History
The Venturing program has a long history within the BSA. The program got its start in the 1930s as the "Senior Scout" Division for boys 15 and older. The Senior Scout programs included the Sea Scouts, Air Scouts, Explorer Scouts, Rover Scouts and a few others. Explorer Scouts focused on advanced camping and worked on advancement leading to the Ranger Award. Sea Scouts and Air Scouts were nautical and aviation focused programs, respectively.
In 1949, the Senior Scout Division became the Explorer Division. Sea Scouts became Sea Explorers, Air Scouts became Air Explorers, and Explorer Scouts became just Explorers. The Explorer program became less of an advanced outdoor program, and more a broader program for young men, with the minimum age lowered to 14 years old. Explorers got a new advancement program leading to the Silver Award.
In 1959, Explorer advancement was dropped. In 1964, the Air Explorer program was eliminated, and the Sea Explorer program had changes made. The program was further changed to be more appealing to older youth, with career exploration becoming a bigger part of the program.
In 1969, the BSA allowed young women ages 14–20 to join special-interest Explorer posts, which caused many posts to be become co-ed. The continuing focus on career exploration was expanded to a major emphasis, and as the years progressed, Exploring focused more on career exploration posts, though outdoor and sports-oriented Posts still existed and thrived as well.
In the early 1980s, posts that primarily consisted of seminars at high school with guest speakers were designated as Career Awareness Explorer posts. This particular facet of Exploring was the fastest growing segment of Exploring and the BSA during the 1980s. In 1991, these posts were realigned into the new Learning for Life subsidiary, and the posts were then designated as High School Career Awareness groups and the youth were no longer considered to be Explorers.
In 1998, the Exploring program was completely reorganized and split into two program categories. All the career-oriented posts were moved to Learning for Life under the name Exploring, while the rest (including outdoor-oriented posts) became the new Venturing program.
Read more about this topic: Venturing (Boy Scouts Of America)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
In Beverly Hills ... they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)