Meritbadge Camporee

[PeteM]

What are your thoughts on having a camporee dedicated entirely on seeing how many meritbadges the boys can earn in a weekend, with prizes going to that effect?

 

A troop in a neighboring district has been doing a small version for years and now that district wants to do it.

 

Pete

[RememberSchiff]

So a cool Camporee patch is not enough. Neither I nor my unit want any part of it as it diminishes the merit badge experience and shortchanges the scout. We do not endorse the two weekend merit badge colleges either. Turning scouting into a cram-session school is not for us.

 

But it seems most in our district believe you cannot get a scout to attend an activity, even a overnight gym lock-in, unless the activity coordinator sells merit badges or do I mean activity "belt loops". Patrol competition - fogetaboutit.

 

I largely blame today's Cub Scout program with creating this belief that to get a scout to do anything he must be given a badge and the subsequent expectation of automatically receiving a badge by youth and parents. Do a good turn and you get a patch irks me the most.

 

'What 12 meetings to earn First Aid merit badge, shouldn't they be getting 12 merit badges in that time?'

 

Should we take the "merit" out of "merit badge" and call it, I dunno, an "hour badge" as in "Camping in an hour badge", "Citizenship in an hour badge"...'Do as many of the following requirements as you can in an hour, but do not spend more than hour. It is okay, if you do not complete any requirements in the hour. Just do your best.'

 

My $0.02

[shortridge]

You asked for opinions, and mine is that it's an awful idea. It turns the whole advancement method into a race, when the goal should be quality of skills learned, not speed or quantity.

 

I can see the value in themed camporees built around one merit badge topic - Wilderness Survival or Pioneering, say - but I wouldn't expect the Scouts to earn the entire badge there. Camporees should, IMHO, be a place to introduce Scouts to new or advanced skills and reinforce those skills through patrol competition.

[Lisabob]

It is one thing to have a merit badge weekend (though I'm not that fond of them). It is entirely another to elevate that to the level of some type of "race" to see who can get the most in a weekend.

 

I would put these folks on the spot. How exactly would such an event really strengthen what units can do in terms of the methods of scouting? Real advancement doesn't happen like this, as anybody (including the boys) who stops to think about it would acknowledge. Why cheapen the advancement program by pretending otherwise? There will be little to no adult association when kids are racing through things just to get it done. Certainly no opportunity to explore areas of interest and engage in some personal growth.

 

If your district chooses to go ahead with such a scheme anyway, I hope you will not promote it to your scouts. Don't cheat them of an honest experience in actually earning (and heck, maybe even enjoying) their merit badges.

[emb021]

"What are your thoughts on having a camporee dedicated entirely on seeing how many meritbadges the boys can earn in a weekend, with prizes going to that effect?"

 

Bad idea.

 

Most merit badges can't be earned in a weekend.

 

Most of the better run merit badge weekends make it very clear that most of the merit badges require some amount of pre-work, and there is no guarantee that the boy will earn any/all merit badges he works on. He does need to complete the requirements, after all. Otherwise he'll just get a partial.

 

 

 

[desertrat77]

Merit badge camporee = spoon feeding.....

 

Runs contrary to the intent of the MB program. Ideally, the scout has to show the gumption to make the time and effort to contact the counselor, do the work, follow thru, etc.

 

Showing up for a weekend, sitting on a log passively listening, demonstrating a few skills, writing a couple essays, and going home Sunday afternoon with a bunch of MBs is hardly the stuff we are looking for.

 

Irony: the scouts aren't looking for lower standards either. But many troops and councils lower the bar of excellence. Youth are looking to be challenged. They've got the smarts and the will power to achieve...but many well intentioned leaders treat them like they are five years old...and thus water down the program.

 

In the MB realm, there is tremendous pride in finally earning that tough MB. I can still point to MBs on my sash, 30 years after the fact, that I thought I'd never finish. The counselor insisted I earned them honestly...and I treasure those the most.

 

These events, I'm convinced, are nothing more than a council execs' and/or commissioners' way of increasing numbers...attendees, badges earned, which leads to more advancement, etc. What they do with these increased numbers is unknown.

 

 

[Buffalo Skipper]

I am working hard in my troop to bring a productive and scout initiated merit badge program to my troop with qualified and trained Merit Badge Counselors. In recent years, very very few merit badges have been earned outside of summer camp, and that is the attiude/expectation I am working to change.

 

If I heard of a MB oriented camporee, I would never even tell the PLC about it, instead letting them decide their own program.

 

Just my 2.

[Twocubdad]

DON'T WALK, RUN!

 

We've got one coming up here shortly. I've done all I can to make sure no one in our troop finds out about it.

 

Sort of off topic, but here's one for the books: the Personal Fitness counselor for our troop is working on the MB with a kid in his neighborhood who is in another troop. The Scout is about 14, a Star and has 30 merit badges. He was having a hard time understanding the whole blue card process. The counselor asked if his troop handled blue cards differently. The Scout said he didn't really know because HE HAD NEVER EARNED A MERIT BADGE OUTSIDE OF SUMMER CAMP!

