EarlVanDorn

jtswestark, He's going to Chief Logan's Reservation near Chillicothe, in Vinton County, with his old Scout troop. He was in the Maysville, Ky., troop which used to be in the Simon Kenton Council. They moved Maysville into the Blue Grass Council just over a year ago, but the troop prefers Chief Logan to Camp McKee. My understanding is that it has an unstructured program, so any Scout can start work on any merit badge at any time. A good friend of mine is one of the adults going, so I'll follow his lead. My son had said he wanted to do both swimming and lifesaving, but I think that i

Well, as the OP, I think summer camp is a great place to earn merit badges. Obviously there needs to be more than that going on. My son just returned from a week and I know he earned three merit badges. One of these was rifle shooting, which requires a certified instructor. Another was Environmental Science, which was a 10-hour course. I took this at camp 35 years ago. The third was Citizenship in the World (he still has a couple of requirements left on this). He's going to another camp up in Ohio in just over a week. It's structured a little differently, but he is going to take swim

I should make clear that they do not work on merit badges during Scout meetings. And, in fact, all of the emails for the merit badge workshops come from the grandfather who has been organizing them. It's really a tremendous oppourtunity, I'm just irritating that in my opinion not enough time is being spent on some of the badges. The troop has not been a perfect fit for my son. He really doesn't enjoy the meetings. At his former troop, where he was only a member for a few months (but got to go to Scout camp), they always had a football type play time before the meetings. The current troop

Well, I agree that a minimum time limit could be frittered away, but I've seen no evidence that the kids are not working diligently while they are working on their merit badges, or that the adults aren't teaching them. It's just that in my opinion they are not spending enough time on it. I think these workshops must be fairly common, and if the requirement is set that Scouts must spend a minimum of say five hours on each and every merit badge, then I believe people will follow that rule. I think they are following the "letter of the law" on the merit badges, but just barely. I just think

This is my first post. My son started Scouting and then we moved so he joined a new troop. I had him join a troop that I knew from my time in Scouting had a good reputation (it is really the only troop option). As soon as I got on the email list, I was excited to see they had an aggressive merit badge program. One of the reasons (I think) for this program is that a grandfather has a grandson who he wants to earn every merit badge plus his Eagle scout at the earliest possible age. Yet everyone has been able to benefit from these workshops, and sometimes boys from out of town have driven in