A "Social Frontier": Boy Scouts, Progressive Education, and the Turner Thesis.

The essay discusses historian Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis about the importance of the frontier to American ideals, its significance to the rise of Boy scouting in the U.S., as well as the evolution of Boy Scout character education between 1908 and 1940 reflecting changes in the frontier thesis itself. It explains the concerns of the frontier thesis and its role in the scouting movement. It describes the Boy Scouts' approach in viewing issues in relation to the frontier thesis.