As a life long "scouter" (so far) I have to say scout badges are pretty hit and miss. It depends on your troop and on the badge whether you learn much on it.
(example; this would be useless in my local scout troop who's focus is generally on water sports [canoing] and hiking/camping - i.e. the physical stuff.
They would probably award it based on little effort (and yes, I did use this "hack" to amass a huge quantity of badges in my time :))
Not that I'm dissing it :) just seems unusual for a Scout badge.
I earned Eagle Scout in 2000, one month shy of turning 18. I agree with your comment 100%. Earning merit badges is akin to preparing for standardized tests; it's simply regurgitating ideas and concepts to fulfill a list of requirements. It was the non-merit badge activities that I gained and learned the most from, where there was less structure involved. Running an Eagle Scout project introduced me to budget constraints, solving problems creatively and managing a team. I don't know much about the Girl Scouts, but if they are similar in spirit to the BSA I'll definitely encourage my daughter to participate.
Without a doubt, Wilderness Survival was my favorite merit badge of all time. I don't think it was Eagle required, but boy was it fun and I learned a ton.
But you're right, having to do my Eagle project taught me the most. Organizing some 150 volunteers on New Years Eve was no small feat, but I felt a great deal of accomplishment when it was done.
Unless of course the merit badge covers a concrete skill: I learned a great deal by completing the Rifle Shooting, First Aid, and Wilderness Survival merit badges.
I agree with your point, though: some are the equivalent of 'read the book, regurgitate the contents on a test'.
That's why it's the capstone. Merit badges are like a mix of exit requirements and gen eds, to give scouts a taste of many things, and ensure basic competency/familiarity with important things. I don't believe it's intended to help you learn a ton through the requirements; rather, to put you into a situation where you can pursue further knowledge.
I love it. I think people involved in boy scouts are more inclined to make their own path and explore entrepreneurship. Many of the leaders involved with my specific troop had interesting backgrounds in business and would have been valuable assets for anybody interested in working toward this badge.
The merit badge sounds like a neat idea, but the BSA exclude gays, atheists and agnostics, and to me, that taints everything else they do (girl scout are much better about this).
Since 1991, openly gay individuals have been officially prohibited from leadership positions in the Boy Scouts of America. A 1991 Position Statement states: “We believe that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts.” The BSA thus "believes that a known or avowed homosexual is not an appropriate role model of the Scout Oath and Law."
As a business decision, if you run an organization with males from 6 to 18 and you have someone who prefers sexual contact with males it might not be a good idea to send all of those people to the woods alone together... without baby oil and Niel Diamond songs.
The Boy Scouts have enough problems with people who don't disclose that they prefer males, hence an 18.5 million dollar lawsuit that the Boy Scouts just lost. Further, imagine trying to get parents to have there kids join a group with a gay leader or that might have a gay leader.
The religion part is very open, for example the Spaghetti Monster religion would qualify so does believing in "Mother Earth" for whatever that means. I was a Den leader for several years for Cub Scouts, an atheist dad and son joined, it wasn't a big deal but I qualified them first by making sure they didn't mind all of the "Duty to God" type sayings.
As an Eagle Scout, I feel pretty strongly against those policies. However, as a practical matter, there is one vital number to keep in mind: 62, the percentage of BSA units sponsored by religious organizations* (as of December 2007, according to Wikipedia). And the largest sponsor (overall, not just among religious groups), by total units and total youth: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I hope the policy will change and indeed firmly believe that it will. But it needs considered in context.
*that's not to say that all 62% would necessarily be alienated by a policy change
Glad to see they've finally updated the merit badge pamphlets--maybe I'm getting up there, but I seem to remember that in the late nineties when I was pretty active, most of the content seemed to be 10-15 years out of date.
I never got this one, but I wish I did (considering I got such gems as coin-collecting and basketry).
I've always thought about starting an organization which was just about entrepreneurship for kids. I went through all the scouting levels, and I think there's a lot of good things in there, I also think there's a lot of cruft left over from when it was a thinly disguised military preparedness course. Salutes, khaki uniforms, ranks, etc : all a bit much for me back then, and I wouldn't put my own kids in it now. Of course it has probably modernised quite a bit but I suspect a lot of it is still the same.
What I'd like to do is keep the good things about scouts : personal responsibility, teamwork, goal setting and acheiving, respect for adults etc and tie it in with an entrepreneurial focus : team building, idea generation, production, marketing, distribution, legal understanding. The idea would be to work on mini-projects a bit like they do on 'the apprentice', with the goal of generating funding for both the club/group/whatever and of returning funds to charity. There would also be aspects of social and environmental responsibility tied in with the work. The projects would be fun for kids, whether it is commissioning a line of t-shirts, selling flowers or doing an e-bay drive.
My reasoning for this is that I think within the space of a couple of generations, people have gone from usually-self employed to usually-corporate employed, and as such get very little control over their lives. It's the entrepreneurs that grow economies and improve lives, and yet it gets virtually no attention throughout school.
As a person that came from a technical background, I followed the 'built it and they will come' heuristic.
It's certainly effective for getting something done and out there. However, I considered nothing about market or even who I thought my users are, or more importantly, where to find them.
In this list, I probably would have benefited from the talk to customers bit. Too bad there's no iteration of the business idea in the list.
(example; this would be useless in my local scout troop who's focus is generally on water sports [canoing] and hiking/camping - i.e. the physical stuff.
They would probably award it based on little effort (and yes, I did use this "hack" to amass a huge quantity of badges in my time :))
Not that I'm dissing it :) just seems unusual for a Scout badge.