brettw777

You all just said a mouthful...especially "Things not practiced are soon forgotten." That goes for many things in life well beyond scouting.

I would have no problem giving my email address out to anyone. I already get spam but my hotmail filter gets rid of most of it before I even see it. Also, email addresses listed on a Scout website could easily be disguised to avoid spammers as in bobwhite at yahoo dot com. Also, I am aware that there is not a requirement for boys to be able to recite verbatim his merit badge material a year or anytime after receiving the merit badge. I only mentioned it because I believe that many boys cannot tell much of anything about what they quickly crammed into their brain just a few weeks or months

I think that is the way it ought to be. It is about ethics.

Twocubdad, to answer your question, here is what my 13 year old son wants to do. He will not put on the merit badges until we as his parents feel that he has completed the requirements. I am very proud that he feels this way. The problem is that for some of these merit badges, I would not know how to make sure he does complete the requirements without spending a chunk of money on, for example, equipment to build an electricity model, something he should have gotten done at the last merit badge class for that. That was an instructor at Clemson University who was not a teenager and he still did

The problem with finishing up the merit badges with different counselors is finding a merit badge counselor. As you know, there is no database of merit badge counselors on any website that I know of and a local man who is high up in scouts told me it is a continuing problem finding the counselors. Whenever we ask about a particular merit badge counselor to our Scout leaders, we get the "we'll look in to that and get back to you." Nothing.

Hi everyone. This is my first post to this site. I am really concerned about the troop we are in. After one year of my son being in this troop, I am starting to see why there are so many Eagle Scouts in it. For the boys aged 15-17, over half of them are already Eagle Scouts. At this last court of honor, my son was handed 4 merit badges and he only finished the requirements on one of them! He was shocked and so were we. It seems that these camp counselors (from summer camp) who are all teenagers just sign off on blue cards without the boy even coming close to finishing the requirements and the