"Please sir I want some more" -Merit Badges.

[Eamonn]

I love the book Oliver Twist. (OJ? Not so much)

Anyway..

Little Lad crosses over from the Pack in Feb. Or March.

Soon he is off to summer camp.

Summer camp is a busy time for a little fellow.

Most camps offer some type of Pathfinder Program or something that will help the little guy on his way to becoming a First Class Scout. This doesn't leave a lot of time for the more involved Merit Badges. No time for Environmental Science or the hard badges.

So chances are that he will return home with some odds and ends that his Mother will keep until he leaves for college.

One of these odds and ends will be something that with a lot of imagination could pass as a foot stool. The basket has come in handy. It stores all the keys that no one is really sure open what, but are scared if they throw them out? Will one day be found to be important.

The little fellow is happy that he now can have his Mum sew on the Basket MB.

He never had any interest in Basket before the camp and chances are that if he lives to be 101 that he is never going to make another basket.

If while at camp he starts to get on his SM's last nerve. The SM knows that he can send him away to the Finger Printing Merit Badge area. This will give the SM at least an hour of peace and quite.. Little Lad's Mum is not so happy as the new white t-shirt has nasty ink stains that even spray and wash can't remove.

Of course if the little fellow decides in later life to opt for a life of crime, he is one step ahead of the game when it comes to having his finger prints taken.

I've been on the planet for over half a century and it wasn't until I took a job working with criminals that I had to have my finger prints taken. We have a staff of 350 people where I work and two guys are in charge of finger printing. With this in mind I'm not so sure that Finger Printing is such a good career choice? I'm not sure if a Lad of 11 years old is even thinking about a career choice?

But add MB #2 to the sash.

By the end of the summer with good planning and a little luck, chances are that this little fellow will have four maybe even five badges that Mum can get busy sewing.

He now has the Merit Badge Bug.

He scours the Merit Badge list, talks with his pals and soon has come up with a list of all the easy ones.

Fido the family dog does well out of this. He is walked, washed a groomed like never before. Until the MBC signs the card, then Fido is again forgotten about.

The family learns quickly never to leave any lose change around, knowing that any coin will be scarfed up until the Coin collecting MB is added to the sash.

While the little Lad researching his list of merit badges, some are just cast aside. They take too long, they are just too involved. His thinking is that he will get the easy ones done and out of the way first.

Little does he know that when he is 17 and trying to add Eagle Scout to his college application that Personal Fitness and Family life will come back to haunt him.

 

We the adults do seem to forget how a little guy or maybe even an older guy sees Merit Badges.

We can go on about exposing Scouts to new interests, we can at times talk about them learning stuff. But for many younger Scouts it's not the badge or the requirements that count. it's the count of Merit Badges that counts.

I'll bet my last dollar that if Snake Charming was to become a MB that a young Scout could earn in a couple of hours at summer camp and Councils could sell Snake Charming Flutes in the Camp Trading Post, within a couple of years the BSA would have more snake charmers that there are in India.

Eamonn.

 

[prairie]

Guilty, I earned that Basket Weaving MB.

I liked it because I'm good with my hands and wanted to learn how it was done, came in usfull when we did basket making in art class.

No, I did not take it at Summer Camp. it and Stamp Collecting and Farm Mechanics were done at home. Heck thanks to living rural I finished up my Rifle and Shotgun here at home after several years of trying at camp, Archery took two trys as well. Cooking and Horsemanship were done the first year at camp, good fun!

 

Back on topic, Supprise!

Sometimes I think all those partials indicate a boy who just picked something cause he was told to but he really wants to do is just have some fun. The notion of earning one harder MB that isn't offered at home and have some fun as well would be much better than coming home with one easy MB and some partials.

Sadly my old troop also had the notion that Summer camp was wasted in the boy didn't come home with at least two finished MBs, those that earned four got praise.

[Eagle732]

At todays summer camp it seems as if a Scout doesn't come home with 4 or 5 MBs he's been goofing off! Our camp has done a better job of publishing prerequisites which if a Scout comes prepared allows him to complete the more involved MBs. Also more flexible scheduling of MBs at camp allows Scouts who finish one badge early to go for another latter in the week. In one way I think this is good; flexible schedules allow more productive use of the Scouts time at camp. Don't have anything to do this afternoon, go up to the admin building and tell them you want to take Plumbing MB, they'll find a counselor to work with you right then. On the other hand a Scout can earn all the MBs he needs for Eagle in 4 years of camp, maybe a little too easy. Heck we had a boy who volunteered at camp and spent the entire summer there who ended up with a dozen MBs by the end of summer!

[PeteM]

Isn't that one of the things that Baden-Powell hated? Merit badge mills (or as he called it, Tent School).

Let the Scouts have a chance to "goof-off" while at camp. Soon they will be busy with schools and with jobs and these days will be gone forever.

