Be prepared... for your Scouts-loving sprog to become tiny spin doctor

Scout Leaders are forever telling their youthful charges to be prepared for anything. But judging by a list of the new badges designed to reflect the modern age, new-school scouts had better be prepared for days spent working as corporate spin doctors and nights focused on whittling down their carbon footprint. The Scouts have …

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously designed for those living in the South East....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet my scouts want to go back to basics and burn stuff, cut stuff, and shoot stuff (targets)...

There are alternatives to The Scout Association, they are not the be-all and end-all of Scouting in the UK.

[hplasm]

New motto!

B-Ark Prepared!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pr0n badge?

There was a naive suggestion about a decade ago that scouts could be used as voluntary workers in a Mary Whitehouse style organisation tasked with reporting pr0n on the web.

[Tom 13]

Four of the six look respectable.

But the bad in the two that don't outweighs the good in the four that are by at least double (2B > 4G).

[Tom 13]

Re: Four of the six look respectable.

The sad part is that when I was in the Scouts we did fundraising. Not like they do today which is essentially just another slick marketing deal where you mark up some brand name good by twice the retail price and beg for money from people because it's for Scouts. No we went out and sold tickets for subs or grilled half chickens. Our leaders went out and bought the supplies. We made the subs and or chicken and we delivered/sold it as appropriate. Subs were always delivered, chicken was always picked up. I learned a neat trick with the chicken sales. We'd sell as many tickets as we could ahead of time. Markup was about 50% from our costs. We'd use all the money from pre-sales to buy as much supplies for the grilled chicken (roll and slaw tossed in) as we could. Then we'd sell the extras to whoever stopped by the grilling spot on the spur of the moment. Thus increasing our profit by 40-50%. Usually for 1 chicken sale, 1 sub sale, and our January candy sale plus regular monthly dues we could fund the troop for the whole year.

So it wasn't that we weren't learning it. We just didn't get a badge for it. And we did REAL work for it (with the exception of the candy sale which was pretty much structured like the stuff is today).

[Montreux]

What media relations badge?

You can see the full list of the new badges and their requirements here: http://scouts.org.uk/media/391795/New-Activity-Badge-requirements-2014.pdf

I can see fire safety, which involves a visit to a fire station, and pioneering, which involves making your own rope and knowing a few knots. I can't see any media relations or PR badge in that list.

[Richard 22]

Re: What media relations badge?

You seem to be letting facts get in the way of a (good?) story. You may have come to the wrong place.

[Elmer Phud]

Re: What media relations badge?

" which involves a visit to a fire station,"

Yeah, but that's not part of fire safety - it's more like hunting a dying species.

[Anonymous Coward]

New?

I'm pretty sure they had gardening, astronomy and navigation badges when I was in the scouts 20 years ago ...

They certainly did in the Cubs.

[Mike Taylor]

Re: New?

Yup, they did then, they do now. And they do all the shooting, archery stuff. Our lot prepared and barbecued (and ate) squirrel last year (the squirrels came in bags though...). And a couple of weeks ago were dumped in a village a couple of miles away and had to navigate their way back to the hut using actual maps. In the dark. Great fun.

[Terry Barnes]

And I had a Computing badge in 1984. It was 'proper' too - I had to write a program on my Oric-1 that allowed the entry of scores for a football league, assigned the appropriate points based on the scores and then sort and display the league table.

[Charles Manning]

Scouting has always been spin-doctoring

When BP started scouting, it was spinning the Empire, Clean Living, Christianity, etc.

Now it is spinning for the other side: being a good greenie, being racially inclusive, etc.

[Thomas Letherby]

Badges

Here's all the Scout activity badges and their requirements:

http://members.scouts.org.uk/supportresources/search/?cat=56,135,156

For those no doubt looking for the IT badge it's staged, and those are here:

http://members.scouts.org.uk/supportresources/search/?cat=56,142

Remember the staged badges are staged and can be started in Beavers, so they start off very simplistic. It's pretty out of date in places, but there's nothing to stop you teaching them more than is on the requirements list.

Follow the links around and you can see the Core badges as well as those for the other sections. The biggest problem is not so much the badges, but finding people willing to offer up the time, expertise and facilities to do the more technical badges.

If you enjoyed the Scouts, or are just curious being a helper or leader is incredibly rewarding and not to mention enjoyable. You don't have to turn up every week, and you don't have to be a leader if you don't want to, or can't spare the time. If you have something you can teach, they'll work around you to get something organised, even if it's just a few evenings teaching basic coding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Raising money for Cancer research would qualify as would raising money for other charities. It fits with the helping other theme of Scouts that has been around since the start and also brings it into the modern world. The fundamentals of camping, exploring and other outdoor skills ere still there as these are the optional Activity Badges to get higher awards.