Queen Scout Award

Ok, I am going to offer a couple of controversial statements about the Queen Scout Award, please don’t for one minute think this is my only opinion it is just some thoughts on the Queens Scout award that I have either picked up via various conversations with people or have pondered on a late-night round a campfire.

“The Queen Scout is not valued like other similar awards”
What I mean by that is it seems there has been a resurgence in the domination of the Duke of Edinburgh Award when I did my Queen Scout the DofE Gold was considered as something you could do as training towards your Queen Scout, it now seems like if you get your Gold DofE and go to a couple of Network meeting you can have your Queen Scout.

There also seems to be a huge gap in the promotion of the Queens Scout Award outside of scouting. If you walk into an interview and you say “I completed my Gold DofE” employers recognise this as a mark of a young person making a commitment to service and training and hard work. If you say I have my Queens Scout they look at you with blank faces.

If we look over the water at our American cousins and their Eagle Scout, they know how to use the award. Their universities have Fraternities for Eagle Scouts which will bring you the benefits of the Fraternity system (a bit of an old boys club but can help grease the right wheels); there is also the National Eagle Scouts Association.

The Eagle Award is used when promoting achievements of excellence e.g. it is quoted that 11 of the 12 men to walk on the Moon were Eagle Scouts.
Americans just seem to know how to maximise the benefit of the challenges and learning a Scout puts into achieving the award.

Is this just a case of poor promotion in the UK?  I hope so.

My other comment is
“The Queens Scout is a Youth Award and should not be worn by adults”

This is an interesting one, I do agree that the badge is a youth award and the adult awards are things like the Silver Acorn and Silver Wolf.
In the grand scheme of the Adult in Scouting what does the Queen’s Scout show, it links back to my point above.

If you have two scout leaders and one has their Queen’s Scout and the other does not does it make one better than the other. I doubt it, I have worked with some great leaders who were not involved in scouting until their children joined and I have worked with some who are just about ordinary and who have been in the movement since they were cubs.

Is it just pomposity that Adults want to say I have the highest award in Scouting and I will show it off?  however, if you look you look over there so do those 17-year-olds do you still feel as good about the award?

In the American System when you become an Adult you receive or purchase (if some from America is reading this please correct me if I am wrong) a reef knot (they call it a square knot), similar to the service awards in the UK, that is red white and blue that signifies that you obtained the Eagle Scout as a youth.

I think by doing this you’re not detracting from the award being something gained by young people and yet you are still allowing people to promote their achievements.

I am really in two minds about this, I completed my Queen’s Scout and I have previously sown on my uniform but I have purchased a new shirt and I am considering whether I should sow my Queen Scout on my new shirt.

It was 15 years ago that I completed this award and sometimes I think about that fact I should be promoting what I have done recently e.g. the completion of my woodbadge which I did about 3 years ago or the Management of a Jamboree unit which I did in 2007 maybe those are the things I should be bragging about.

Then again I suppose it is not very scouting to brag about these things or is it??

Yours in Scouting
K

©ChrisMeadows2009