Educating New Scouts on Merit Badges

[TAHAWK]

I showed this Youtube video at a Court of Honor in an attempt to teach the parents how merit badges are supposed to be earned.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81t74RXWr-s

 

The Scouts got excited and mothers horrified about a Rat Study merit badge.

 

Good man.

[ItsBrian]

I showed this Youtube video at a Court of Honor in an attempt to teach the parents how merit badges are supposed to be earned.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81t74RXWr-s

 

The Scouts got excited and mothers horrified about a Rat Study merit badge.

I like it! Probably will show them next week.

 

Thanks!

[Back Pack]

I showed this Youtube video at a Court of Honor in an attempt to teach the parents how merit badges are supposed to be earned.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81t74RXWr-s

 

The Scouts got excited and mothers horrified about a Rat Study merit badge.

Love the idea. Step 1 should have been keep parents out. That’s a joke but actually serious.

[Hawkwin]

. . .

Experiential learning is the key: Exciting and meaningful activities are offered, and education happens. Learning comes from doing.

 

This is my major gripe about many and perhaps even most of the merit badges - they don't rely on or even require experiential learning. They appear to require a bunch of research or fill in the blank memorization.

 

When my son was working on First Aid from home, he simply took the worksheet and his tablet and said, "Hey Google, Explain the standard precautions as applied to bloodborne pathogens." He did that with nearly every section that didn't require him to "show" or "demonstrate."

 

I am quite positive he didn't even know what a pathogen was or what made one bloodborne, but he was able to write down the answer Google gave him and this discuss it with his MBC at his last campout.

 

The Merit Badge program is bloated with a bunch of junk geared toward filling in the blanks so that you too can be featured in a national expose about how you completed all 135+ merit badges.

 

 

 

When you design a system with incentives, you can't really blame people for responding to the incentives and the MB process doesn't appear to really incentivize scouts to learn by experiential learning.

[Tampa Turtle]

.......*sigh*.......

[Back Pack]

I had counselors that took the worksheets and graded them. I never used them again. At some point it’s the scout who needs to step up and do what’s difficult. My SM would review a few times a year how a mb should be taught. He went over the action verbs you’d see in requirements and would tell us how to fulfill these. Some counselors would be surprised when guys from our troop would schedule meetings to discuss or show what we’ve learned. If more Scouts and troops did this the counselors might get a clue.

[NJCubScouter]

The Scouts got excited and mothers horrified about a Rat Study merit badge.

 

If the Scouts want a Rat Study merit badge, they can earn the Mammal Study merit badge and choose the rat as the "one nongame mammal" they wish to study in requirement 3©.  There's a merit badge for almost every interest.