[Boatanchors] Radio Merit Badge

[Bruce Long]

As an eagle scout and former summer camp staff and former merit badge councilor, I think I can comment on this.   There was an article printed in Atlantic magazine ( the on line version only?) that compares present 2013(?) merit badge requirements against the original 1917(?) requirements.  To say the requirements have been tremendously dumbed down does not begin to cover it.  The circa 1970 requirements I worked to as a summer camp staff member are much easier than the original 1917 requirements and the 2013 requirements are very much easier than the circa 1970 requirements.

It says something profound that we as a society expect far less from our young men and boys than we did not so long ago.

To be fair in the last 100 years society has become far more urban and far less rural.  Expecting a boy to catch and record a representative sampling of local fish over a summer might not be realistic.  I suspect there has also been a huge shift in the demographics of prospective boy scouts that might well merit a re-examination of advancement requirements.

while i am off and running on my old man rant---- a few years ago i taught junior and senior year electrical engineering at a regional prominent, rather exclusive private university.   There was a huge different in the expectations as expressed in the textbooks i taught from and the text books I was taught with in 1975-1976.  To be fair a lot or new material was added to the EE curriculum since I graduated but it is still unsettling.

The college I graduated from cut the required credit hours for a BSEE from 144 to about 130 in the mid eighties in response to a severe drop off in enrollment right after they expanded the ee teaching staff by at least 30 % in response to a huge increase in EE enrollment in the lat 70s and early 80s. 

They cut required credit hours because marketing surveys and student focus group studies reveals that students (claimed) they avoided EE because it it required too many class hours, you could get a degree in public relations for as little at 118 credits.

ok  rant over







________________________________
 From: Wilson <infomet at embarqmail.com>
To: BOATANCHORS <BOATANCHORS at puck.nether.net> 
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2014 10:48 AM
Subject: [Boatanchors] Radio Merit Badge
 

I have a 1974 printing of the 1965 Boy Scout Radio Merit Badge book.
Remarkable, it’s harder than the current General license...5WPM code and actually build something, with soldering!
Picture of kid’s station on the cover.
$5, shipped 2 u!
Wilson
W4BOH
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