Talk:Boys State and Girls State

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69.120.208.247 (talk • contribs) wrote the following in the article (and misplaced it after external links and categories) I have moved it here:

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Boy's state differs greatly from girl's state because there is a strong military presence at Boy's State. The average day consists of: 530 am wakeup, 600 am physical training. the rest of the day consists of marching everywhere, spending hours in a hot gymnasium mindlessly 'voting' in the mock state government. There is a 'chow hall' visit 3 times per day. A purpose of boys state is to instill certain values in young men, as well as to push some of the boys towards future military service.

I attended Nevada Boys State in 2006 and it was nothing like that. We did no marching (except to get to the various buildings on the UNR campus), there was no physical training aside from an hour of sports each day, and we woke up at 7:30. I'd like to know which state you attended and when, because that certainly isn't a universal experience. --Hemlock Martinis 06:47, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

He may be referring to NY Boy State. If I recall correctly from my Boy State experience (2004), New York is the only state to use Marines as counselors and use military training. It is a pretty dead on description as mentioned and it is true that other states are more laid back in their approach. I think that may be worth mentioning. --Champthom 01:50, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I have a hard time believing that every state conducts Boys State this way. When I went to Kentucky Boys State in 1973, there were mainly military counselors, and we did have some AM physical training. However, I don't remember getting up at 5:30, and we did no marching. Also, all of the buildings where we met at Eastern Kentucky University were air conditioned and comfortable. We had our meeting of the entire group in an auditorium and we ate in the university dining halls. I would agree there may have been some military recruitment going on, but since there were boys that were almost all college bound, it was recruitment for officers training either in college or after. I think the anonymous editor may have a somewhat jaundiced view of the program. This same IP address had previously added a link to Hitler Youth [1] --Rogerd 06:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I attended Florida Boys State back in 1981. I don't agree either with this anonymous 'editor'. I wouldn't describe it as having a heavy 'military' presence. Yes, things were heavily scheduled. We walked a lot around campus, but I wouldn't call it 'marching'. The intention of BS is to learn about government. hence we were organized into partys, counties and cities, and engaged in learning about government and conducting city, county, and state elections for positions. I don't recall any military recruitment. There was a strong 'americanism' element, but consider who is running these events: the American Legion. --Emb021 20:54, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

User:gramby I attended South Dakota Boy's State in 1983 and it was stunningly laid back. I did have to sneak down into the basement stairwells of my dormitory to have occasional cigarette breaks, but overall it was pretty casual. We did have heated debates in the Senate (I was a senator from Hawaii) and I found those to be incredibly enlightening. But to think that all Boy's State assemblies are some type of hard-core military training would be missing the point. More than anything, I learned to bond with my fellow state citizens, and I learned how to disagree with them.

The anon. was quite wrong. It is established nationally, and the programs are pretty consistent are not run in very different manners. Michael 19:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Merging Girls Nation/Boys Nation into this article

User:JianLi had redirected Girls Nation Boys Nation to this page. I have reverted those changes and inserted {{Mergeto|Boys/Girls State|date=November 2009}} into each article. I think it is inappropriate to remove the articles about the national programs from wikipedia. For example, Boys Nation often gets national press attention and is well known for having Bill Clinton as one of its participants and meeting John F. Kennedy while Kennedy was president. --rogerd 22:05, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I don't believe that something should merit its own article just because it gets "national press attention." Arkansas Boys State gets national press attention for sending Bill Clinton to Boys Nation in the first place. Should it get its own Article? -JianLi 22:14, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

That is a specious argument. Probably more people are aware of Boys Nation than they are Boys State. Wikipedia is large enough to have articles on both. If you have an issue with Girls Nation, then fix it, don't remove it. --rogerd 23:17, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

It has been 2 months since this proposal was made, and there have been no comments except for the nominator and me. I am removing the merge requests. --rogerd 05:15, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Famous Alumni

Under Famous Alumni, Mark Wahlberg is listed. I could be mistaken about this, but I am fairly certain that Mark Wahlberg is being mistaken for Mark L. Walberg. I did a quick search for sources, but, unfortunately, only turned up results that had almost the same thing (verbatim) written as this article (i.e., people using this wiki article as a source, rather than this wiki article using an external source). The only thing I found that, somewhat, supports my assumption is this : http://www.michiganlegion.org/boysstate/ . That list clearly states Mark L. Wahlberg (although they spelled his last name wrong... it should actually be Mark L. Walberg) as an alumni. I'm sorry, maybe I'm way off base here, but I just can't imagine that a man who was addicted to cocaine by age 13, committing violent racist crimes at age 15-16, and in a street gang around the same time, could be the same person that we're talking about here attending an American Legion sponsored leadership program... it just doesn't make sense to me. Unfortunately, I can't find any hard evidence that I'm right... but at the same time, I can't find any real hard evidence that I'm wrong either. As I said, my quick search turned up only references that clearly got their information from this article (at worst), or an unverified/undisclosed source (at best). I think that rather than changing the link from Mark Wahlberg to Mark L. Walberg, we should just remove the references altogether until a more verifiable source is determined. Furthermore, that source that is attached to the statement right now has absolutely no mention of either actor.208.214.101.206 (talk) 14:01, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

User:gramby Michelle D. Johnson is listed in the famous alumni section along with information explaining who she is. It would seem to me that if someone is actually famous, an explanation of who they are is unnecessary. I move to strike their name from this section. Perhaps an additional section titled "Successful Alumni" or similar could be created to cover such people.

Successful? That's awkward-sounding. Michael 19:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

In the second paragraph of this section it lists that many governors have gone to boys/girls state, but above it lists two of them, George Pataki and Mike Huckabee. I say that those two are removed from the list since it mentions that other governors have attended. Either that or add all of the governors but that would be a huge hassle that I don't think anyone would actually do.

Criticism

A few left leaning liberals in Austin (big surprise) got their feelers hurt and wanna ruin it for the thousands of others. It seems the only real intolerance and hatred is the intolerance against people who believe in God. Before you call someone else intolerant, take a look in the mirror.

I've rewritten the criticism section to be specific to individual programs, as each program is run independently and not all Boys State programs are militaristic (as evidenced by the comments above, as well). Virtuald (talk) 02:28, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I've taken out the part about Texas and Ohio. The ideas (God, Patriotism, etc.) that are being complained about are the CORE ideas of the experience. It's pointless to make a deal out of these pointless issues. --Jabbottman (talk) 18:42, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I enjoy that many of you right wing extremists took the time out to dismantle the criticisms of the homophobic state of your association. If you can't handle the criticisms than don't lead your association in a way to be criticized. Regardless of the fact that different Boys States lead in different ways, you should be looking at the fact that there are even Boys States leading in a way to be so harshly criticized. Talk about the left leaning liberals having their "feelers" hurt, look at you all, you can't even handle a criticism on this page. Furthermore, the removal of this comment only further proves that you can't handle the harsh criticisms of your citizens. It's not a "pointless issue" when your company is being reported as homophobic and harsh by multiple sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.200.192.144 (talk) 01:04, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Girls' State Nothing Like Boys' State

I understand that Girls' State is advertised as being much like Boys' State, but that it in fact has nothing to do with teaching leadership. In Oregon in the late 1980's at least, I'm told it was more about teaching girls to be "obedient," 1950's style wives and mothers. SkyDot (talk) 20:04, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Errors

The entry indicates that Boys' State was initiated in opposition to a Young Pioneers program sponsored by the Fascist Party. The hyperlinks lead one to Young Pioneers, a youth program in the Soviet Union, and the hyperlink to Fascist Party leads to Italian Fascism. I just can't see an American program being started to offer an alternative to a Communist program in Russia and one started by the Italian Fascist Party. If there was an American Fascist program called "Young Pioneers" then that should be explained, as it is one gets the idea that the Italian Fascists started the Russian Communist youth program and Americans started Boys' State as a reaction. LAWinans (talk) 03:14, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

• I removed the links and re-worded that part of the article. Most of this info was just copied from the Boys' State website. I don't know of any Young Pioneer group in the United States or any group called plainly "The Fascist Party" in the United States. I'll try to find the real story. Vaughnstull (talk) 20:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

• review this article online: http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/americansforhitler.html. Boys State was developed as a counter to the rising youth camps being created by immigrants from Germany in support of the Nazis and Hitler in 1935. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrmaggoo13 (talk • contribs) 05:19, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Outdated material

Is there any update to this estimate?

" ... the American Legion Auxiliary alone is adding 19,000 girls trained in the processes of government to a group that by the end of 2006 will total about 1,103,000."

Partitionista (talk) 10:55, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

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