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Mandatory Change from National: 2017 Requirements


John-in-KC

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Thanks for posting that, John.   We had a couple of kids who were aiming to finish First Class by that deadline but didn't make it.  I believe there are seven or eight additional requirements for First Class that they need to finish.

 

@@NJCubScouter, that seems to be the case. However, most of these (service hours, camping nights) would be part of an average scout's experience. (E.g. swimming and canoeing at summer camp, plotting a course to an event, sorting through cooking utensils.)

 

Hopefully the boys won't be discouraged by the extra hurdles. On the bright side, most of you second class scouts (who ranked up last year) should already be use the new reqs anyway. So, now that everyone is on the same page, expect things to go smoothly.

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@@NJCubScouter, that seems to be the case. However, most of these (service hours, camping nights) would be part of an average scout's experience. (E.g. swimming and canoeing at summer camp, plotting a course to an event, sorting through cooking utensils.)

 

I think there were some others that were "new", I think something about weather.  (Probably mostly common sense, like not handling large metal poles in a thunderstorm, but not part of the requirements previously.)  And a few other things that were "new". I don't have it handy right now.

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We have a scoutmaster who has not been very proactive on this.  He's barely mentioned it to the scouts.

After a BOR during 2016 I sent each scout and their parents the pdf for the new requirements they now had to use,

but the sm asm team didn't really pay attention to that, and we had to catch scouts for subsequent BOR using old requirements.

EX: 1st class on old req in January 2016, so for star they had to use new requirements but nobody reinforced that to them during the year and sm did sm conference and completely forgot about the change.  Luckily it's virtually the same req with a little wording changes plus cyber chip and the how to prevent child abuse.  It did postpone a scout so he's now going to finish star in January this year instead of November.

 

Monday we are supposed to have a bunch of the pdf of req changes printed.  Why is that PDF so annoying to use? like nobody wants it in their book with top stapled so that every other page prints upside down?  The scouts don't want to flip it up to sign off stuff that way when used to turning pages right to left to sign. and they have to cut the pages in half and it seems they get kinda out of order when you do that.

 

And even printing in color on my fairly good printer, the eagle info that is printed in the blue box is barely readable.

 

I think I'm going to have to scan the pages out of a new scout book and make a new pdf

where people could choose to print just part of the requirements pages, like maybe they only need the life and eagle pages.

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Personally, I like the new requirements over the old ones except for the Cyberchip requirement.  But overall, I think it is a better more consistent program for start to finish.  It frustrated me personally when I saw people cross their boys over prior to the new year just so they could do the easier requirements.  The spirit of scouting isn't to race through to get to Eagle, parents seem think that is the only goal.

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Personally, I like the new requirements over the old ones except for the Cyberchip requirement.  But overall, I think it is a better more consistent program for start to finish.  It frustrated me personally when I saw people cross their boys over prior to the new year just so they could do the easier requirements.  The spirit of scouting isn't to race through to get to Eagle, parents seem think that is the only goal.

 

There are a lot of troops and SM's out there that think that too.

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Our Scouts knew of the changes since last year.  We told them that it might be in their best interest to reach 1st class by Dec 2016 and at T-1 Boards of Review the Scouts decided which requirements they wanted to use going forward.  Many finished First Class in time, some didn't.  It is what it is.

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Requirements are what you make of them.  I don't think the wording of the new requirements is bad, but it just seems too verbose.  In most cases, the requirements are 90% more words ... almost double in size.  It's frustrating and a waste.  

 

The requirements just don't seem set up for scouts to manage them.  They seem setup for adults to manage.

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When they decided to make CyberChip a required thing, they should have revamped the whole thing to make it a teachable program. The requirements as they exist right now are geared to having a Scout teach to a group of other Scouts. When the whole Troop eventually needs to get this training, that is no longer a viable mechanism, since the content isn't varied enough for multiple Scouts to pass on the knowledge without it becoming repetitive and boring. This is now similar to my Council's requirement to take YPT annually, yet National hasn't updated the training in years.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Monday we are supposed to have a bunch of the pdf of req changes printed.  Why is that PDF so annoying to use? like nobody wants it in their book with top stapled so that every other page prints upside down?  The scouts don't want to flip it up to sign off stuff that way when used to turning pages right to left to sign. and they have to cut the pages in half and it seems they get kinda out of order when you do that.

When I was preparing for this for my Midway, I found two different versions: 

 

Back to back from scouting.org: http://www.scouting.org/filestore/boyscouts/pdf/524-012_BS_Requirements_Insert.pdf

 

 

Single pages: http://www.scouting.org/filestore/boyscouts/pdf/524-012_BS_Requirements.pdf

http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/2016BoyScoutRequirements_8.14.2015.pdf

 

Bryan on Scouting was the one who clued me in to the pdf versions:  http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2017/01/03/new-boy-scout-requirements-now-mandatory-jan-1-2017/

 

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