[HN Gopher] Master at Arms Badge for Boy Scouts (1925) [pdf] ___________________________________________________________________ Master at Arms Badge for Boy Scouts (1925) [pdf] Author : 83457 Score : 56 points Date : 2022-05-11 19:00 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (web.archive.org) (TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org) | kiernanmcgowan wrote: | I'm just thinking back to my time in scouting and can only | imagine what it would be like to teach a bunch of 14-16 y/os the | 1920s equivalent of MMA. Probably about 30min of fun until kids | just start hitting each other as hard as they can with sticks. | | Still sounds more fun than the basket weaving merit badge though. | EVdotIO wrote: | Hey, basket weaving and leather work were super fun, and I have | all cool ones like shotgun, archery and rifle. The most boring | are probably your citizenship badges. Don't knock it till you | try it. | dctoedt wrote: | Former longtime adult Scout leader here (and Eagle Scout) -- | you're absolutely right about the kids hitting each other | gcheong wrote: | I get it but when I took martial arts as a kid it didn't | devolve into a free-for-all so I guess it would depend on the | effectiveness of the teacher to maintain order. | kjanssen wrote: | Hey man, my first year at summer camp all I did was basket | weaving, leather working, and pottery. I originally planned to | do swimming and some other adventurous stuff but was too | overwhelmed by the swim test to be allowed in the lake and had | a bit of a meltdown before changing course. I spent the whole | week chilling in camp or the crafting grove working with my | hands - it was great. | | A few years later I went to a different summer camp as a senior | patrol leader and finally got my swimming badge along with | canoeing and rock climbing - that was a great week too. Point | being: there's value in the "boring" stuff, maybe even more so | now that I'm established in my career and looking for a little | more peace these days. Lately I've been strangely interested in | weaving and am thinking of making a simple loom - maybe this | goes back to my basket weaving experience when I was 10? | ddoolin wrote: | I wasn't at all worried BEFORE that swim test, but afterwards | I can safely say that was legitimately difficult and pretty | terrifying. Especially when you realize the lake we did it in | was full of leeches, which was completely foreign to me at | the time. | nytesky wrote: | Ah summer lake leaches. Stuff of nightmares. My | understanding was as long as you didn't touch the mucky | bottom you were in the clear? I swam in New England lakes | for 20 years and never had one myself but saw several. | | Probably why I did the mile swim several times, treading | water to keep leach free builds endurance. | themodelplumber wrote: | Did you do basket weaving? Basket weaving was super chill and | could make you feel like an adult in some important ways. My | baskets were a disaster but talking to friends about favorite | video games while weaving them was like free therapy. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > but talking to friends about favorite video games while | weaving them was like free therapy. | | This is backwards. Your friends aren't cheap knockoffs of a | therapist. Therapists are people you pay to pretend to be | your friend. | germinalphrase wrote: | This is bassakwards. A therapist isn't supposed to be - let | alone _pretend_ to be - your friend at all. | glowingly wrote: | No parasocial experience really is. However, intent of | the therapist may not be fully acknowledged by the | patients. | jvanderbot wrote: | I really love this. | | I am a firm believer in everyone studying _some_ martial art | (player's choice). | | For the following reasons: | | - It teaches an insane amount of respect when two people have to | hold themselves back to practice | | - It teaches self-discipline, mostly in the long-forgotten art of | keeping yourself from becoming so angry you cannot function with | form. | | - It gives a crazy amount of confidence to know you are at least | a little bit prepared for bad situations | | - It removes a lot of the panic instinct in all kinds of | intimidating situations, from actual fights, to presenting to a | review board. | | - You quickly learn to operate through pain and discomfort and | intimidation, even if you are not being actually injured (e.g., | not actually sparring). | | - Everyone should feel that they are legitimately _their own_ | first line of defense. Even if that defense is to create space | and get away. | | My sport was boxing. I'm a knowledge worker, still. | leephillips wrote: | All excellent points. And, in addition, you get many other | beneficial side effects: improved sense of balance and body | awareness, situational awareness, realistic appreciation of how | dangerous fighting is and how easy it is to get hurt, stamina, | and more. | VWWHFSfQ wrote: | Not to mention a little bit of humbling. | | Mike Tyson had a very famous quote "Everyone has a plan until | they get punched in the mouth." | | It's good way to learn about your own limitations in the most | primitive form. | throwawayboise wrote: | I could support kids learning boxing if it was limited to body | blows. With what we are