March 24, 1971
Page 7679
SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 10 – SUBMISSION OF A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION PAYING TRIBUTE TO THE FIRST ANNUAL NATIONAL EXPLORERS PRESIDENTS' CONGRESS
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, on behalf of myself and Senator BAKER, I submit, for appropriate reference a concurrent resolution commemorating the first annual National Explorers Presidents' Congress of the Boy Scouts of America. This Congress will take place in Washington from June 2 to June 6 and is expected to bring together between 4,000 and 5,000 young people from Explorer posts around the country.
Mr. President, the Boy Scouts' exploring program provides a unique opportunity for more than 350,000 young men and women between the ages of 14 and 21 to gain firsthand knowledge of potential career fields such as law enforcement, local government, small business, and conservation, to name a few. Under the guidance of professionals in these fields, Explorers gain invaluable insights into their own career interests at the same time that they perform useful community services. I ask unanimous consent that the text of an article, "Exploring – A New Path to a Better America," that appeared in the October 1970 issue of Reader's Digest, be printed in the RECORD at this point.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
EXPLORING – A NEW PATH TO A BETTER AMERICA
(By John G. Hubbell)
The armed robber must have wondered what the Los Angeles police force had come to. He had just made a clean getaway with approximately $1,000 from a customer of a branch of the United California Bank when he found himself in the unyielding clutches of three teen-agers in khaki uniforms. Unarmed themselves, they had, with quick, professional efficiency, relieved him of his .32 caliber pistol. Then two held him while the third summoned a squad car.
Later, the captors, Ron E. Miller, Paul Stephan and Wayne King, all 16, explained that they had just come off duty and were walking home, listening to police calls over a transistor radio. They heard of the robbery and suddenly there was the robber, running toward them. They knew they should not try to capture an armed man – but it would have been a shame to let him escape. Anyway, weren't they supposed to be studying all aspects of Los Angeles police work?
The three young heroes and the Los Angeles Police Department are subscribers to a remarkable idea called Exploring. Though developed by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), it has nothing to do with hiking, camping or merit badges. Exploring's aim is to enable young adults, 14 to 21, to find the fields of interest, to "try on" careers under loose but intensely interested expert guidance, while equipping themselves with healthy attitudes about one another, their country and the free-enterprise system.
The movement now involves more than 350,000 young men and women from across the entire American social and economic spectrum, and is expected to number one million by 1976, the 200th birthday of the Republic. BSAs enthusiastic partners in this adventure run the gamut of trades, professions, large and small businesses and industries from coast to coast – from hospitals to space-science companies to law offices. For youngsters with strong notions about their futures, Exploring offers glistening opportunities. Since 1962, for example, more than 3000 young men have explored the law enforcement field under the tutelage of professionals in the Los Angeles Police Department's 17 divisions. They undergo police academy training, are issued L.A.P.D. recruit-type uniforms with Explorer patches, ride in patrol cars, learn police communications and study all phases of crime detection. "We are now beginning to get former Explorers onto the force," says their adviser, Officer Robert Portillo, "and we have 20 student-workers – college men who assume administrative duties." So successful has its Explorer program been that the Los Angeles force has answered requests from some 200 other towns and cities for advice and assistance in organizing similar efforts.
Meanwhile, Explorers in Mesa, Ariz., and Quincy, Ill., are absorbed in a top-to-bottom study of city government, from the functions and operations of the mayor's office to the city engineer's department. In Cambridge, Mass., Explorer firemen are led by professionals through an understanding of the chemistry of fire, the essentials of rescue work, and the operation, maintenance and repair of every kind of firefighting apparatus. In Coronado, Calf., tough U.S. Navy frogmen helped latch onto a group of miscreant teenage surfers, and develop an Explorer post which is fast becoming a source of oceanography and nautical-science experts. The boys also claim responsibility for policing and keeping clean for public enjoyment miles of Southern California beaches.
Even the sky is no limit to Exploring's possibilities. In Redondo Beach, Calif., TRW Corp. sponsors a coeducational group which spent more than two years in the company's laboratories designing and building a satellite. Piggybacked into orbit on a shot from Vandenberg Air Force Base, it will be available as a communications relay station to ham radio operators around the world.
The new Exploring got its real start in 1964. By then, it was apparent to BSA executives that their Explorer Scouting program, a sort of advanced Boy Scouting oriented to the outdoors, was dying for lack of interest. Of 20-odd million American teenage boys, only one in 20 was being attracted to Explorer Scouting. The University of Michigan's renowned Institute for Social Research was commissioned to conduct a nationwide survey of the attitudes and interests of boys 14 through 16. An accurate reading might provide the basis for a more successful approach.
The answers young America gave to the two-year study shocked the Boy Scout organization. They were told bluntly that if they wanted to succeed with teen-agers, they had to junk the existing Explorer Scouting program and start from scratch. That program was kid stuff – and they were no longer kids.
