Into the Real World

Lord Baden-Powell might be appalled, but the square knot of scouting is slipping fast. Reacting to longstanding charges of irrelevance and to dwindling membership rolls (down 515,457 in the past year), the Boy Scouts of America have been seeking a mod image for the electronic age. Some of their innovations were on display over the weekend at Campex-West, a Camporee for 2,425 Scouts at San Francisco's Presidio.

"We're trying to bring Boy Scouts into the real world," explained Campex-West Volunteer Director Martin Michael. Hence a contest like "Scouting the Headlines," in which the boys scanned the San Francisco Examiner for news items about people who have obeyed or disobeyed the tenets of Scout law. In an evening spectacular, a rock band made up of Explorers blasted nature's quiet; a disc jockey was brought in as master of ceremonies. A helicopter bombarded the Scouts with 15,000 fortune cookies containing quiz questions. Possibly the most shocking deviation from tradition was a Magic Forest Electronic Nature Trail event. The old nature walk was replaced by a marked course, along which cassette tape recorders emitted sounds of the wild. Said Campex-West's Michael: "It's about like Disneyland."

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