Merit Badge Pamphlet quality

[Beavah]

In da previous thread, Tawhawk mentioned that in his opinion the Wilderness Survival MB pamphlet was pretty poor. I'm wonderin' if other people are seein' this with other MB pamphlets.

 

I confess I don't use the things. I'm enough of an "expert" in the badges I counsel not to need 'em, and prefer to steer scouts to other resources as part of the mentoring and discussion. I figure if they're interested in a topic they should know where to find the good stuff.

 

Beavah

 

[bnelon44]

Some are quite well done, some are not. Most will give the Scout the exposure necessary to satisfy the or lead to satisfying the requirements.

 

I don't use them for the badges I mentor either. I did had a Scout the small boat sailing book just as he was leaving on a vacation with his grampa who will teach him to sail. It is good enough so he will hae a little knowledge of the terms that will be used as he learns.

 

I am interested to hear of his experience when he returns. Learning to sail can be a life altering experience.

[desertrat77]

None stand out as high quality. Darn shame, too. If National is going to go thru the effort of publishing, the pamphlets should have some standard of excellence as a primer to the particular subject.

[ghermanno]

bnelon44,

 

Maybe I read your post incorrectly but did you really state that you do NOT use the MB Pamphlet for MB's that you mentor? If not, what guidance do you use to ensure "standard" testing and requirements for the Merit Badges?

 

Just curious as these are the responsabilities of the MBC's. As are sending in corrections to National and hoping they will change things.

 

My $0.02

 

Rick

[TAHAWK]

As Da Beav knows, the requirements are the requirements. As a MBC you are on your honor to add nothing to and subtract nothing from the requirements. If they are indefinite, you do the best you can.

 

The rest of the MBP is supposed to be educational to help the candidate meet the requirements. The quality is uneven, including uneven (and contradictory) within the same MBP.

 

You are not bound to accept the educational material as accurate, which is fortunate on the occasions when the MBP is dead wrong.

 

Some MBP's have bibliographies of additional materials, some of which are actually available and useful. Other cited sources are out of date or superseded for decades.

 

No, you can't communicate with the secret author(s) with questions or comments. You can, however, write snail mail letters to a PO Box and be ignored.

 

Scouting [magazine] staff will help all they can to clarify ambiguities, and Scouting frequently publishes articles that correct errors in MBP's (and BSA inserts to Scouting).(This message has been edited by TAHAWK)

 

(And yes, I think it's pretty bad that a BSA MBP contradicts every U.S. authority I can find, public and private, on chemical treatment of wild water, including most other BSA publications (excepting only the sadly mistaken BSHB). And that's only one of a garbage can full of gross errors in a publication whose topic is survival - life or death. You might want to take extra care to get THAT right.)(This message has been edited by TAHAWK)

[Venividi]

Not sure that MB quality matters to anyone other than the counsellor. Ideally, MB's are about going out in the field and doing stuff. Sends scout off to do more interesting stuff, and do some self study. Scouts often dont want to read if they dont have to. Perhaps MB pamphlets should follow the lead of the Boy Scout Handbook, and increase the ratio of pictures to words.

 

 

[TAHAWK]

Ven,

 

Wilderness Survival does have some hands-on stuff - the fires and shelter/stay in shelter stuff. The PSK requirement (if they would just correctly explain what a SPK is) could lead into actually using the parts - but no such requirement. Not enough hands-on.

 

Pictures? The Wilderness Survival PBP is full of pictures of improperly-dressed Scouts (in the style of pp. 10-11 of the BSHB). The picture that accompanies the (incorrect) instructions on use of natural flint and steel in the MBP is a picture of a ferrocerium rod and scraper (AKA "Hot Spark"), a totally different tool that would likely be destroyed by the instructions to "strike" the "flint" with the steel. So they don't do near 100% with pictures either.

 

(Oh, the picture of the shield of an early BSA knife in the BSHB at p. 402 is a picture of a knock-off knife that BSA successfully sued to stop. Funny peculiar. More serious, look at the illustration of scraping an insect stinger out with the "side of the blade" of your Scout knife on p. 43. Looks a lot like trying to scrape it out with the edge of the blade, doesn't it? I have asked numerous Scouts "What's wrong with this picture?" and they all say it looks dangerous, or words to that effect ["Crazy"].)

 

 

[Tampa Turtle]

I think I started all this awhile ago. I still think Small Boat Sailing is pretty good for $5. It's a good start. Wilderness Survival is pretty suspect.

 

At Summer Camp the counselors insisted on using the BSA Shooting MB Book for all answers verbatim. So if you used other language to say the same thing they rejected it. Stupid.

 

Yes you can skip the MB Books but at least they are a common base and relatively cheap. Color seems to help.

 

I would be happy if our boys would look at them. Most don't; they just get the meritbadge.org sheet and start filling in the blanks. I told a boy the other day that "the worksheet IS NOT the Merit Badge" -- he looked at me like I was crazy. I suspect some of this stems from Merit Badge Academies, Summer Camp classes, and the growing trend of MB "classes" at Troop Meetings. So much like school, so boring.

 

I am helping the Troop Librarian and we may do a book drive. I was wondering what supplemental books would be good to add beside MB booklets. For Hiking I think The Complete Walker IV by Colin Fletcher is good --even if dated it has a lot of pro's and con's to making choices. Jardine's Tarp book is expensive but probably worth getting. What others?

[TAHAWK]

Beard, Daniel, Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties http://www.manybooks.net/titles/beardd2825528255-8.html

[shortridge]

I had never heard of "worksheets" until I came on this board.

 

As for the MBPs ... problems with Wilderness Survival aside, I think they're decent as a baseline for providing introductory information (certainly better than Wikipedia ). But qualified MBCs should NOT be using them as the only source of information. They should be sharing their own expertise and directing Scouts to other sources of information. A counselor who uses the MBP as a bible should not be counseling the badge.

 

I sympathize with Tampa Turtle. I can't count how many Scouts signed up for MB classes I taught at summer camp who hadn't even read the relevant sections in the BSH (knots & lashings, cooking, etc.), let alone gotten a copy of the MBP. And forget actually practicing the stuff they learned after lunch or in the evenings! It was very disheartening. They (and their leaders) expected it all to be taught to them on a silver platter, going from Point Zero to Expert in about six hours of class time.

 

But that's another subject.

[allangr1024]

I would prefer that the scouts read the MB Pamphlet as a start to the badge. But most don't, although they might use it as a reference. When I was a boy I never read them either.

 

Some I have used are very good. the Pioneering pamphlet is excellent in teaching the subject. Others I have a hard time with. I tried to sit down and read the orienteering book one time in preparation to teaching map and compass. The text was so badly written as to be unreadable. And I was not sure the technical info about map symbols was correct. Sad.

[packsaddle]

I always have the latest one on hand when I'm counseling the few that I do. I don't use them as references but I do read them to know what the boys might encounter there and to be able to compensate with additional explanation or correction if something is incorrect or unclear. Given their relatively low cost, my expectations are low to begin with so I'm not too disappointed. I doubt they go through much of a peer review process if there is any at all.

[TAHAWK]

I've mentioned this before. The first Wilderness Survival Merit Badge pamphlet was written by Larry Dean Olsen, an instructor of wilderness survival ay BYU. At the time he was Da' Man. Now it's the Mystery Committee, no Table of contents and no real bibliography. And he was a Scouter, by the way.

 

While coverage in 60-70 pp can't be exhaustive, it ought to be correct as far as it goes.