Merit Badges and the National Jamboree

[Buffalo Skipper]

I have some questions about MBs offered at the Jamboree.

 

I have heard that scouts will have the opportunity to take MBs at the NJ. As a SM, how do I prepare my scouts for this? Do I offer each scout a stack of blank signed Blue Cards? As we live 750 miles away, obvously none of these counselors are registered in our district or council. If it was at a summer camp, I would counsel the scout in advance. I have one scout attending who acts like "He who has the most badges wins."

 

Please give me some ideas here.

 

As a personal note (few of you know me should be surprised by this), but why are scouts taking MBs at the Jamboree? Don't they have something better planned? $2000 seems like a lot for a parent to spend for a "Merit Badge Midway." I attended the NJ in '81 and I don't believe I earned a single badge, nor do I even recall them being offered. If this is what the Jamboree has become, I will certainly discourage participation in the future.

[emb021]

The Merit badge midway is but ONE of MANY activities the scouts can do. So I think you're getting bent out of shape over nothing.

 

What is great about the MBM, is that for many of these merit badges, you get some really great top notch people running them. In many cases, a lot better then what you have might get at home.

 

If your scouts want to try things out let them.

 

You don't need to worry about blue cards. The MBM used its own system. For a lot of scouts, they will get particuals (keep in mind that some requirements just can't be completed at Jambo), especially if they don't do everything. The Jamboree SM are supposed to get a report at the end of completions and partuals.

 

 

[AvidSM]

Some SM's tell their boys not to go for any MB's at the Jamboree and go for the activity station rockers instead. You can get merit badges anytime - you can only get the rockers while you are there.

[Buffalo Skipper]

I am not really bent out of shape (yet), just opinionated. I also am 29 years out of date on NJ, and I really want to know that I am dotting my i's and crossing my t's.

 

I have many fond memories of the 81 NJ, and as this is the 8th Jamboree at this site, I can only imagine how much more organized it has become. I will consider counseling my scouts on the meaningfullness of all the activities. Interestingly, both scouts are 13. One has 4 merit badges while the other has 28.

 

I just took a moment to look at the bsajamboree.org and the midway site. However dishartened I was by the list of 95 merit badge offerings, I was reassured by these words:

"...Scouts will have an opportunity to practice many skills related to the merit badges. Scouts may meet some of the requirements of the badge(s) at the jamboree and then complete the requirements at home. By the same token, some merit badge work begun at home may be completed at the jamboree...."

 

I will certainly bring that up to my scouts when I review with them the activities. I am sure they will have a great time.

[Kahuna]

Rockers, schmockers! Tell the kids to do whatever turns them on. It's their jamboree. Disclaimer: I'm on the MB Midway, but I don't care if they come get MB's or whatever. It's a Jamboree, not a contest. In ten years, the rockers will mean nothing, but the experience of the Jambo will mean a heck of lot. Speaking from experience.

[acco40]

I know Scouts who earned the fingerprinting MB from the director of the FBI. Some have earned cinematography from Steven Steilberg (before he "left" scouting). How cool is that?

 

Scouts have a Scoutmaster at Jambo. They can sign paperwork if needed.

 

My boys enjoyed having Navy Seals barking at them to drop and give me 20 push-ups on the spot - which earned them some sort of trinket (patch or pin I forget). That is what they enjoyed the most! Go figure.

 

To each Scout his own.

[Twocubdad]

No blue cards are needed. Boys will be given multi-part forms to bring home showing what the completed.

 

Like you, BS, I believe there is a purpose in requiring the Scoutmaster to sign a merit badge card BEFORE a boy begins work on a merit badge. I won't necessarily authorize just anything. For example, I discourage with extreme prejudice our guys from working on Communications, Family Life, Personal Management or the citizenships at summer camp. There's not good reason to get these MBs at camp (except that it's much easier); the instruction from our troop counselors is much better; and sitting through a class at camp the boys miss the part of the merit badge program which requires them to make and keep appointments, prepare for a meeting, work with a real expert in a field and develop a relationship with an adult counselor.

 

But for the special opportunities jamboree affords I'm willing to look the other way. I would hate for one of my guys to miss an opportunity to earn a merit badge with someone really significant just because they don't think I would approve. I've told my guys going to jamboree to please not take those MBs just because they're available. But if they get a really significant opportunity -- Communications with Tom Brokaw? Citizenship in the Nation with David Souter? (I'm making those up, it that's the kind of possibilities out there) -- GO FOR IT! But if they do, to be fair to the guys not going to jamboree, I asked the boys to please bring the materials home from jamboree, get a troop blue card and go over the merit badge with one of our local counselors. The Scouts are old enough to understand the situation and reasoning and I trust their judgement.

[Bando]

I don't think there's any proble or issue with a scout taking time to earn a couple merit badges at Jamboree. I earned 4 or 5 MB's when I went in 2001, although admittedly for a few of those we shopped around to find the ones you could knock out in an hour or two. (I never owned a pet growing up, yet I have Veterinary Medicine MB thanks to NJ!) I will say, though, that earning Atomic Energy MB at Jamboree was one of the coolest things I did in Scouting. That's the one MB I always wanted to get, my dad was one of the first to get it when it was introduced in the 60's, and with 3 or 4 afternoon sessions in a tent with a few people who ran a nuclear facility in Texas, I got it. There wasn't a counselor at home to do it. Learned a lot, and certainly remember it more fondly than 5 more hours of patch trading.

 

Jamboree offers the opportunity to take, if I'm not mistaken, every single merit badge the BSA offers. If there's one out there for which a scout has no hope of finding a counselor at home, and they've got a little time, why not do it? Jamboree is more than patch trading and looking at tanks and humvees parked in a field. Why not get some advancement work done? Every time you look at your sash you're going to remember where you earned that badge.