science

I think I got a lot out of being a boy scout (not going to go into all of the very valid criticisms of the organization)

I spent a lot of time out in the woods with other kids, making mistakes, getting hurt, patching ourselves back up, making and executing plans, solving problems organizing, teaching and learning from those other kids, with relatively little adult oversight. The adult leaders were there if we needed them, they'd round us up and point us in the right direction when it was called for, but by and large they mostly just kind of told us what needed to be done and sent us on our way.

Part of the underlying philosophy of scouting is boys (or I guess kids now that they allow girls, which I'm fully in support of) teaching and leading other kids.

My circle of friends includes a lot of eagle scouts and guys who didn't quite make eagle but were still very much a part of the program, both from my own troop and from other troops. They are, overall, some of the most well-rounded and competent people I know, the ones who always have some idea what to do in a given situation and can figure out the parts they don't know on the fly.

You can probably quibble over whether we learned to be that way because we were in scouts, or if we gravitated towards scouts because we were already inclined to be that sort of person. I tend to think it's a mix of both, but leaning slightly more towards the former.

I won't say that scouting is necessary the program for everyone, or that all kids necessarily even need some kind of official structured program to develop that kind of resilience, but I do think all kids would probably benefit from some sort of safe environment where they're able to run a little wild, make their own decisions, make mistakes and figure out how to fix them, etc.