I suppose it is similar to every National
Scout Association. The national level creates the program
and makes huge changes, and they let us deal with the problems
that spurs out of it. If you have given close attention to
the advancement requirements, you will notice a lot of flaws
that can easily be fixed if the national office pays attention
and gives it a little bit of time.
Non-Existent
Merit Badges.
There are merit badges listed in the "13 and Above"
handbook that has no official requirements tied to them. No
set procedure was provided on how Scouts can work on these merit
badges. They are listed on this website as the In
the Works Merit Badges.
Non-Eagle Merit
Badges.
Merit badges that has tied official requirements can be classified
into four types (at least I classify them into such):
-
Eagle Required Merit Badges
-
Eagle Optionally Required Merit Badges (ex. Tree Farming,
Ecology)
-
Specialist Rating Merit Badges
-
Non-Eagle Merit Badges
The Non-Eagle Merit Badges
are merit badges that a Scout can earn, but it cannot be credited
towards a Scout's advancement towards Eagle Scout. These merit
badges are not made specifically required and they are not part
of any specialist rating. Note that a merit badge is credit
towards Eagle if it was specifically required by the rank requirements
or it was earned as part of a specialist rating.
There are at least 40 Non-Eagle Merit Badges
as of this time.
Un-Earnable
Specialist Ratings.
The first step in earning a specialist
rating is to select three merit badges under the specialist
rating that you have not earned previously. There are specialist
ratings that includes merit badges that are required for Eagle
Scout (which automatically disqualifies them from being part
of the three) and leaves the specialist rating with less than
three merit badges.
The
Merit Badge Center has removed these un-earnable specialist
ratings from our list of specialist ratings. There are six of
these specialist rating in the "13 and Above" handbook.
I have written a letter to the Program Division
of the National Headquarters in 1999 and did receive a quick
response from Director Rogelio Villa. Until today, the revised
future editions of the requirements he had mentioned in his
response letter has not surfaced.
Rank Requirements
Problem.
In the Airman Rank (Air Scout track) and Seaman Rank (Sea Scout
track) the requirements can never be completed due to required
merit badges without officially tied requirements to them. They
are the Airplane Modelling and Survival
Swimming Merit Badges respectively.
There is also a problem with the specialist
rating required for the Venturer Rank (Traditional Scout track)
since on the "13 and Above" handbook the specialist
rating Scout Conservationist does not exists.
Although it does exists in the proof edition of the handbook,
there are only two merit badges left to earn after you eliminate
all the merit badges that are required for Eagle Scout.