 

Thirty merit badges. All at summer camp.

 

Sheesh.

 

[John-in-KC]

I'm with Lisa and emb.

 

This is a bad idea.

 

If your District decides to go through with it, influence your PLC to be someplace else that weekend.

 

I do not care if we are talking Music, Railroading, or Cit in Nation: Unless you short-cycle the MB, you cannot get there from here in a weekend. PERIOD.

 

Now, setting stations which explicitly support a task from a MB (ie, at this station you will do the BSA Swim Test, which is Swimming MB REquirement X)? Yeah. The whole MB? NWIH.

[Eagledad]

Units take lesson from the district and this kind of activity teaches the units really bad habits. I found this out when we cancelled our Disrict MB Fair one year. We suddenly found that many troops use only summer camp and the MB Fair as their full year advancement program.

 

With the idea that advancement is the units responsibility and the district should only set good examples, ask them how they expect the unit follow the BSA guidelines that a scout is supposed to ask the SM for a list of counselors, then fill out the MB card, get the card signed by the SM, then call the counselor to set up meetings with the counselor, and attend those meetings with another scout? Also ask them how the scouts contract the counselors to complete the requirements after the camporee is over?

 

If they come up with a camporee that does all that, and gives each unit a list of all the counselors in the course to use after the camporee, it might actually teach the troops better proceedures.

 

Otherwise I would run.

 

Barry

[Hal_Crawford]

Coming soon: Merit Badge Drive-thru window at Council Service Center... OK, bad idea but I am afraid that it is just taking the MB Camporee, the MB University and the MB week at summer camp to its logical conclusion.

 

I agree with the posters above; it's just plain wrong. I don't have a problem when merit badges are offered as part of a camporee theme. Sometimes a camporee setting can give scouts access to resources/activities that might not be as accessible in day to day life.

 

I am particularly offended by the idea of giving a prize for the most merit badges earned in a weekend. This suggests that quantity is more important than quality. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to save my injured buddy but I earned six other merit badges the day I got First Aid".

 

But I am preaching to the choir hear; it seems we are all pretty much in agreement (be afraid, be very afraid).

 

Hal

[eagle1977]

I have to agree that this is a deplorable idea. I am not a fan of the merit badge university concept either. I was thinking the other day that, with the exception of the Klondike Derby, our council does not have any real, meaningful competition among the troops. When I was coming up (back in the dark ages!) we had quarterly competitions at the district level. They were usually held on a Saturday at a gym or some other public building, not always at camp in other words, and there would be a patch for all participants, a trophy of some sort, and a streamer for the Troop flag for the top three winners. We held First Aid meets, Scout craft meets, and of course the Klondike Derby, hopefully on a snowy weekend. These were opportunities to show off what we had spent time learning and practicing and a great deal of fun.

 

What happened to that type of activity? Has the BSA gone the way of a lot of other activities and become an organization that places emphasis on participation over competition and learning. Does that mean that everyone attains Eagle now just like everyone gets to play on the t-ball team?

 

It certainly seems to be true if you decide to think that the posting from Daddy_O is realistic!

 

(This message has been edited by Eagle1977)

[Beavah]

The Scout is about 14, a Star and has 30 merit badges....The Scout said he didn't really know because HE HAD NEVER EARNED A MERIT BADGE OUTSIDE OF SUMMER CAMP!

 

Holy smoke! Yah, I hope he at least was doin' more than one week of camp each year, eh? Otherwise that would be 10 MB's per week at camp!

 

Coming soon: Merit Badge Drive-thru window at Council Service Center...

 

Nah, Hal_Crawford, da logical next step is to run MBs like we run adult trainin'. Thirty minutes watchin' an online video should do the trick. Yeh can even throw in a 5-question multiple choice quiz for the lad.

 

PeteM, yeh beat your district staff over da head with the BSA policy statements about how MBs are to be counseled and what the purpose of the program is, and if that doesn't work yeh send your COR to vote your District Chair and Program Committee folks out of office at the next district annual meeting.

 

I suspect the folks are well-meaning Cubbers, eh? Nobody bothered to help 'em learn that boy scouting is different. Personally, I wish we'd fix webelos and confine the badge mania to Wolves and Bears.

 

Beavah

 

[Beavah]

Yah, I was just thinkin' this might be a fine youth example of that problematic WB21C game "Win all you can".

 

Yeh send out a whole host of lads to go nuts for two days tryin' to grab as many badges as they can for themselves.

 

Then at the end yeh only give awards to the boys who are actually able to demonstrate real, thorough understanding of one thing in the act of helping someone else. And who actually know the name of their counselor.

 

B

 

[Twocubdad]

That's evil, Beav. I like it!

 

Don't know about mutiple weeks at camp for the kid, but I know he's gone to four years. Still, that's 7-8 per week. His troop is one that goes out of council to summer camp specifically because they camp offers MBs all day long. Our camp looses a number of troops to that camp every year so we're trying to be more like them. Great. I think the drive-thru window is in the capital budget for next year.