In a lengthy response to a fan's question on Facebook, Mike Rowe best known for the “Dirty Jobs” TV series weighed in on the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to include girls among their ranks.
So far his response has been shared more than 15,000 times since it was posted Wednesday.
The post begins with a question from Sharon Freeman:
Rowe begins by discussing his introduction to scouting as a “painfully shy twelve-year-old kid with an annoying stammer and a deep fear of trying anything new” and relates his first meeting, where they played a rough game, suffered some minor bruises and cuts and then learned how to treat those injuries.
He goes on to say that Scouting helped him grow in confidence and gave him a code, and he said much of the value came from being exposed to risk while instilling discipline.
Rowe says when he left Scouting in 1979, there were 5 million active members and today there are 2.3 million. He says with “the recent departure of the Mormon community, that number will soon drop to under two million.”
Rowe argues that too many children grow up without having to confront risk or embrace discipline, but he also acknowledges the instinct to call millennials “snowflakes” is a generalization and that it was the parents of millennials who handed out participation trophies and removed risk from the path of their children.
Rowe says he worries about the Boy Scouts the same way he worries about the Girl Scouts, Future Farmers of America, 4-H or other groups “that try to elevate virtues like hard work, delayed gratification and personal responsibility” because those values are “wildly out of fashion.”
He says he would encourage the Boy Scouts to stand against the safe space movement and offer children the same opportunities Scouting gave him as a child, and he makes it clear to Sharon that, while he isn’t in favor of co-ed Scouting, he does not share her view that girls will destroy Scouting.
The full post from Mike Rowe is embedded below: