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年前的8月1号，来自长岛的17岁的童子军阿瑟?埃尔德雷德（Arthur Eldred）成为了晋升到鹰童军（Eagle
Scout）级别的第一人。埃尔德雷德身材高大，性格文静，长着一头浓密的黑发。他加入童子军很大程度上是顺从守寡的母亲的命令，母亲希望这可以帮助他学
会打理生活。然而，正如鹰童军在随后的一个世纪里不断证明的一样，埃尔德雷德让童子军界刮目相看，他是一个独特的新群体的首位成员，这些人会证明他们与传
统上身着短裤的13岁的童子军有很大差异。埃尔德雷德的最初成就是在1912年春天鹰童军这项童子军最高奖励颁布后仅仅半年就完成了达到 鹰童军级别的所有标准。美国童子军（Boy Scouts of America，简称BSA）领导这时还没有制订出鹰童军候选人的最终评审体系，甚至还没着手奖章的设计，他们认为，任何孩子要赢得要求的21枚勋章都得 花上好几年的时间。 在 过去的102年时间里接受过童子军训练的1.15亿男孩子中，有大约200万人成为了鹰童军，比例为2%，近年来这个比例上升到了4%。有的人擅长应对户 外挑战和担任团队领导，或者在这方面表现突出的同时还赢得了海洋学或创业勋章。不过所有人都因所谓的“少年PhD”（the Ph.D. of Boyhood）训练经历而发生了改变。反之，这些鹰童军也出人意料地显著改变了美国的文化面貌。 很多鹰童军后来都建功立业，为国家做出 了突出贡献。过去一个世纪里，鹰童军中涌现出的名人包括众多影视明星、六名荣誉勋章（Medal of Honor）获得者、多位诺贝尔奖得主、小说家、大批宇航员（其中包括多数航天飞机宇航员）、塔斯克基飞行员（Tuskegee airmen）、珍珠港事件后被囚禁的日裔美国人、国会议员、参议员和州长、无数的公司CEO和大学校长、一位美国总统[杰拉德?福特（Gerald Ford）]、以及在月球上行走的第一人[内尔?阿姆斯特朗（Neil Armstrong）]，还有其他一些鹰童军的名气也许没那么大：性学家阿尔弗雷德?金斯利（Alfred Kinsley）、科学学奠基人罗恩?哈伯德（L. Ron Hubbard）以及名誉扫地的华盛顿前市长马里恩?巴里（Marion Barry）。 两 年前的夏天，BSA在华盛顿特区举行百年庆典游行的时候，鹰童军成年官员方队由一名外交官、一名记者、数名军官、一名拆弹专家、数名医生和一名百货公司的 圣诞老人组成。不管你怎么想，美国的鹰童军遍及政界上下，他们中各个种族的人都有（童子军从一开始就实行种族融合的制度），所持信仰与其他美国人一样各不 相同。他们的共同之处是他们选择了创造成就的生活，并在年纪轻轻的时候就承担起领导的角色。 人们常常（错误地）对童子军抱有一些带着鄙夷的成见：热心搀扶小老太太过街的人，秘密的准军事民兵组织，各种极端保守事物的代名词。 然 而，数十年来鹰童军在美国生活和文化中的形象却在提升──印第安纳?琼斯（Indiana Jones）与史蒂芬?斯皮尔伯格（Steven Spielberg）一样是一名鹰童军，威尔?史密斯（Will Smith）在《黑衣人》（Men in Black）中扮演的角色也是一名鹰童军。它近乎于我们已有的优秀青年的标准，这就是为什么很多80多岁的人去世后讣告中罗列其一生的成就时往往也会提到 他是一名鹰童军。 这样的名誉是名符其实的。盖洛普（Gallup）最近受贝勒大学（Baylor University）之托对鹰童军、前童子军和从没参加过童子军的男子做的一项调查发现，美国的鹰童军几乎在他们周围世界的任何方面都付出更多──社区 服务、俱乐部、教堂礼拜、户外消遣以及教育和卫生领域。 鹰童军对美国生活的最大贡献有口皆碑：服务项目，即少年Ph.D的“毕业论文”。从20世纪60年代中期开始，除了要赢得传统的21枚勋章外，所有的鹰童军候选人按要求都必须对一项社区服务项目进行设计、规划、实施和管理。 这些项目多数都是小项目：在公园里安装一条新板凳、给校舍刷油漆、为收容所募集毛毯。但是有些项目目标宏大：恢复湿地、在非洲建一座图书馆或在俄罗斯一家孤儿院建一个操场、建造一个人工岛礁──这些项目需要耗时数千个小时。 读 一份美国小城的报纸，一个月中至少有一次你会读到有关鹰童军服务项目的报道。不过直到最近美国全国鹰童军协会（National Eagle Scout Association）才决定要超越轶事报道，对曾经完成的鹰童军服务项目进行统计，结果总量超过一亿小时的服务令人瞠目结舌。每年鹰童军还会新增 300多万小时的社区服务时间。 凭着那些数据，鹰童军服务项目应该算是历史上发起过的最大的单项青年服务项目，深入到每一个美国社区并发挥了重要作用。 （本文作者是一名资深记者，也是一名鹰童军，其描写鹰童军历史的新作《百分之四》（Four Percent）已由WindRush Publishing出版社出版。） Michael Malone: A Century of Eagle Scouts MICHAEL S. MALONE One hundred years ago on Aug. 1, Arthur Eldred, a 17-year-old Boy Scout from Long Island, became the first person to earn the Eagle Scout rank. Eldred, tall, quiet and with a shock of dark hair, had joined scouting largely at the behest of his widowed mother, who hoped it would give some structure to his life. Yet as Eagle Scouts would continue to do throughout the next century, Eldred caught the scouting world by surprise. He was the first of an extraordinary new cohort of young men who were to prove very different from the classic 13-year-old Boy Scout in short pants. Eldred''s initial accomplishment was to complete the requirements for the rank of Eagle Scout only six months after that supreme award in American scouting was announced in April 1912. The leaders of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), assuming it would take several years for any boy to earn the required 21 merit badges, hadn''t yet devised a final review system for Eagle candidates; they hadn''t even settled on a design for the medal. Unsure how to proceed after Eldred qualified for all the badges, the BSA ordered him to come down to its headquarters in Manhattan and put him through what had to be the most intimidating board of review in scouting history─led by the BSA''s founders themselves. Eldred apparently passed with ease. And then, as an indication of what kind of remarkable person scouting would now have, while awaiting his award that summer Eldred saved two of his fellow Scouts from drowning. Out of the more than 115 million boys who have passed through the Boy Scouts of America in the last 102 years, approximately two million have become Eagle Scouts, a 2% rate that has climbed to about 4% of all scouts in recent years. Some may have excelled in outdoor challenges and troop leadership, or while earning merit badges for oceanography and entrepreneurship. Yet all have been changed by the experience of what has been come to be called ''the Ph.D. of Boyhood.'' And these Eagles in turn have changed the face of American culture in ways both obvious and unexpected. Many went on to notable careers and distinguished service to the country. The list of famous Eagles over the last century includes movie and television stars, six Medal of Honor recipients, Nobel Prize winners, novelists, a number of astronauts (including most Shuttle astronauts), Tuskegee airmen and Japanese-American internees, congressmen, senators and governors, an endless number of corporate CEOs and university presidents, a U.S. president (Gerald Ford), and the first man to walk on the moon (Neil Armstrong). But there are other, perhaps less obvious, Eagles as well: sexologist Alfred Kinsley, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and Washington''s disgraced ex-mayor Marion Barry. Two summers ago, during the BSA centennial parade in Washington, D.C., the adult Eagle contingent of official marchers featured a diplomat, a journalist, military officers, a bomb-demolition expert, doctors and a department-store Santa Claus. Despite what you might think, America''s Eagles are spread across the political spectrum. They include individuals across all races (scouting was officially integrated from the start) who hold beliefs as diverse as other Americans. What they have in common is that they chose a life of achievement and assumed leadership roles at a very young age. Scouting as a whole has regularly (and falsely) suffered the indignities of various stereotypes: the ardent escorts of little old ladies crossing the street, the secret paramilitary militia, the synecdoche of all things reactionary. Yet the image of Eagle Scouts has only risen over the decades in American life and culture─Indiana Jones, like Steven Spielberg, is an Eagle Scout, and so is Will Smith''s character in ''Men in Black.'' It is as close to a gold standard of youth as we have, which is why it is regularly noted in the obituaries of octogenarians alongside a lifetime list of other achievements. And that reputation is deserved. A recent Gallup survey (for Baylor University) of Eagle Scouts, former Boy Scouts and men who never joined scouting found that America''s Eagles are far more engaged with the world around them in almost every way─in community service, club membership, churchgoing, outdoor recreation, and the fields of education and health. Eagle Scouting''s biggest contribution to American life is the one most recognized: the service project, the ''dissertation'' of the boyhood Ph.D. Since the mid-1960s, all Eagle candidates are required, beyond earning the traditional 21 merit badges, to devise, plan, execute and manage a community-service project. Most of these projects are small: a new bench at the park, painting a school building, collecting blankets for a homeless shelter. But some are hugely ambitious: restoring wetlands, building a library in Africa or a playground at a Russian orphanage, creating an artificial reef─and they consume thousands of hours. You cannot read a small-town newspaper in America without running across the story of an Eagle service project at least once a month. But it was only recently that the National Eagle Scout Association decided to look beyond the anecdotal and tally up all of the Eagle service projects ever done. It came to the jaw-dropping total of more than 100 million hours of service. Eagle Scouts are adding more than three million more hours each year. Those numbers likely make the Eagle Scout service project the single greatest youth service initiative in history, and one that has touched every community in America in an important way. Mr. Malone, a veteran journalist and Eagle Scout, is the author of a new history of Eagle Scouting, ''Four Percent'' (WindRush Publishing, 2012). |
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