learning about concussion, it seems to | be more and more understood that blows to the head are never | OK. Maybe you still need to teach defense against head blows, | but they should probably not be allowed in competition. Getting | battered in the head until you cannot stand up or respond | should be right out. | leephillips wrote: | Although, according to the pamphlet, "Every boy who is worthy | of the name has an inclination to know something of the art | of boxing." | throwawayboise wrote: | I saw that too and it made me smile. I think it can still | be done. Just cut out the brain damage. | leephillips wrote: | Totally agree. And some other sports, especially soccer | (football outside the US) are also risky for the brain, | because practice involves repeated heading. | slowhand09 wrote: | Boxing outside of competition is almost always done with head | protection gear. And supervision to prevent violence rather | than sport. | amalcon wrote: | There are martial arts where even in competition, concussion | is relatively rare. E.g. grappling sports like Brazilian Jiu- | Jitsu don't usually involve impacts of that intensity, to the | head or otherwise. | mastazi wrote: | The problem is that out of this concern, some martial arts | disallowed head blows in competition, only to fall out of | grace due to how "unrealistic" they are in terms of self | defence. | | A large number of people who start practising martial arts, | does that out of a self defence concern, maybe they have been | bullied at school etc. | | I don't have a solution to this problem (possibly head gear, | but recent studies seem to indicate that it's not effective | and might even make things worse)[1]. | | Of course one possible solution would be to mainly promote | grappling-based martial arts, like BJJ or amateur wrestling, | but then in a self defence optic you would still need some | striking practice, at least in order to learn striking | defence. | | [1] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/olympic-boxers-arent- | wearing-h... | jvanderbot wrote: | One of the biggest misconceptions about boxing training is | that it involves repeated blows to the head. | | Boxing _competitions_ may. But boxing _training_ involves | form, combos, reflexes and defense drills, and lots of | conditioning. The most contact is "touch" drills, where you | may touch your glove to someone with no force behind it. | These drills are for intermediates to prepare for sparring, | and I've never seen someone get hit too hard there. | | Imagine if karate involved untrained people just kicking | eachother hard enough to injure themselves / someone. That | seems silly, yet that's what we imagine with boxing. | throwawayboise wrote: | Thanks for clarifying. I don't have experience with boxing | myself, but yes I was mostly talking about competition | (i.e. fight to knock-out) and it makes sense that training | is more about the skills you mention. | mistrial9 wrote: | not sure how anyone can recommend boxing now ; all those | interactions require the right social environment, things can | go wrong quickly. I reflect on learning about places in the USA | where they take wrestling seriously, which at the time seemed | like low-income, blue collar sort of places.. but now I realize | that the social interaction between men there was rugged, but | they had norms and ways to regain equilibrium. Meanwhile multi- | cultural urban school, really a bad idea to have regular and | repeated situations where students strike others, IMHO. | moron4hire wrote: | In principle, I want to agree. In practice, I think the vast | majority of martial arts schools are nothing more than | glorified day care facilities with a side of calisthenics. | | They don't constructively do anything to actually teach those | issues of control and discipline to the students. It's not | enough to give people the skills and then expect them to learn | from experience the restraint necessary to not use it. They | don't do anything at all to prepare their students for the | realities of what it means to use violence against another | human being. It is an emotionally traumatizing experience. | | Nothing like that was ever mentioned in any of the schools | across multiple styles that I attended. All that was discussed | was the potential of an "unfair" legal ruling if your attacker | decided to press battery chargers against you. There was always | an implication of "be careful when looking for a place to use | these skills", not "avoid it completely, except on completely | unavoidable threat to life and limb." | [deleted] | nimbius wrote: | Broke: I want to enter my son into a child fighting ring. | | Woke: My boys earning his arms merit badge in the boy scouts. | motohagiography wrote: | Grew up playing hockey and just assumed the point of having | children was to set them against one another for sport. It's as | though nobody here is from Canada. Did you not have lawn darts, | potassium nitrate, and licorice cigars? I was a generation or | so late to get a duelling scar, but grew up about 20miles from | the site of Camp X (where we invented the CIA), and it seemed | the american kids were given guns willy nilly where here it was | just expected you would use the tools at hand to plan a night | mission take them yourself