How do you get kicked out of girl scouts in grade 8?
Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at
9:49 pm
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That’s not true in my troop – and in my area. We have christian, jewish, pagan, muslim, and "undecided" faiths represented – and that is the ones I know about!
Some families are conservative, some are liberal, so I find it is best not to talk politics at get-togethers. But the girls find plenty to say, and lots to do with each other.
In our area, the troops have different personalities. Some are more structured, some are more wild. But none of them fit the mold you describe.
The best solution is to find a few like minded adults and get your own troop going, that suits your style.
But I’ve seen your other, almost identical post on this topic – I guess you have your heart set on raising a stink.
Actually, that’s entirely NOT true about Girl Scouts (what’s funny is GS has more detractors who are Christians complaining that GS has "watered down its values" by allowing girls to use the words to represent "god" in their own faith in the GS Promise, by having official policies to accept members of all sexual orientation, etc. It’s these detractors who started the organization American Heritage Girls to get back to what they view as "the good old days" of scouting or whatever.
The thing is, GS is delivered to girls usually by troops – troops led by volunteer leaders with other girls from the community – without a set curriculum that all troops must follow. So there’s a HUGE range of troops out there. I won’t argue that your troop leader and the girls in the troop may be the way you describe, but please don’t attribute that to Girl Scouts of the USA, the national organization, or even the whole GS Council where your troop is located.
Maybe you can find another troop that fits more with your beliefs (I assume at this point you’ve tried with no success to get your views across to your current troop mates), or you can work individually as a Girl Scout.
They really can’t kick you out – the requirement to be a Girl Scout is to accept the GS Promise and Law and pay the registration fee (or get financial aid to cover it). An individual troop may ask you not to return, but that’s not getting kicked out of the organization.
So, if you really want to take a stand, get a copy of the Girl Scouts official positioning statements on things like homosexuality and religion and bring them to the attention of your former troop, work within your Council to promote diversity, etc. Just leaving in a huff is the least effective thing you can do to promote change, it makes it easy for everyone else to write you off as unstable or overemotional. Taking a stand it a lot harder, admittedly. If you’re not up for that, at least just quit, don’t try to trash an organization as a whole because of a single bad troop experience.
And, please, please, don’t confuse the Girl Scouts with the Boy Scouts of America, and entirely separate organization with entirely different requirements for membership.