The Girl Scouts are in the midst of a major rebranding:
With enrollment dropping sharply, the organization is experimenting with a total makeover of the Girl Scout experience.
What's in: books and blogs written in girls' voices on topics such as environmental awareness and engineering; troops led by college students; videoconferencing with scouts in other countries.
What's out: textbook-style lessons on the value of helping others; shunning the Internet; moms as troop leaders for teenagers.
Teaching is out. “Friending” is in. Traditional values, like measurable achievement, are insufficiently inclusive:
The biggest change is last year's debut of Journeys, a pilot curriculum that will mostly replace the system of earning badges on specific topics. Girls still will be able to earn badges if they want, but Journeys rarely mentions them, focusing instead on broader themes, including teamwork and healthy living. Rather than scouts earning a badge for cooking a single nutritious meal, for example, the books emphasize fruits and vegetables whenever food is mentioned.
Young girls will no longer be expected to learn about, and actually get their hands on, nature. Instead, they will be indoctrinated into worshipping the abstract concept of environmentalism:
Many lessons focus on changing the world in measurable, modern ways. Recycling is still an important part of lessons on helping the environment, but some troops also install solar panels and test water quality in rivers.
In Boston last year, fourth- and fifth-grade scouts conducted an energy audit of the city's convention center using sophisticated engineering equipment and then offered recommendations on how to make the building more efficient.
They will still sell cookies. The organization abandoning its values, but milking the brand value those values built. I’ve had my last Thin Mint.