An exploration of Eagle required merit badges and a timeline of completing selected badges.
- Eagle Scout rank (Merit Badge.org)
- Eagle Award History (National Eagle Scout Association)
- Legacy of Honor: The Values and Influence of America’s Eagle Scouts (Amazon)
Transcript:
Eagle is a big step that starts with a scout’s first requirement signed off and their first merit badge.
For most scouts, merit badges are earned during summer camp, with the first badges earned being first aid and swimming. In fact, depending on where you live, swimming may be a problem to earn outside of the summer camp experience.
During a scout’s second cycle of summer camp it’s not unusual for a scout to earn cooking and camping. If they are really go-getters they earn environmental science.
This leaves some easy badges and some hard badges, and unfortunately for scouts running up against the time clock, a couple of these have longer time commitments to complete.
Citizenship in the Community, Communication, Personal Fitness and Personal Management all require either a time commitment or outside activities like meetings or visiting places.
In our troop we look at the age and maturity of a scout before letting them take certain badges. Badges like Communication or Personal Management hold a lot more relevance when the scout is a little older.
Surprisingly, one of the most age appropriate badges for younger scouts is usually left to the end that is Family Life. There is nothing in Family Life that a 11 year old cannot do or grasp fully, but more often than not it is an Eagle Scout’s last 2 badges.
When scouts are working on putting together their Eagle project its helpful if the scout has completed Communication and Personal Management. Before they begin.
If a scout has done Communication correctly they have learned how to organize their thoughts and present ideas in a cohesive way.
As a Merit Badge Councilor for Communications I spend time not only making sure they have completed the requirement, but have a conversation on how to improve the communication process. I make them think a little bit on what they could have done better. Iteration always improves the final project, and if you can effectively communicate this as part of the badge it can go a long way.
For obvious reasons, Personal management is a good badge to have under your belt before beginning the Eagle process, as it reinforces coordination and budgeting over time.
Whichever the order, its important to ensure the scout knows where they are in the merit badge journey. I hold yearly meetings will all scouts at life rank and outline where they are, and also how long they have until aging out, as for scouts with early birthdays this can be a factor to Eagle. But this is what works for us.
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 Eagle Required Merit Badges.
