Minimum Age for a boy to become a Boy Scout

[SWScouter]

FScouter,

 

That's not quite right. Before the change, a nine year old that finished fifth grade could have joined Boy Scouts whether or not he had earned AOL or was even a Cub Scout.

 

SWScouter

[FScouter]

A better clarification might have been "age 11", and skip all the confusion about ifs, ands, ors, buts, grades, and AoL requirements, which reference Webelos badge requirements.

[NJCubScouter]

Acco: No, there is no "hard age requirement" for Arrow of Light, either "directly" (in the AoL requirements themselves) or "indirectly" (in the joining age for the Webelos program, which is fourth grade (or completion of third grade, I forget the wording) or age 10. In fact I believe there is no "hard age requirement" for any level of Cub Scouts.

 

I think the BSA addressed the "minimum age" issue in the Boy Scout joining requirements rather than the Arrow of Light or Cub Scout joining requirements, because that is where the issue was arising. There had been one or two posts in this forum with examples of boys (or at least one boy) who had qualified to join a troop before his tenth birthday, and maybe a few more about parents who were pushing their sons toward the Arrow of Light with this in mind. As has been pointed out, a child who has "skipped" a grade could finish fifth grade before the age of 10 without the Arrow of Light even coming into play. I suspect that there were enough instances of boys showing up at troops having qualified to join before the age of 10, that it created enough concern among enough people for national to do something about it.

 

I also think that if there was a similar problem at other levels, something would be done about them, too. For example if a number of 4-year-olds were showing up at Tiger programs, with parental certifications that the boys were in the first grade, eventually national would probably do something about it. It probably doesn't happen because the inappropriateness of a 4-year-old in Tigers must be obvious to all parents, while the inappropriateness of a 9-year-old in a Boy Scout troop is obvious only to almost all parents.

 

I don't have any facts to back that up, it's just my guess.

[Lynda J]

According to my information a boy must be 11, or have completed 5th grade, or 10.5 and earned Arrow of Light.

[NJCubScouter]

Lynda, almost. For the boy who qualifies by completing the fifth grade, you need to add that he must be at least 10 years old (which almost all who complete fifth grade would be anyway.) And probably more importantly, for the boy who qualifies by earning the Arrow of Light, the minimum age is 10, not 10.5. There was no minimum age before, that is why the "clarification" was made. I think the 10.5 figure comes from two places, one is that it used to be in the joining requirements, and the other is confusion with the fact that turning 10.5 is one of the two options for qualifying to earn Arrow of Light. The other option is completion of fourth grade plus six months, which in theory could permit any-age boy to earn Arrow of Light (and therefore, until the BSA set the floor at 10, to join a Boy Scout troop.)

 

Among the Arrow of Light group, the difference between 10 and 10.5 is important because, assuming an October 1 school cutoff and a February or March crossover to Boy Scouts, there are some boys who will cross over when they are 10 and 4 or 5 months, even if they have started school at a "normal" age. The youngest possible boy in this group, born on October 1, will not be 10.5 (10 and 6 months) until April 1. With a later school cutoff, the boy will be even younger when crossing over.