Working Independently on Requirements [SMD157]

SMD 157: Working on requirements independently.

When I was a young scout, the troop I was associated with was very hands off regarding requirements and advancement, and I mistakenly believed that I was solely responsible for completing the requirements independently of what the troop was doing. For me this was a horrible experience, and one that led me to quit scouting not long after I joined, rediscovering scouting many years later with my own kids.

While working entirely independently is probably not the best approach, there are some requirements that can benefit from working outside of the Troop structure.

In general, anything that requires the scout to learn or explain can benefit from doing work outside the Troop. The best way to figure this out for each individual scout is to go through the requirements and start with the ones that either are interesting or easy. For example, all the scout requirements fit in these categories Learning the scout oath, describing the first-class badge, describe what merit badges are all are easy to learn with the resources within the handbook.

The latest version of the handbook will even point you to the right page in the handbook to reference, as we see in this example, we have the requirement listed followed by the page number. If we turn to page 28, we see a whole paragraph on merit badges that help fulfill the requirement.

Some requirements are probably better to be done with help and encouragement of your unit. Knots, whipping and fusing rope and your specific patrol flag, yell and name benefit from group participation.

Scouts will generally advance as slowly or quickly as they are comfortable with. Units with good programs that do activities that dovetail with requirements and have a robust outdoor program will have an easier time advancing as programs that consider advancement will lead scouts to a good pace of advancement.

But even in good programs, there are scouts that want to advance quicker.

What I tell parents (and scouts) about how to advance, is to go through the book, and first look for things that you have already done and just have not gotten signed off on, there are bound to be a few.

Secondly, look for things that you have learned, or can easily brush up on that can get other advancement completed.

And the third, are items that interest you that you can learn that are new.

With this in mind, I have the scouts mark off 2-3 items that they need to either work on or get signed off, and then do just that. Once complete, for the next week, repeat it, by marking off the next 2-3 items. Within a month with a combination of things done in the troop and things done at home, the scout may be quickly ready to advance.

Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with the hope we can all learn together.

I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was a bit about independently working on requirements.