I think their curriculum is great for maybe 90% of the girls who want a scouting experience.
Having said that, there is no question in my mind that the outdoor aspects of the girl scout curriculum are much weaker than those of boy scouts. I say that as a parent of both a boy scout and a girl scout who is a volunteer leader of both.
My daughter is a fifth grader. Compare the requirements for the girl scout camper badge with those of the webelos camper and castaway badges. It is so absurd that it is a joke. The only one insulting the girl scouts here are the girl scouts nationals who decided that girls could get a camping badge by talking about camping, making trail mix, and singing campfire songs. That's right. They do not even need to camp over night, and if they do it could be in an air conditioned cabin. Boys the same age have to tie several knots, set up their own tents and prepare their own meals. The argument is that nothing prevents the girl scout leaders from having the higher expectations that we have for same age boys, but the reality is those leaders do not have the training, support, or reward/rank structure to do that. I took my girls junior troop on a camp out at caves code and followed the webelos curriculum with them but 99% of troops will not have that experience.
There is a fundamental difference in the structure of the organizations. Most girl scout troops are short lived and started by parents of interested girls and fold when their daughters out grow it. The boy scout packs and troops are charted by organizations and have structure and longevity. The adult training - and I have received both - is world's apart in focus and structure and quality of information.
The problem arises for little sisters. They see what their brothers did and they want to do that fun stuff. Last year I volunteered to teach webelos castaway at cub scout camp (my son is older than this age) do that I could take my then 4th grade daughter. The year before I had taken her to girl scout father-daughter camp. The girl scout district covers a much, much larger geographic range, and there were about 15 people who attended the camp. The cub scout cub and partner camps are spread across three weekends and have 300 campers each weekend. At the webelos class I taught I had three girls in the group, all little sisters who were camping with the families that have a brother. And my son could not go any where near girl scout camp, but there are always a ton of girls at cub scout activities. The girl scout camp would hot allow brothers to come. Which is one of three reasons that I took the juniors to the smoky mountains instead of back to the girl scout camp, so my son could come also. The second was so that they could sleep in tents instead of cabins. The third was so that they could learn the things about fire and tools that sane age boys learned. All my daughter wanted to do at camp outs when she was in third and forth grade was whittle because the boys she went to school with were earning their whittling chips and learning pocket knife safety. The girl scout camp didn't allow the girls to have pocket knives.
By the way, I went to the boy scout office and bought whittling chip cards and awarded to my girl scouts who met the requirements to earn them. Again, there is nothing to stop a girl scout leader from teaching knife safety, but there is no structure, curriculum, requirements or rewards to support it.
So I am not implying that girls are being denied the values of scouting in girl scouts, I am overtly saying that this is absolutely true for some girls that want a scouting experience that is different from the one offered by the girl scouts. It is unfair to tell those girls they have to wait until they are 14 to join the venture crew. There are so many cub scout packs that have been family oriented that have had girls there the whole time, this just gives a path for the girls to be recognized in the same way as the boys. Those three girls in my castaway class that did everything the boys did? They didn't get a patch. Last summer at boy scout camp I saw girls in venture troops doing the same merit badge classes as boys, but at the end they wouldn't be able to get the merit badge even though they met the same requirements. That's just stupid.
So, again, this doesn't change anything about the girl scout curriculum. Girls that want that curriculum can get that curriculum. This allows girls that want a different curriculum to have it.
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