Scouting, Volume 63, Number 4, September 1975 Page: 18
112 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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MacPHERSON
nthropologists recently revised
their estimates of how long
homo sapiens has been on
earth, and came up with the neat
round figure of three million years. In
the last few thousand of that three mil-
lion years our ancestors have created
and developed many institutions. But
the one institution that came with us at
the beginning, the family, is showing
signs of neglect.
Witness, for example, the rates of di-
vorce, child abuse, child abandonment
and runaways. Some experienced wit-
nesses have suggested that one ele-
ment lacking in our approach to family
life is early training in family attitudes.
A former U.S. assistant secretary for
education, Sidney P. Marland, Jr., is
widely quoted as pointing out: "We in-
sist that plumbers have four or five
years of training before they put
wrench to pipe. Yet, we have no sys-
tem at all for training people for the
most important job of all — being a
parent."
Take Mr. Marland's analogy just
a little further and you face some
awesome truths. A parent, re-
gardless of age — or youth
— and regardless of experi-
ence or lack of it, is em-
powered to do offhand what others
may not do without a license or formal
training. Any parent can punish or con-
fine a child, give or take away food, or
administer medication. By the time the
child begins to spend a small part of
the day with a licensed educator, some
family attitudes have been firmly
planted in his five-year-old psyche.
Because many of us obviously need
training as parents, the U.S. Office of
Education and Child Development es-
tablished'an Education for Parenthood
program. Courses were introduced in
more than two hundred schools
throughout the country. But the spon-
sors also felt that the overall purpose
was so vital that the program had to go
beyond classroom techniques. Seven
agencies with experience in serving
youth were asked to undertake experi-
mental work beyond the in-school pro-
gram. With its rich experience in youth
programs, the Boy Scouts of America
was a natural choice as one of the sev-
en.
At Scouting's national headquarters,
Dr. Ivan Stafford was appointed na-
tional coordinator for Education for
Parenthood. In metropolitan northern
New Jersey, the Bergen Council under-
took the launch- (continued on page 106)
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 63, Number 4, September 1975, periodical, September 1975; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353698/m1/18/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.