cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/24428192
Stolen from Reddit.
The big drop in the 1970's was supposedly due to a change in the program to de-emphasize outdoor activities. The step down in 2019 was the LDS church cutting ties and starting their own program.
If you consider this as a proportion of the population it's an even bigger drop. In 1970 there were about 4.8M scouts in a population of 205M, so about 2.3% of all Americans were in Boy Scouts. Now it's 1M scouts in a population of 341M, so only 0.3% of Americans are in Boy Scouts.
Those all sound like good things to me.
I think they meant worse than that for the BSA. They're allowing way more people to join than ever before, and they're still down in membership.
Your explanation makes a lot of sense actually, because of how they start out.
Good call, I’ve reversed my downvote
Oh, I see what you mean - I read it as OP criticising those progressive moves, but yeah, they might have meant it your way, fair point.
No I meant that BSA does not exist anymore so that chart stops at last year, its now Scouting America. I was being too cheeky. FFS its good news that they opened up to everyone.
Ah. The way you wrote that I was wondering if Catholic trad-dad found his way onto Lemmy somehow.
Lol, def not how anyone would describe me.