Self-Abuse, Idiocy & Other Perils of Boyhood, from the 1908 Scouting Handbook

[shereads]

Scout's Honor, these are true nuggets of advice from the original 1908 manual, Scouting for Boys by Robert Baden Powell. From Outside Magazine.

"Every boy ought to learn how to shoot and to obey orders, else he is no more good when war breaks out than an old woman, and merely gets killed like a squealing rabbit."

"The result of self-abuse is always that the boy after a time becomes nervous and shy, he gets headaches and probably palpitations of the heart, and if he still carries it too far he very often goes out of his mind and becomes an idiot."

If a man's hat is "worn very much on one side, he is a swaggerer; if on the back of his head, he is bad at paying his debts; if worn straight on the top, he is probably honest but very dull."

"Bees are quite a model community, for they respect their queen and kill their unemployed."

 

[oggbashan]

Scouting for Boys was very much of its time. Similar things and worse can be found in many books of that era.

The influence of 'Scouting for Boys' is that it encouraged boys to act responsibily and sensibly, to become involved in their community and to THINK. Radical ideas for the time.

Criticising something written in a hurry nearly one hundred years ago is easy. At least Baden-Powell actually mentioned masturbation - shocking!

At the same time Rudyard Kipling was complaining that the average British youth was so unfit that he would be useless when war came. Baden-Powell and Kipling knew it would come soon. When the draft came during the First World War Lord Kitchener wept at the poor physical state of the recruits.

Og

 

[cheerful_deviant]

As a former Scoutmaster and Eagle Scout I suppose I am a little biased on this posting.

While I will be the first to agree that the Boy Scouts is a little backward (read: conservative) in their thinking, but overall, I believe it is still a very good orginization if you ignore a few foolish doctrins. I personally got out when they banned gays from the orginisation because I didn't agree with them. But from what I have heard, most troops are not enforcing that rule so it may be a moot point (almost).

But I learned many things about friendship, leadership an teamwork from the Scouts. I made trips to national Jamborees and met Scouts from all over the world. It also taught me many skills I use even today.

Is the 1908 Scout Manual a little backward? Sure it is. But as Og pointed out, so are many other books from that period. Many from much more recently are just as foolish when we read them today. Ever read anything about the "A-Bomb" from the 50's? "Hide under a desk"... now that's silly.

Just my 2 cents, take it or leave it.

CD

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I have to agree with both of them. Remember in 1908 it was still widely believed that women wouldn't be able to mentally handle the strain of voting. The views on the manliness of the males pale in comparison to that.

 

[Pure]

I think a little research would show that these concerns were still active in scoutland in the 1950s.

 

[shereads]

As a former Scoutmaster and Eagle Scout I suppose I am a little biased on this posting.

While I will be the first to agree that the Boy Scouts is a little backward (read: conservative) in their thinking, but overall, I believe it is still a very good orginization if you ignore a few foolish doctrins. I personally got out when they banned gays from the orginisation because I didn't agree with them. But from what I have heard, most troops are not enforcing that rule so it may be a moot point (almost).

But I learned many things about friendship, leadership an teamwork from the Scouts. I made trips to national Jamborees and met Scouts from all over the world. It also taught me many skills I use even today.

Is the 1908 Scout Manual a little backward? Sure it is. But as Og pointed out, so are many other books from that period. Many from much more recently are just as foolish when we read them today. Ever read anything about the "A-Bomb" from the 50's? "Hide under a desk"... now that's silly.

Just my 2 cents, take it or leave it.

No one said "hide under a desk." They sang a song, "Duck and cover." Which put the idea of nuclear holocaust in a cheerful framework.

I don't doubt that self-abuse leads to idiocy, but what's this business with killing the unemployed?

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

No one said "hide under a desk." They sang a song, "Duck and cover." Which put the idea of nuclear holocaust in a cheerful framework.

I don't doubt that self-abuse leads to idiocy, but what's this business with killing the unemployed?

"Kill the Poor" by Dead Kennedys

 

[Pure]

All this calls to mind the wonderful phrase, concept, and practice (sorry Sher; I know you share the liberals' contempt for Christian manliness )

http://www.infed.org/christianeducation/muscular_christianity.htm
Muscular Christianity

by C. Putney




The notion of Muscular Christianity was an important feature of some key discourses around work with boys and men in the second half of the nineteenth century. Here Clifford Putney explores the origin and use of the term.

Muscular Christianity can be defined as a Christian commitment to health and manliness. Its origins can be traced to the New Testament, which sanctions manly exertion (Mark 11:15) and physical health (1 Cor. 6:19-20). But while muscular Christianity has always been an element in Christianity, it has not always been a major element. The early Church sometimes praised health and manliness, but it was much more concerned with achieving salvation, and it preached that men could achieve salvation without being healthy and husky. This doctrine seemingly squared with the Gospels, and it reigned supreme within the Church for centuries. It did inspire criticism, however, and that criticism was especially fierce in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when droves of Protestant ministers in England and America concluded that men were not truly Christians unless they were muscular Christians.

