. There were probably a good dozen different music class options (some open to all, some requiring auditions).
I… went to a very wealthy public school…
To give you an example. Concert band was just like most high schools. Symphonic band was just the “good” students who cared.
Wind Ensemble? That was audition-only, and we played real symphonic pieces. We did real concerts in halls outside of the school. We performed in competitions. We had guest conductors. A couple times, we had composers guest conduct their works for us.
We played the same music a professional symphony would without alteration (just not as well).
We had many band classes available in high school, but the freshman year concert band was the only real option for people who were not also in marching band. I think even the jazz band was 100% marching band members.
Jazz band was an elective in 9th period (which was itself an optional period: most kids never scheduled anything in 9th and just went home). But, it ended up being 100% marching band kids.
Yeah that is some rich kid school shit right there! I forgot that we did also have Music Theory I and Music Theory II. I took the first one and enjoyed it thoroughly. Also had choir, but I don’t think you got to take drama as an actual class.
The only special audition-only band we had was jazz band, which I was only good enough to make it into my senior year, with not much competition coming up under me. That was a blast.
The marching band at my school was super chill and fun, but we literally only had five people marching. There were about eight people in the entire school band. We still played at football games and even competitions, but just for fun since a five person band can’t even compare to all of the other schools with hundreds of people marching!
Band camp was basically just a mini vacation with classmates.
Well, your school also had a pretty hard core band. My band occasionally went up against yours back in the day (though more frequently after I graduated).
It’s funny to hear how insane some of the other marching bands were given that while we practiced like crazy (one period per day during school, and 2.5-3 hours after school ever day, with up to 6 hours per day on weekends), we didn’t go to quite the same extents that, say, Rym’s band did, and we were still a championship-winning band.
The real culty side of Scouts is their secret society the Order of the Arrow. On one hand, it’s a creepy approximation of creepier grown-up white man in-clubs like the Knights of Columbus, Lions Club, etc., and it’s themed around a horrifically appropriative caricature of Native American spirituality.
On the other hand, it actually seems to be honestly focused around acts of community service which is cool I guess? At least at the lower levels which is as far as I ever made it.
I should note, this is BSA only. Regular Scouts don’t have that sort of thing going on, not even with the actual mini-orgs within the various national movements, ie, Gang Show, Lones, Queen’s Scouts, etc.
For sure the wider Scouting community seems on average pretty far ahead of the BSA in terms of philosophical and social maturity.
Fun facts - the US is one of only 14 remaining national movements that is still Boys only, and one of only two with more than 20k members (The other being Pakistan.) The other countries are Bahrain, Barbados, Botswana, Kuwait, Lesotho, Liberia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Swaziland, and the UAE.
Suddenly I am very interested in the scouting organizations of other countries. I imagine they do not have the Native American appropriation aspect.
I am an Eagle Scout and an Ordeal member of the Order of the Arrow. My experience was that the BSA was just as culty as the adult leaders made it. The dads in our troop recognized that Scouting was a program to teach us leadership as well as outdoor skills, so they provided loose guidance for us while we worked towards our next achievements mostly on our own. They realized very early on that camping trips and such were great excuses to get out of the house and go fishing etc. without too much stress because they taught us all to be self-reliant and responsible.
The trouble was when we got into larger groups with other troops. I think the scouts attracted a lot of military dads who craved being authority figures, so they became leaders to RUN their troops rather than let the kids learn to do it on their own. Literally every experience I had with other troop leaders involved them yelling at the kids and forcing them to do something unfun, presumably to build character.
Order of the Arrow was a little different, because it wasn’t the same as regular scouting, in that you could continue to be a member and participate after you turned 18, when you would normally age out of the regular BSA program. The ordeal itself felt sort of like it was meant to be a fraternity initiation, but based around being out in the woods and surviving on your own while being surrounded by other scouts doing the same thing. But once you were in, it was pretty much just mostly organizing community service programs and such. I suppose it was a little bit like the Freemasons in that regard. I didn’t stay long in that program because the meeting place was far from my house and no one else I knew continued doing it either.
At the time that I became an Eagle Scout, the statistic was that only 2-4% of all scouts became Eagles. With the kind of leaders that most troops had, I am not surprised. One of my friends from a neighboring town left his troop because he hated scouting, but after I talked him into coming to one of our meetings, he joined up with our troop instead and made Eagle just after I did.
It is amazing how my leadership skills and motivation developed thanks to being in scouts, and that was absolutely due in large part to how our leaders recognized the real benefit to scouting and let us achieve on our own. But I think it’s safe to say that the BSA has developed a toxic culture because it leaned too far away from it’s Native American and frontiersman origins and too far towards the military side of it’s heritage. If you can manage to break away from that, then scouting can be hugely beneficial, but that’s not up to the scouts themselves.
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I’m pretty sure the BSA officially announced they’re letting girls in soon. The girl scouts weren’t thrilled.
That seems unusual. After all, they generally tend to be a moderately progressive organization, and as a WAGGS organization, they should already well know that inclusive scouting doesn’t reduce membership rates, and increases member retention.
When my daughter started elementary school I actually looked into alternative to the girl scouts, with activities more in line with actual scouting, not going to the mall and selling cookies. There are some up-and-coming alternative scout organizations out there, but I decided they weren’t well enough established for me to dive in and try starting a local branch.
Send her to summer camp when she is old enough. The sleepaway kind. It will cost many moneys, but you’ll have 8 weeks of ahhhhhh.
My brother went all the way to Eagle. I dropped out after the top of Cub Scouts. I know he had a good time with it, but it seems to depend so much on what the local scene is like.