How Scouting Meets the Seven Needs of Growing Boys

According to Michael Gurian Scouting fulfills seven important needs of growing boys in the following ways:
    1. Goal Setting. The program of merit badges teaches boys how to set goals and work methodically toward accomplishing them and provides an opportunity for achievement and recognition.
    2. A healthy hierarchy. Boys like a hierarchical system, one in which their position is clear to them. Scouting provides that type of emotionally healthy hierarchy.   
    3. Mentoring. Boys hunger for male heroes to emulate. Scouting provides both adult mentoring and healthy peer mentoring.
    4. An experience of nature. For boys, nature is a living organism, and boys need to bond with that natural life. Boy Scout camping takes them out of the cities and into that natural environment.
    5. Spiritual Development. Boys must have a spiritual language within which to understand concepts such as character and moral development. A Scout leader who is a devout person offers, but doesn't push, that spiritual language.     
    6. Character Development. There aren't a lot of places these days that just come right out and say they're about character development. Through Scouting, boys hear the message that Character counts.   
    7. Discipline. The discipline provided by the structure of Scouting helps boys build their own system of self Discipline.

Excerpted from Scouting Magazine May-June 1999 Issue.