Re: Merit Badge Statistics - BSA Home Page
(no name) ((no email))
Sat, 30 Jan 1999 03:00:00 -0600
Mark Arend <arend@CENTURYINTER.NET> wrote in part and asked:
>If it was dropped in 1987 to earn this badge a boy would have had
>to start working on it before their 9th birthday, if my math is
>correct.
>
>It seems that the last Bookbinding MB should have been earned
>about 1994. Or am I missing something here?
Nah...you haven't missed anything, Mark...we have a lot of *early
birds* earning Merit Badges *laughter*
Seriously: First, *ONLY BOY SCOUTS CAN EARN MERIT BADGES*. Gotta
make that clear, because *somewhere out there*, some parent or
Cub Scouter is going to see those two lines above and say
"ALRIGHT!! LET'S GIT THESE BOYS GOIN'!! ANYONE FOR FIRST AID MERIT
BADGE??", and the next thing we know...well...you know...
To the core of your point, though. The Boy Scout Program Division
has long understood that there's a lag period between the time that
a merit badge was either discontinued or transformed to another
badge. This is despite their informing all local Councils, and
despite local Council efforts at informing all Scouters of the
changes. There's going to be *some boys* out there still working
on "discontinued merit badges" like Bookbinding (and your 1994 date
is correct, by the way).
The basic "rule of thumb" is that it is *up to the local Council*
to certify merit badges earned by Scouts in their local Council.
Ideally, there's a year to year and a half "grace period" that
Councils are supposed to be following; in reality, if that Council
STILL has access to the CLOTH BADGE (and that's the most important
thing here...not the card but the actual badge!), the merit badge
could still be earned. This doesn't mean that if a Scoutmaster can
"scare up an old World Brotherhood Merit Badge", that a Scout could
earn it; we're talking the *local Council's ability* to find the
merit badges. Once a merit badge is gone, the ability to earn that
badge is also gone.
Scouts have until age 18 to earn merit badges; so again
realistically a Scout could have started on Bookbinding in 1992,
stopped work on it and picked it up again in 1994, earning the
badge. Ideally, we would want Scouts to work on the *current
listing of merit badges* because it assists us adults in tracking
which merit badge(s) he's earned and cuts our paperwork down in
having to "ink in" or pencil in badges which are not listed (or
entered in Troopmaster(tm) or other software programs). Yeah, we
adults are a LOT more flexible than the "ideal"... good thing, too!
When the BSA consoldated a lot of the "farming and ranching" merit
badges into two broader merit badges, many Councils in the midwest
and west still offered the earlier merit badges. It was important
that those Scouts living in the Corn or Cotton Belts understood the
importance of those industries to our economy, and those merit
badges had counsellors that did nothing more for the local Council
than to serve as counsellors...and were happy to do that!
So if a Scout earned a merit badge which has been officially
discontinued, it still may show up on the BSA's annual stats (which
are compiled from local Council summaries send at the end of the
year) for a couple or four more years but perhaps no more than
eight years (accounting for the fact that a Scout is typically 10.5
years old and advancement typically ends at 17.5) at the outside.
Merit badges, once again, are a BOY/VARSITY SCOUT program.
(Which leads me to asking: Does anyone know if Venturers will be
able to earn merit badges??? Scott Smith...you know?? I haven't
heard anything, but it was possible at one point for *male
Explorers* to earn merit badges!!)
Settummanque!
(c) 1999 Mike Walton ("no such thing as strong coffee,...") blkeagle@mninter.net
http://mninter.net/~blkeagle Burnsville, MN 55306-7130 (612) 435-3068
privately at kyblkeagle@aol.com or waltonm@server.kaiserslautern.army.mil
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