Before long (January 1, 2014) the list of Eagle required merit badges will change slightly with the addition of cooking as a required merit badge and the new sustainability merit badge as an alternative to environmental science.
Here’s an overview of the current and new lists:
Current list of Eagle-required merit badges
Earn a total of 21 merit badges, including the following:
- First Aid
- Citizenship in the Community
- Citizenship in the Nation
- Citizenship in the World
- Communication
- Personal Fitness
- Emergency Preparedness OR Lifesaving
- Environmental Science
- Personal Management
- Swimming OR Hiking OR Cycling
- Camping
- Family Life
List of Eagle-required merit badges, effective Jan. 1, 2014
Earn a total of 21 merit badges, including the following:
- First Aid
- Citizenship in the Community
- Citizenship in the Nation
- Citizenship in the World
- Communication
- Personal Fitness
- Emergency Preparedness OR Lifesaving
- Environmental Science OR Sustainability
- Personal Management
- Swimming OR Hiking OR Cycling
- Camping
- Family Life
- Cooking
I welcome the addition of cooking as an Eagle required merit badge. Scouts who camp and cook in patrols regularly will complete many of the requirements in the course of their routine activities and many of the requirements correspond to rank requirements up to first class rank.
Sustainability as an alternative to environmental science is fine, I suppose, but it doesn’t really get me all that excited.
These changes get me thinking about the merit badge program as a whole and Eagle required badges in particular.
Looking at the list of Eagle required badges I note that academic-style requirements (listing, defining, explaining, planning, writing) far outweigh requirements centered on actual activities and experiences – even with badges like cooking and camping.
Fulfilling these requirements, to borrow a phrase from Baden-Powell, ‘retrenches the work of schools’. Theres a dissonance that drains the enthusiasm from my Scout’s faces when they contemplate the pile of repetitive, academic-style busywork applied to a lot of these requirements. We promised them exciting adventures and they end up with worksheets and notebooks.
I’ll agree that the list of Eagle required badges are aimed at Scouting’s formative goals; engaged citizenship, competent outdoor skills, helping those in distress, physically active and fit, young people able to manage their own affairs, active family members, an understanding of the way the natural world works and our place in it. The problem is, at least to my mind, that most of these badges emphasize academic oriented methods over Scouting methods.
What would I change about this? Probably a great deal given the chance, but that’s not a likely option. Perhaps the best thing we can do to minimize the dissonance of these things is to better understand and apply the processes and benefits of Scouting.