 

Pete

[Hal_Crawford]

At our camp if a new scout follows the program he will come home with Swimming, Mammal Studies and one of the handicraft merit badges (Basketry, Leatherworking or Finger er.. Woodcarving). In addition he will have a number of requirements for T-2-1.

 

There are some that go for the numbers in later years but most seem to be at camp for the fun... even if Mom thinks they were goofing off. I don't see a lot of scouts going for the low-hanging fruit. They usually go for the badges that are Eagle required or ones that are fun. Maybe part of this is because we go to a patrol cooking camp rather than a dining hall/merit badge mill camp (and no, I am not saying that all dining hall camps are merit badge mills). Patrol cooking seems to move the emphasis.

 

They don't go after the low hanging fruit at home either. For years I have told scouts that if they want to take something quick and easy they should do the Computers MB. For years the requirements were way beneath the skill level of most 12 year olds. The hardest part was learning some of the obsolete/historical information in the MB book. Even the re-written requirements are not challenging.

 

It's easy yet few of our scouts have taken it. Maybe they are just too lazy to call a MB councilor but I don't think so. Mainly they aren't interested because they use computers all the time and just don't see the challenge. They would rather learn something new or do something that is required for Eagle.

 

Hal

 

 

[Eagle92]

I remember as a scout that the only time the PL, SPL, or SM got involved in scheduling, was IF a scout didn't qualify for a class, i.e. didn't pass the swim test for Swimming MB and Canoeing Also the only "strongly recommended' MB we were advised to take was First Aid as it was required for First Class (and from my experiences it should eb again, differnt story for a different day). we were also advised to haev a least one free period, to have fun and work on projects as needed.

 

Grant you I took a bunch of Eagle required MBs at summer camp: First Aid, Swimming, Camping (had to have alot of work done in advance), Emergency Preparedness, etc, but I also took a few fun ones: Wilderness Survial, Indian Lore, Pottery, Canoeing etc. But with the exception of the High Adventure program I did one year, I always had a free period to relax and goof off.

 

 

[desertrat77]

Basketry was the last MB I earned at camp, right before I turned 18. My fellow camp staffers thought it was funny.

 

Whether the scout earns the MB or not, he should enjoy the freedom of choosing things that interest him. Even if he never goes near the topic again, at least he has a basic appreciation for what it entails.

 

The Eagle required MBs are important...some are painful but one must press forward with pride...a good preview for adult life!

[nolesrule]

When I went through summer camp, Metalwork, Leatherwork and Basketry merit badges were all offered a la carte. You could buy the raw materials at the trading post to do the handicraft requirements and sit with the available counselors for the rest, or you could just use the tools and do things on your own.

 

It was up to you if you wanted to earn the merit badge or not, but no one stopped you from just making a leather belt, a basket or metal dish on your own time.

 

Sadly, I have no idea what happened to my basket, my leather belt, my leather knife sheath or the embossed copper foil coin. Probably wherever my handbook disappeared to. But I still have the metal dish. My woven seat of the stool for basketry is starting to deteriorate after 20 years, mainly due to the cheap cardboard/paper material used. I still have the rope I made and splices I did for Pioneering merit badge.

[IM_Kathy]

reading this I gotta say I'm even more proud of my son...

 

his first time at summer camp he wanted 1 that he could do completely at camp so he'd have 1 merit badge for court of honor - he did leatherwork because it was something he really wanted to learn about. He also took astronomy that year which was only partial at camp the rest he spent a good couple of months doing at home to complete. He picked it because it was something he wanted to learn more about. That summer he did what our camp called "Eagle Bound" which covered a lot of T-2-1 requirements, but he hated it because he was bored out of his mind and wanted to "do" more than "listen"

 

next one he did swimming (he finally was able to get over his fear of drowning and learned to swim to do this) so while it is considered an easy one he spent months prior to summer camp at the local Y working on his swimming, he took camping which was a partial - he's almost done, and he took cooking because he loves to cook - he isn't finished with it and may never finish it but is almost always his patrol cook on campouts, and he took fishing because he wanted a badge that was more relaxing though he didn't catch a single fish while at camp and he just recently caught his second type of fish at a troop campout (I can't believe the number of blue gill he caught while trying to get that second type)

 

this past year he took enviromental science purely because he knows it's eagle required, he also took weather because it was something he really wanted to learn about (just has 1 more thing to finish but requires a long stretch at home and he's been gone a lot lately), and the final was pioneering because he loves building and knots.

 

I would definetly not call our camp an eagle mill - this past summer the boys get to pick 3 merit badges and 1 activity grouping to do, while the year before they did get to pick 4.

 

so for him he picked only one because he knew it was "easy" all the others were ones he wanted to do or try. He's contimplating climbing next summer - he doesn't have a fear of heights, but he doesn't like them - but he wants to learn how to do it and thinks it might get him to where he can like heights a bit.