Where did their interests lie? The study showed that some 83 percent spent a good deal of time worrying about how they were to spend the rest of their lives, while 75 percent were already beginning to grapple with the vital decisions they would have to make after high school – about college, military service, careers, even marriage. Contrary to the popular adult notion that teen-agers, who are naturally rebellious, want to be left to themselves, 94 percent wanted adult leadership – but not of the Scoutmaster man-to-boy variety. Rather, they wanted close contact with and advice from men who had reached points in life where the boys thought they might like to go, men who would show them the fundamentals – not lecture, but show – and then step to the sidelines and let them run with the ball.
The study fired the imagination of William H. Spurgeon III, of Newport Beach, Calif., a member of the national Explorer's Committee. Big, handsome, outgoing, Bill Spurgeon had been an active Scout leader all his adult life. He got permission from Boy Scout Headquarters to use some new ideas. One night in 1955, he gathered around his dining-room table a small group of friends who shared his enthusiasm for young people, including Kingery E. Whiteneck, a high-school science department head, and Gilbert Bell, a professional Scout executive. By the small hours of the morning, a plan had been conjured.
From local high schools, Whiteneck recruited 25 lads who claimed an interest in science, and took them to see Jon Myer, a Hughes Aircraft executive. Then the two men prompted a discussion of the aspects of science the boys wanted to explore. Myer promised to provide working scientists who could supply expert advice for any experiments and projects they wanted to try – they could go as far as they wished on their own, but the expertise always would be available.
The boys soon decided to form the world's first Special Interest Explorer Post. They elected officers, agreed to meet in Myer's laboratories for two evening hours every second week, and mapped out a months-long agenda. After some searching, Myer was able to deliver on his promise to provide professional expertise. "It's difficult to get hardworking men interested in taking kids hiking and camping," he says. "But offer them the opportunity to share their professional knowledge with a group of interested teenagers, and it's like shooting them full of adrenalin. You can't stop them!"
Among other things, the post in the next few years built and maintained a smog monitoring station for Orange County, built an elaborate amateur radio station, and a fall-out shelter for the city of Newport Beach. At least seven members of the original post went on to earn doctorates in various sciences.
Meanwhile, Bill Spurgeon evangelized through Orange County, cornering all who would listen. "Every kid you see around here is up for grabs, and you had better be interested in who grabs him," he told them. "That's America's future you are looking at." Then, with a string of successful Exploring prototypes established in the West, Spurgeon, at the urging of Boy Scout National Headquarters and a group of California friends who financed him, took a three-year leave-of- absence from job and family to sell the program nationally.
Traveling all over the country, he left behind him a widening trail of Explorer posts. And soon it was apparent that a single man, even a Spurgeon, could not properly service the surging interest he had sparked. It was time for the national organization to take over. Thus, in 1968, Explorer Scouting, a term and activity which turned off the modern young adult, gave way to the Explorer Division of the Boy Scouts of America. Director John Clearhout assembled a staff of experienced but young, energetic professionals. "We organized a group of 'whiz kids,’" Clearhout explains, "who could take apart the studies that had been made, and the Spurgeon effort, then develop new schemes that would help preserve old values.
An example of this imaginative approach. the past few springs, students in hundreds of high schools have been asked to rate from a list of 100 career fields the three which appealed to them most. Soon, successful men who were known to be good citizens in communities across the country were being told, to their amazement, of the large numbers of young people who were interested in their work. By the beginning of this year, there were some 23,000 Explorer Posts in the United States.
Exploring is happening everywhere, for reasons which should hearten Americans. If it has its way, upcoming generations – the ones we are always prone to despair over – will make tomorrow's America better than ever.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I am proud to salute the first annual National Explorers Presidents' Congress, as well as all the outstanding young people who participate in the exploring program throughout the Nation. I ask that the text of the concurrent resolution appear in the RECORD following my remarks.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The concurrent resolution will be received and appropriately referred.
The concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 10), which reads as follows, was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary:
S. CON. RES. 10
Whereas the Exploring Division of the Boy Scouts of America will hold its first annual National Explorers Presidents' Congress in Washington, District of Columbia, from June 2, 1971, through June 6, 1971, at which time presidents from all national divisional posts will attend and represent local youth organizations and communities on a nationwide level;
Whereas such Congress will provide a living experience in the democratic process in that a national president and twelve regional vice presidents will be elected for one-year terms and thus become members of the Adult National Explorers Committee of the Boy Scouts of America; and
Whereas such Congress will afford Explorers the opportunity to demonstrate publicly their daily avocational and vocational interests, community participation, and youthful concern with today's national issues and problems: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That the Congress of the United States of America
(1) welcomes Explorers of the Boy Scouts of America to their first annual National Explorers Presidents' Congress in the Nation's Capital from June 2, 1971, through June 6, 1971;
(2) urges these Explorers to witness first hand the structure and operations of their Government;
(3) calls upon them to use their Congress as a means of promoting the aims and advancing the aspirations of all young persons of the United States; and
(4) commends the Explorers for their example and for their part in training future leaders for our Nation.