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LATEST POSTS
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By Eagle94-A1 · Posted
As others have said, national won't change things because it hurts their bottom line. Heck they encourage. I remember one council in FL was given all kinds of praise in a NAM video on the number of MBs they awarded during COVID. Sadly this is the attitude of too many parents. Summer camp is supposed to be more than MBs. The attitude is why a camp will give Basketry away, when Scouts did 1/2 the requirements. That is why summer camps give away Canoeing to folks who spend 15 minutes on the water every day, and when the Scouts go on a canoe trek with the troop, cannot do basic maneuvers. And I can go on. -
It is interesting that the original question I posed had to do with why the media picked up story that basically represents someone outside of scouting doing a good deed, and treated it as special. Meanwhile we have the Slogan that we in theory expect our youth to consider doing, but we seldom discuss the subject. A while back I stepped in early in the meeting and posed the query to the group, asking them to describe how they may have met that concept of the Slogan. The discussion morphed into a real interactive thing. We talked about a good deed, and what it meant. We talked about how large an effect it might have and whether simply holding a door, for example was a good deed, and that counted. They should not consider themselves a failure in regard to the Slogan if it was not extraordinary. It eventually morphed into also talking about how the Motto interacted with the Slogan, and touched on the Law. The larger question that now comes to me is how often do we bypass these kinds of opportunities? Do we so focus on getting the "plan" for the meeting accomplished that we lose opportunities? Maybe we need to not be so fixated on some things, but instead listen for these opportunities and explore with our youth. I just read a FB piece about how we, as adults and too often educators, neuter the curiosity of our youth for various reasons. It discussed at what age the kids stop asking why, and how it is related to our NOT taking the time to find out if we do not, ourselves, know. How, if we change direction and explore it with them, that it may have a much larger impact on them, but we also open ourselves again to curiosity. The article was really leading up to an encyclopedic book on what are the most common "why or what" questions of young kids. But, while it was come on for the book, it also did open my eyes a bit more, even at my age. We may need to step back a bit and reevaluate our approaches, not just in Scouting, but in general. I am 82, and I just realized that I have actually learned something about the larger world, and also have gotten a different perspective on why we may do what we do. -
I totally get this, I'm even a parent who expects MB at summer camp, though the pressure is on my kids to actually perform. God help them if they come back from camp with a partial; partials trigger the old "What were you doing instead of completing this?!" and subsequent chastising about how much they are applying themselves and how much they would apply themselves if it was their own money. -
By InquisitiveScouter · Posted
I perceive no appetite at the unit, district, council, or national levels to police this. Enforcing any kind of integrity into the process would hamper the money flow of summer camps and merit badge events, and make Jimmy or Jenny less competitive on their college applications. I have had numerous discussions with parents who absolutely expect that, if they pay their $600 camp fee, then their child had better have a multitude of merit badges to show for it. Many parents don't give a hoot about values, ethics, and morals. And we wonder why so many kids do not join Scouting, or if they do, do not stick with it. Once they realize the emperor has no clothes, the ones with a good measure of integrity are tempted to pull their kids from the program. As long as merit badges are available for sale (and I do not mean the pieces of cloth...), then we will have this problem. Pay your fee, get your degree? -
National knows that there is a problem. National has some effort going into recruiting subject matter experts and having national level people train them correctly on the MB process. The issue is at the council and district level, and I believe that is because the MBC training is too brief, has no test, never expires, and far too many people are teaching MB and not even registered as an MBC. National could fix this, I would propose a 3 step solution. S1) Update MBC training, apply a test, training expires every 2 years. S2) Tell councils that they cannot restrict the number of MB an MBC can teach, instead tell councils they can only restrict what is considered qualified to be an MBC. S3) Force every district and council committee to have sitting and meeting MB committees.
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