On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth

by Jay Mechling

In a timely contribution to current debates over the psychology of boys and the construction of their social lives, On My Honor explores the folk customs of adolescent males in the Boy Scouts of America during a summer encampment in California's Sierra Nevada. Drawing on more than twenty years of research and extensive visits and interviews with members of the troop, Mechling uncovers the key rituals and play events through which the Boy Scouts shapes boys into men. He describes the campfire songs, initiation rites, games, and activities that are used to mold the Scouts into responsible adults.

The themes of honor and character alternate in this new study as we witness troop leaders offering examples in structure, discipline, and guidance, and teaching scouts the difficult balance between freedom and self-control. What results is a probing look into the inner lives of boys in our culture and their rocky transition into manhood. On My Honor provides a provocative, sometimes shocking glimpse into the sexual awakening and moral development of young men coming to grips with their nascent desires, their innate aggressions, their inclination toward peer pressure and violence, and their social acculturation.

On My Honor ultimately shows how the Boy Scouts of America continues to edify and mentor young men against the backdrop of controversies over freedom of religious expression, homosexuality, and the proposed inclusion of female members. While the organization's bureaucracy has taken an unyielding stance against gay men and atheists, real live Scouts are often more open to plurality than we might assume. In their embrace of tolerance, acceptance, and understanding, troop leaders at the local level have the power to shape boys into emotionally mature men.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Cultural

349 pages, Paperback

First published November 11, 2001

Reviews

[Esther Baar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mechling compellingly argues that traditional events are not always, well, traditional -- identities (as they are created by such organizations/programs as the BSA) are always adapted / negotiated by individuals. in this case, Mechling shows how one Boy Scout Troop brought to live several of the BSA's tenets in the Sierra Nevada mountains during a two-week summer camp. Mechling uses Freudian and feminist psychoanalytical insights to make sense of the boys' problematic/xenophobic/exclusionary behavior, ultimately arguing that there is value in the BS experience.

[Justin Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A somewhat-clunky and Freud-heavy exploration of Scouting and American manhood that -- when it gets away from the excess of its theoretical frame some and lets the boys and their scoutmasters speak for themselves, occasionally backlit and explained by theory -- is worth the read, if not exceptional. The special attention here given to Pete's topology of fuck-ups and the evasive language his Scouts use interested me, but many descriptions of the day-to-day wildlife activities of the camp lacked that sizzle. Especially appreciated the history of scouting and America's apoplectic worry over boys in crisis.

[Scott Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are two books here: Jay Mechling's account of the pseudonymous Troop 49, its customs and traditions and the philosophies of "Pete", the Scoutmaster, and Jay Mechling's symbolic ethnographic study of how everything the Scouts do is driven by latent homoeroticism/overt homophobia and misogyny. Like all good deconstructionist works, it assumes that the meaning of a thing CANNOT be the obvious meaning, but is instead dependent upon how the participants and readers use the thing to create frames of meaning for their underlying psychological issues.

That book isn't so good.

The first one - and parts of the second, where he explains some of the psychology of "Pete's" methods of relating to the boys in the troop, are quite good. The other parts, particularly some of the excursii into legal issues facing the Scouts at the end of the 20th Century (the book was based on research gathered in the 1980s and 1990s) are tedious, long-winded, and so pretentious that they'll make you choke. (At one point Mechling defines "Twinkies", as though no one reading the book could be aware of the family of Hostess snack cakes.)

There's an interesting conflict between the two halves of the book, where the reader can see how Mechling (an Eagle scout) is trying to reconcile his obvious enjoyment of both his past in the Scouts and his experiences as an observer/Assistant Scout Master with his "educated" distaste for many of the things the Scouts stand for.

There are better books about Scouts and Scouting. I would recommend "Scout's Honor" by Peter Applebome over this one.