After a Decade, Boy Scouts Get New, Updated Handbook

By Mark Walsh

The Boy Scout motto is "Be prepared," and that apparently includes adapting to life in the late 1990s.

In the first new edition of The Boy Scout Handbook in a decade, members of the youth organization get advice on Internet safety and expanded guidance on sexual responsibility, alongside traditional information on tying knots and starting a campfire without matches.

"We have met the needs of 21st-century kids," said David E. Setzer, the vice chairman of the National Boy Scout Committee, an advisory panel that oversaw the new edition. "Kids wanted information that dealt with the...