Boy Scouts of America

The Boys Scouts of America was founded on February 8, 1910. The movement began two years earlier in England, where Sir Robert Baden-Powell founded it. He had been a hero of the South African Boer Wars.

Today the Boy Scouts are the largest voluntary youth group in the world. Its membership exceeds 25 million.

Baden-Powell wrote in a pamphlet "Scouting & Christianity" (1917): "Scouting is nothing less than applied Christianity."

Here is the Scout Oath:

On my honor, I will do my best: To do my duty to God and my

country, and to obey the Scout Law, To help other people at all times. To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally

straight.

Many presidents have praised and addressed the Boy Scouts over the years. President Calvin Coolidge said this to a group of Boy Scouts in 1924:

The three fundamentals of scouthood are reverence for nature ... reverence for law ... and reverence for God. It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Doubters do not achieve. ... No man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is part of an unending plan.

In designing the Scouting program, Baden-Powell drew ideas from the Japanese warrior's bushido code, on educational methods of the African Zulu tribes. on the Victorian "ragged schools" movement, and the educational methods of Montessori.