EarlVanDorn

jtswestark, He's going to Chief Logan's Reservation near Chillicothe, in Vinton County, with his old Scout troop. He was in the Maysville, Ky., troop which used to be in the Simon Kenton Council. They moved Maysville into the Blue Grass Council just over a year ago, but the troop prefers Chief Logan to Camp McKee. My understanding is that it has an unstructured program, so any Scout can start work on any merit badge at any time. A good friend of mine is one of the adults going, so I'll follow his lead. My son had said he wanted to do both swimming and lifesaving, but I think that is too much, and so I told him to take swimming and first aid. If his best friend from up there is taking a third badge, he probably will, too.

Well, as the OP, I think summer camp is a great place to earn merit badges. Obviously there needs to be more than that going on. My son just returned from a week and I know he earned three merit badges. One of these was rifle shooting, which requires a certified instructor. Another was Environmental Science, which was a 10-hour course. I took this at camp 35 years ago. The third was Citizenship in the World (he still has a couple of requirements left on this). He's going to another camp up in Ohio in just over a week. It's structured a little differently, but he is going to take swimming and first aid and perhaps a third course. Both of these lend themselves to group instruction, in my opinion. I think encouraging the kids to work on the badges at camp is a good thing, and I think generally enough time is spent with the kids on the courses that are taught. It's the quickie workshops that bother me.

I should make clear that they do not work on merit badges during Scout meetings. And, in fact, all of the emails for the merit badge workshops come from the grandfather who has been organizing them. It's really a tremendous oppourtunity, I'm just irritating that in my opinion not enough time is being spent on some of the badges. The troop has not been a perfect fit for my son. He really doesn't enjoy the meetings. At his former troop, where he was only a member for a few months (but got to go to Scout camp), they always had a football type play time before the meetings. The current troop just "sits around." The point of all this is that he hasn't felt the need to take every merit badge, and has only been semi-active in his troop. He enjoyed himself at Scout camp this year, so I think he may get more enjoyment out of his troop next year as a result. We will see.

Well, I agree that a minimum time limit could be frittered away, but I've seen no evidence that the kids are not working diligently while they are working on their merit badges, or that the adults aren't teaching them. It's just that in my opinion they are not spending enough time on it. I think these workshops must be fairly common, and if the requirement is set that Scouts must spend a minimum of say five hours on each and every merit badge, then I believe people will follow that rule. I think they are following the "letter of the law" on the merit badges, but just barely. I just think there needs to be more depth, and that can only come with a bit more time. Back in the 1970s they used to have little bronze belt loop thingies that you could earn in two or three hours. I guess they got rid of those, and we didn't think much of them. It was when there was a big push to make Scouting appeal to urban kids, which we thought ridiculous since so few people live in cities. But maybe these aren't such a bad idea for those who only want to spend a couple of hours working on something.

This is my first post. My son started Scouting and then we moved so he joined a new troop. I had him join a troop that I knew from my time in Scouting had a good reputation (it is really the only troop option). As soon as I got on the email list, I was excited to see they had an aggressive merit badge program. One of the reasons (I think) for this program is that a grandfather has a grandson who he wants to earn every merit badge plus his Eagle scout at the earliest possible age. Yet everyone has been able to benefit from these workshops, and sometimes boys from out of town have driven in to attend at no charge. This grandfather is a fine man, extraordinarily well connected, and he brings in talent for some of these workshops that would otherwise be hard to get. He has done a LOT for Scouting other than just the merit badge program. I certainly appreciate what he is doing. My son has attended only a few of the workshops. He recently attended a canoeing merit badge course that lasted all afternoon, from noon until almost 6 p.m. My feeling is that the objectives of the merit badge were met, even if it was a little rushed, and there were several top-notch instructors on hand to teach the course. I think my son earned the badge. On the other hand, there have been workshops that have lasted a mere 1.5 hours, and I just think this is too short. There are lots of ways to skim the requirements with a group of kids, but I just don't think barely meeting the requirements is what it's all about. I know some on this board have criticized the summer camp programs, but at least these programs provide a minimum of five hours of instruction and sometimes 10. Five hours over five days seems like a good program to me in that it gives the Scout time to think about what is being learned. Sometimes they do a little work outside of the "class." I like the summer camp programs. I'm just the parent of a Scout, nobody else. I understand this is not an isolated phenomenon. Couldn't Scouting require a minimum number of hours to be spent earning merit badges to provide a bit more rigor? Any thoughts?