The phrase "muscular Christianity" probably first appeared in an 1857 English review of Charles Kingsley's novel Two Years Ago (1857). One year later, the same phrase was used to describe Tom Brown's School Days, an 1856 novel about life at Rugby by Kingsley's friend, fellow Englishman Thomas Hughes. Soon the press in general was calling both writers muscular Christians and also applying that label to the genre they inspired: adventure novels replete with high principles and manly Christian heroes.


Hughes and Kingsley were not only novelists; they were also social critics. In their view, asceticism and effeminacy had gravely weakened the Anglican Church. To make that church a suitable handmaiden for British imperialism, Hughes and Kingsley sought to equip it with rugged and manly qualities. They also exported their campaign for more health and manliness in religion to antebellum America, where their ideas failed to catch on immediately due to factors such as Protestant opposition to sports and the popularity of feminine iconography within the mainline Protestant churches.

Putney, C. (2003) 'Muscular Christianity', the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/christianeducation/muscular_christianity.htm. Last updated: February 14, 2004. The article first appeared in ABC-CLIO (2003) Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Encyclopedia.

 

[shereads]

All this calls to mind the wonderful phrase, concept, and practice (sorry Sher; I know you share the liberals' contempt for Christian manliness )

I like all sorts of manliness except the kind that's wasted.

 

[oggbashan]

I don't doubt that self-abuse leads to idiocy, but what's this business with killing the unemployed?

Baden-Powell was being sarcastic. Much of Scouting for Boys includes his humour. He wanted Scouts to develop skills that meant they would never be unemployed. He was initially surprised by the strength of the movement in poorer areas but adjusted to it. He also accepted the need for the Girl Guide movement which was heresy at the time.

In the 1950s the Scouting movement reflected the morality of the time. Liberalisation didn't come until the 1960s and later. The Scouting movement cannot afford to be leading the change of attitude. What it did and does is make boys think for themselves.

I feel a deep sense of gratitude to Scouting. My troop introduced me to ballet, opera and classical music as well as more normal Scouting activities.

Og

 

[neonlyte]

I remember very little of scouting apart from this one episode.

For reasons I cannot recall the scout meeting was held in the physics lab at the school, we may have been learning how to rub two boy scouts together to make fire or some such nonsense.

One lad, ever the wag, took the over flow tube that stands in the lab sink on each row of desks and placed it over his dick. Needless to say, said dick became erect and trapped in the tube, we all earned our First Aid badges that day waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

 

[Guest]

Fuck them boy scouts up their ass!

O-oh... Gone too far, haven't I?

 

[shereads]

The influence of 'Scouting for Boys' is that it encouraged boys to act responsibily and sensibly, to become involved in their community and to THINK. Radical ideas for the time.

I see...And that hat position, which appears to be not exactly straight on top of your head, nor slanted at a radical angle...Was that your idea, or this Mr. Baden-Someone's?

 

[shereads]

One lad, ever the wag, took the over flow tube that stands in the lab sink on each row of desks and placed it over his dick. Needless to say, said dick became erect and trapped in the tube, we all earned our First Aid badges that day waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

There's a story that wants to be a screenplay.

 

[Pure]

Nice analysis of Powell:

http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive B Vol. 11-16.1/Vol. 14.2/14.2Voeltz.htm



Richard A. Voeltz
Reflections on Baden-Powell, the British Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, Racism, Militarism, and Feminism

excerpt

Purity, self-reliance, self-control, comradeship, discipline, play, and love of nature, these are the principles of Baden-Powell's philosophy. Strictly military aims were never at the core of scouting, rather Baden-Powell had bigger fish to fry than conscription or national service. What he really wanted was the creation of the warrior spirit in peacetime, the spirit of the knight or the Samurai, the code of Bushido, and he sincerely thought that world peace, even utopia, a sort of international Never Land without women could be obtained through some premodern warrior spirit. The spirit of James Barrie's Peter Pan permeated early scouting, as Robert MacDonald put it, "...innocent boys led by innocent scoutmasters, boy-men showing the way to a safe and good-natured wilderness." (206).

 

[SummerMorning]

Purity, self-reliance, self-control, comradeship, discipline, play, and love of nature, these are the principles of Baden-Powell's philosophy. Strictly military aims were never at the core of scouting, rather Baden-Powell had bigger fish to fry than conscription or national service. What he really wanted was the creation of the warrior spirit in peacetime, the spirit of the knight or the Samurai, the code of Bushido, and he sincerely thought that world peaceeven utopia, a sort of international Never Land without women could be obtained through some premodern warrior spirit. The spirit of James Barrie's Peter Pan permeated early scouting, as Robert MacDonald put it, "...innocent boys led by innocent scoutmasters, boy-men showing the way to a safe and good-natured wilderness." (206).

Ahh... the warrior for peace. The sad thing about peace is that as soon as you fight for it you kill it. How to reach peace by peaceful means?

*sigh*

 

[Pure]

Was Baden-Powell a racist and anti-semite? [Tim] Jeal [a biographer] makes a strong case that Baden-Powell was no more racist or anti-semitic than a lot of Englishmen of his generation, and using the word "Jap" in an early edition of Girl Guiding might make him politically incorrect today, but hardly offers prove that he was a blatant racist.

