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Re: Citizenship in the World Merit Badge
Robert Losee (rlosee@UNLINFO.UNL.EDU)
Thu, 14 Jan 1999 09:15:38 -0600
Bruce E. Cobern wrote:
> Hopefully, mere presence is NEVER enough to qualify for the merit
> badge. That is totally against the rules. The rules REQUIRE, no
> matter how the material is taught that "Scouts must be tested
> individually, and they must meet all the requirements." (1998
> Advancement Policies and Procedures, #33088A, page 14) AND they must
> meet them in the manner contemplated by the text of the requirement,
> which means written tests are very often not acceptable substitutes for
> the counselor spending the time necessary to allow each Scout to
> individually tell, explain, or demonstrate, for example.
>
> Other than that, I find absolutely nothing unusual or negative with
> your method. Keep it up, it sounds like fun and should work. (I HATE
> merit badge classes, if you haven't figured that out yet, particularly
> at summer camp, as there is really no need for them.)
I totally agree that presence shouldn't be enought to qualify and that's
why I teach it the way I do. It probably comes from my reaction to summer
camps. Because of circumstances I've never spent more than a day at the
regualar summer (instead I focus on the high adventure camps). But I've
been surprized by how many scouts come back from camp and seem to get merit
badges for which they know very little. Our troop has gone to a number of
different camps and this observation seems to apply to all of them. My
method makes this about impossible. And I've got a reputation in our troop
for it, like a professor of a university calculus course that's required
for many many majors.
Richard Ikler noted that this MB is difficult to teach as the concepts are
so foreign to most people, including adults I'd say. I thought I probably
knew more about U.S. foreign policy than 95% of adults when I agreed to
teach this MB. Yet I found there were several requirements that I had to
carefully read the MB book on. So this should be an "advanced" badge after
the other citizenships.
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