Merit Badge Days

[webdog]

Seems our local NY council has not participated or have set up any 1 day MB's.When I pressed them about it I was told the Executive comm. decided to do away with them. I heard the usual stock answer."This is what the National wants".I found this a nice way to get some MB that were possible to obtain with pre req's done ahead of time.Can someone share with me how there council handles this matter.

[Eamonn]

Our Council doesn't hold them.

Never has and talking just for myself. - I hope never will.

Ea.

[ajmako]

My council doesn't have merit badge days. We did once, when I was 13 or 14. I went but didn't get anything out of it. The fact is, merit badges are supposed to be individual study, where a Scout and a buddy or parent meet with a mentor and actually learn the subject.

 

When I went to that one merit badge day, just for one merit badge, I never actually met the counselor. I filled out a sheet, sat and listened to him talk for a while, then I had a chance to work on a couple requirements while the counselor was busy signing off the two or three requirements he covered during his speech. There were too many Scouts for him to go through the stuff I'd already done or the stuff I did that day. All he did was hand back the sheet (what the council used as a "partial" at the time) and tell everyone to get our SM's to sign the rest of the requirements. I got more out of a summer camp merit badge class.

[evmori]

We don't do that in my council either. Glad we don't. Usually nothing is learned or earned but Scouts come away with a handful of MB's.

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[jr56]

My council doesn't do it. But, when I was a scout, my council did, and as I remember it was a positive experience. There was a lot of outside work involved, the merit badge were not given away. It was a series of 3 Saturday mornings.

[mschwartz]

Our council has "Merit Badge University". Two Saturdays in April, this year three weeks apart (most years four weeks apart). Boys can sign up for three merit badges (with limited registration for everything so the counselors are not overwhelmed). They meet for an hour each session, do some things, get a list of "homework" to do by the next session. Some of the homework can be emailed in ahead of time (for instance, for the Computer merit badge); some has to be brought in (models of a nuclear reactor for the Nuclear Science badge). They do more work at the second meeting and either complete the merit badge or get a partial and have to finish up on their own. No Eagle-required badges are presented at these sessions, but it's been a good way for the younger scouts especially to get a few merit badges done in a reasonably controlled fashion.

[emb021]

The two councils I work with have them. One calls their event "SAW" (Scout Advancement Weekend), and is now one of the biggest events in the council. The other calls theirs Merit Badge University. A variety of merit badges are 'taught'. There are just certain requirements that can not be handled, so its made clear that certain things need to be done before hand, or the boys will be leaving with partials.

 

Many chapters of my fratenity run 'Merit Badge Universities' on their college campuses. They usually focus on more 'academic' type merit badges (chemistry, nuclear science, computers, space exploration, aviation, etc) that can take advantage of the resources (professors, labs, etc) that are available to them.

 

Scouting Magazine ran articles on this sorts of events.

 

Utah National Parks' Merit Badge Pow Wow:

http://www.scoutingmagazine.org/issues/0409/a-blst.html

 

APO Chapter at UT-Austin's Merit Badge University:

http://www.scoutingmagazine.org/issues/0409/a-grtt.html

 

 

[epalmer84]

The Moose lodge in Covington, VA has a merit badge weekend every April. It is run quite well. They have several merit badges that are not easy to get counselors- Pulp and Paper (paper mill nearby), Railroading, (the lodge is by the river- in Virginia that means there is a railroad), Chemistry (paper mill again). There are several standard badges- Communications and the like. All in all, it is no worse than summer camp- they can do one or two badges in a day.

 

It has it issues- the Scout is supposed to do the legwork of getting a blue card (done with Troopmaster now), finding a counselor (pick from a list) and building a relationship with the counselor.

 

Ed

[Beavah]

Yah, no MB days in our council. Like Eamonn, I hope things stay that way.

 

To quote the actual BSA policy excerpted in ACP&P:

 

To the fullest extent possible, the merit badge counseling relationship is a counselor-Scout arrangement in which the boy is not only judged on his performance of the requirements, but receives maximum benefit from the knowledge, skill, character, and personal interest of his counselor.

 

Just hard to live up to that even in well-planned MB Days, so too often they short the boys of the real, full experience. We don't want 'em just to get a patch, after all, we want 'em to get personally introduced to something interesting by a genuine mentor.

 

The policy goes on to say that group instruction is OK in cases where 'special facilities or expert personnel make that most practical.' So epalmer's examples of doin' Pulp and Paper or Railroading are good examples - cases where some group instruction makes sense because you can corral the paper mill manager into giving an afternoon with a tour of the facility. Some of the APO badges offered at college chem labs are like that, too.

 

Da problem is that while group instruction is allowed in such cases, "this group experience should be followed by attention to each individual candidate's projects and his ability to fulfill all requirements." Which goes back to the first bit about how "to the fullest extent possible" MB counseling is a personal mentoring relationship.

