I'm sure there were still plenty of boys for whom it worked. The BSA that I liked, however, had passed into history, much like how chemistry sets were emasculated at about the same time.
The old German chemistry set, Kosmos' All-Chemist, was basically an incarnation of that book. Kosmos' contemporaneous Electronik-Labor series was also an amazing kit that would provide a kid with the equivalent of an Electronic Engineering degree (absent the math).
Kosmos really made amazing kits for teenagers who were fascinated with science and technology.
I scanned in one of their manuals (with their kind permission):
I had a simple kit that was basically a big board with components on it. The components had springs attached. Then you could stick wires in the springs to connect them. It had a book with schematics and info. Not sure who made it.
One think I thank the BSA for is when I moved to Arizona, I thought it was one ugly lifeless brown desert. One of the merit badges required me to identify many types of flora and fauna to a leader while hiking in the desert.
It really opened my eyes to the beauty of the Arizona desert, which I grew to love very much.
The swimming and lifesaving merit badges also made me confident in the water, which I thank the BSA for giving me the impetus to do.
And, of course, the knots have served me well, and I can make fire with one match. I wish the Scouts had taught a lot more woodcraft. They didn't even teach building an emergency shelter.
> They didn't even teach building an emergency shelter.
This is now a requirement. I don't remember the exact merit badge, but one of them had me and a friend huddled up between two logs surrounded by pine boughs for a summer night somewhere in the sierras.
It was cold, but manageable. What got me was a bug of some sort fell into my ear and I spent the whole night alternating between trying to pick out out with my finger, shaking my head wildly in attempt to make it fall out, or just lying there listening to it scurry back and forth in my ear canal.
When I was a kid the badge was called “wilderness survival”. I took it every summer camp because it was so much fun to be sent off into the woods with a bit of food, matches, knife, and rope.
> Improvise a natural shelter. For the purpose of this demonstration, use techniques that have little negative impact on the environment. Spend a night in your shelter.
Yeah that was the best. I usually found a tree that was bent over dead and laid fallen branches across each side to form the shelter and then cover in leaves.
Kids today have more oversight and less freedom. God forbid you build a rope bridge because someone might fall off it and sue you to oblivion. Even playing unsupervised around the neighborhood is frowned upon and can result on the police showing up.