More disturbing however, and more difficult to explain away with ease, was a diary entry for 6 October 1939 made after reading Mein Kampf. B-P wanted to know his enemy: "Lay up all day...A wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organization, etc...." (Jeal 550).

 

[dr_mabeuse]

If a man's hat is "worn very much on one side, he is a swaggerer; if on the back of his head, he is bad at paying his debts; if worn straight on the top, he is probably honest but very dull."

Tell me! Tell me then! How the hell am I supposed to wear my hat?! Ccoked rakishly over one eyebrow? That probably means I am a base, disrepectful fellow much given to the snide quip and the low aside. Backwards? So that I look like some substance-addled adolescent fop? Or tucked under my arm so I resmble a furtive, ratlike middle-eastern hashish-eater?

I was in the boyscouts. That's where I learned what a dutch oven is, where you fart under a blanket and then push some guy in there and sit on him till he stops screaming.

I liked the knots a lot. I really did. I studied all of them. They've served me in good stead to this very day, where I always use a square knot on my women and eschew the lowly granny.

---Zoot

 

[oggbashan]

Was Baden-Powell a racist and anti-semite? [Tim] Jeal [a biographer] makes a strong case that Baden-Powell was no more racist or anti-semitic than a lot of Englishmen of his generation, and using the word "Jap" in an early edition of Girl Guiding might make him politically incorrect today, but hardly offers prove that he was a blatant racist.

More disturbing however, and more difficult to explain away with ease, was a diary entry for 6 October 1939 made after reading Mein Kampf. B-P wanted to know his enemy: "Lay up all day...A wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organization, etc...." (Jeal 550).

Did you know that Mein Kampf was in print in the UK in English throughout the war? Contrast that with Hitler's book burning.

And yes, Mein Kampf did have good ideas for the time. Some of those ideas are still valid today BUT not the racist ideology.

If you can, see Leni Reifenstahl's films 'Triumph of the Will' and 'Olympische Spiele'. The first is frightening. Despite the black and white filming and the poor technology it tempts you to join the Nazis even if you are a liberal.

Hitler and Goebbels were masters of the crafts of propaganda and re-education.

Og

 

[Somme]

I like all sorts of manliness except the kind that's wasted.

(...after suffering an acute attack of mirth from this thread....and drying th' tears....)

ahhh....would you care to clarify this, she?

 

[Pure]

Ogg: And yes, Mein Kampf did have good ideas for the time. Some of those ideas are still valid today BUT not the racist ideology.

------

Perhaps you can post a short list of these 'good ideas,' *especially those still valid today.*

 

[cantdog]

Did you know that Mein Kampf was in print in the UK in English throughout the war? Contrast that with Hitler's book burning.

And yes, Mein Kampf did have good ideas for the time. Some of those ideas are still valid today BUT not the racist ideology.

If you can, see Leni Reifenstahl's films 'Triumph of the Will' and 'Olympische Spiele'. The first is frightening. Despite the black and white filming and the poor technology it tempts you to join the Nazis even if you are a liberal.

Hitler and Goebbels were masters of the crafts of propaganda and re-education.

Og

Riefenstahl was a genius. Seeing the Triumph of the Will will clue you in to a lot of the techniques being used right now, on you, by your own government and by the corporations who want to influence your attitudes.
The black art of propaganda has not managed to surpass Riefenstahl yet, in any significant way. And they have CGI effects; they do not need real filmcraft to make the images and sequences they want.

 

[cantdog]

Re: Re: Self-Abuse, Idiocy & Other Perils of Boyhood, from the 1908 Scouting Handbook

Tell me! Tell me then! How the hell am I supposed to wear my hat?! Ccoked rakishly over one eyebrow? That probably means I am a base, disrepectful fellow much given to the snide quip and the low aside. Backwards? So that I look like some substance-addled adolescent fop? Or tucked under my arm so I resmble a furtive, ratlike middle-eastern hashish-eater?.......
---Zoot

Zoot, maybe manly honest fellows eschew hats altogether. Execrate them; objurgate them; anathematize them, even.

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: Self-Abuse, Idiocy & Other Perils of Boyhood, from the 1908 Scouting Handbook

Tell me! Tell me then! How the hell am I supposed to wear my hat?! Ccoked rakishly over one eyebrow? That probably means I am a base, disrepectful fellow much given to the snide quip and the low aside. Backwards? So that I look like some substance-addled adolescent fop? Or tucked under my arm so I resmble a furtive, ratlike middle-eastern hashish-eater?

That last one, I think. I like a furtive man who knows his knots. At least, I think I would like one, provided he wasn't too ratlike and was generous with the hashish.

 

[shereads]

(...after suffering an acute attack of mirth from this thread....and drying th' tears....)

ahhh....would you care to clarify this, she?

I'd like to, honey, but I don't think I can. I'm about to share some hashish with this other gentleman and I expect to be tied up for a while.

That Mr. Hitler was quite the organization specialist, wasn't he? If he hadnt been bent on genocide and world conquest, he might have founded Ikea or The Container Store.