 

So it's just difficult to do a MB day well, eh, and provide that core ingredient of personal mentoring. It should only offer badges where you get experts or special facilities, or badges where you are really short on counselors. And then yeh have to plan it in some way where even after you do the group bit, you live up to the expectation that there's a period of personal mentoring and individual attention.

 

I've seen very few done well. Those usually limit boys to 1-2 badges, have a first and second session like mschwartz describes, and provide contacts for boys to finish up with over the following month(s).

 

[How 'bout that, an impassioned defense of BSA policy by da old Beavah. Difference is this one is a real policy, not just a quote from support materials.]

 

Beavah

[Lisabob]

The more experience I have with these MB Days, the less I like them. Our district allows a local APO group to do one of these every year. Problem is, this is a fundraiser for APO and until recently, the local APO chapter had no scouts or scouters involved. So they had a weak understanding of, or commitment to, the program. Results were predictably bad.

 

This year the student in charge is active with scouting and that went a long way toward improving the quality - as did some serious limits put in place by our DAC ('bout time!). Class sizes were 10-20 instead of 100-200 and boys could only work on 2-3 MBs, most of which were designed to produce partials. And personally, I made very sure that my contact info was available for any scouts who wanted to follow up on MBs for which I'm registered. So things were better and our scouts actually really liked some of the sessions.

 

But in my opinion, MB Days should not include the Eagle-required badges at all. These can't be done justice in a classroom setting, especially in a one-day format. They should be as hands on as possible and they require a huge amount of preparation to do them well. Groups who are organizing them "just" for fundraising probably shouldn't be involved at all.

 

On the other hand- recently our district held a HAM radio day where boys could work on a MB. This was very targeted and I like that idea better than these blanket "come and earn a fistfull of badges" types of deals.

[LongHaul]

 

First let me say most Merit Badge Days Ive participated in or have witnessed, when considered as a whole, have been poorly run. They have amounted to just what he who wishes not to be named  was referring to when he said >> We don't want 'em just to get a patch, after all, we want 'em to get personally introduced to something interesting by a genuine mentor.

[LongHaul]

 

First let me say most Merit Badge Days Ive participated in or have witnessed, when considered as a whole, have been poorly run. They have amounted to just what he who wishes not to be named  was referring to when he said >> We don't want 'em just to get a patch, after all, we want 'em to get personally introduced to something interesting by a genuine mentor.

[Lisabob]

In thinking about the variety of things I dislike about the MB Days I've seen so far, one of the items on the top of my list is that they seem prone to misuse by SMs. Last month I helped (against my better judgment but that's a long story) with one of these for our council. I am a counselor for communications. Now, this can be a fun and interesting badge to earn and I did my best to make it a lively interactive session rather than a typical classroom experience.

 

But several SMs had signed up boys who had JUST crossed over from cub scouts! Here these kids were, 10 or 11 years old, with no personal desire to be there and a lack of maturity. They seemed like nice kids, sure, but they didn't belong there. They'd have been better off doing finger printing or art or something a little more simple and hands on. Other SMs had registered older boys who were apparently "stuck" on the path to Eagle and who also clearly didn't want to be there.

 

I talked to one of the SMs who did this because "his" guys were extremely disruptive and downright rude (and believe me, it takes a lot for me to get to that point). Actually I was sympathetic to their plight - they'd been signed up for Communications, Citizenship in the World, and Citizenship in the Nation, all by the SM without their interest or really, consent. What a boring Saturday for a 10 year old brand new scout!

 

The SM opined that this was a good opportunity to get these Eagle-required MBs "out of the way" early in their scouting careers.

 

We can and should fault poor planning and poor execution when these MB Days are not well done, which seems to be much of the time. But unless we also start holding SMs' feet to the fire w/ regard to how the MB Days are used, there are still going to be some bad experiences out there.

[GernBlansten]

Our council has Merit Badge Universities. Each district holds their own but scouts of other districts are welcome to attend. Usually at a high school or LDS ward. Our unit has a tradition to travel to Hayes Kansas every year to a giant MBU.

 

I don't like them. My son has never attended one. He has earned most of his badges at summer camp. I guess for non-Eagle badges, they are OK. Complaints I hear from scouts and parents are that they are poorly organized or the counselor is lousy. Lost/incomplete records are also an issue.

 

Lowes and Home Depot are now offering MBs at their stores on weekends for plumbing, carpentry, etc. A few of our scouts have taken advantage of it and seem happy with the results.

[Beavah]

Lowes and Home Depot are now offering MBs at their stores on weekends for plumbing, carpentry, etc. A few of our scouts have taken advantage of it and seem happy with the results.

 

Yah, this is the sort of thing I'd like to see more of. The Flight Instructors at our local community airport offer Aviation MB the same kind of way. It's a much better system than the MB days.

 

Beavah

aka Tom Marvolo Riddle

(with a wink and a nod to LongHaul, eh? )