in the event of an invasion. I'm a | bit out of the loop as I have only recently become an uncle, | but presumably a boy today can at least still have a pet | bobcat? | | Between all the sugar cereals and cartoons, it's a wonder the | people of the US aren't speaking Canadian... | totierne2 wrote: | Border poll? | corrral wrote: | See also: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canne_de_combat | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartitsu | | (related to the first link--it's a martial art Sherlock Holmes is | familiar with, in the Doyle stories) | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlestick | | The photos at the tops of the the second two links are great. All | the sailors in the last one, facing off in lines with their | stick-swords, and the dudes in boater hats posing with their | sticks like they're LARPers who accidentally put on a costume for | the wrong setting, at the second link. | irrational wrote: | 1925 in Great Britain? So, this was published just a few years | after the end of World War I. I presume it was written by people | who actually fought in the war. I wonder how much of this | reflected the skills they had learned or used as soldiers in that | war? | Dlanv wrote: | I'm not sure they fought with quarterstaffs or rapiers in WW1. | | The boxing and jiu jitsu perhaps. | ch4s3 wrote: | Ehh... a quarter staff is a good approximation for a lot of | weapons of convenience. It also teaches gauging distance in a | way that translate to boxing. | irrational wrote: | Apparently swords were used in the war. | | http://www.militarian.com/threads/use-of-the-sword-in- | ww1.70... | | Hitting each other with sticks seems like something people at | war would do ;-) | dctoedt wrote: | > _I wonder how much of this reflected the skills they had | learned or used as soldiers in that war?_ | | Even today, Marine recruits are trained to fight with pugil | sticks and padding -- part of the idea is to get them | accustomed to being hit without losing focus on the mission. | | https://rp.marineparents.com/bootcamp/mcmap.asp | ilamont wrote: | Some merit badges involve strenuous physical challenges, such as | hiking (multiple long-distance hikes including a 50-miler). The | canoeing MB requires learning how to get back on an overturned | canoe while in deep water, which is bloody hard. | | They still have badges for shooting and archery, too. | | There are also some badges that were unexpected - plumbing, | fixing farm equipment, computer game design. | mistrial9 wrote: | canoe merit badge here | graywh wrote: | there's no 50-mile hike requirement -- all the hikes are to be | done in a single day and 20 is the maximum length for good | reason | | the sum total of all the required hikes is 70 miles: 5, 10, 10, | 10, 15, 20 | ilamont wrote: | You are correct. I was thinking of the "50 miler" badge. | | https://www.scouting.org/awards/awards-central/50-miler/ | fishtoaster wrote: | I remember getting my computer badge- in the late 90s, iirc. I | had to write up a document in a word processor, create a simple | spreadsheet, and one or two other things I'm probably | forgetting. Even then it felt a bit basic and behind the times, | but I was happy to get an easy badge! | MisterBastahrd wrote: | Ah yes, the canoeing merit badge. Accomplished by yours truly | and one other scout because I found an underwater stump in the | Sewanee river and told him about it. LOL. | themodelplumber wrote: | Holy smokes! Reading this over, I'll bet there were more than a | few injuries among the groups that practiced it. | | Imagine sending your kid off for a fun weekend and then watching | them come home Sunday morning with an acute elbow injury from an | arm bar... | | Scouting was dangerous enough without that stuff. You could get | lost and even die in any number of unexpected ways. I watched a | friend take a full swing of a wood axe to the top of his head. It | didn't make any of us stronger or more interested in the | outdoors. Plus everybody told us the Eagle Scout looked amazing | on a resume when you become an adult, but they didn't mention | that it could have the complete opposite effect depending on | where you're applying... | | Edit: I see the typical pro-danger, pro-learning-through-injury | realism-posturing replies, but these quick takes are | inappropriate for beginners, which merit-badge-earning scouts | definitely are. | eckmLJE wrote: | Where did you apply that being an Eagle Scout counted against | you? | jimbob45 wrote: | The problem is that people who become Eagle Scouts tend to be | successful enough individuals that the jobs they apply to | don't understand why they would put such a low-grade | achievement on their resume (compared to the other higher | achievements they most likely have). | | It's like putting that you won an Olympic Gold in gymnastics | when applying to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Yes, it's | impressive to everyone, but at some point it's not necessary. | | I'd say the same applies to high school Honor Societies. If | you're a member of one, chances are that it's never going to | professionally benefit you. | depaya wrote: | When you look at the direct benefit over the course of your | lifetime I agree the benefit of things like Eagle Scout of | Honor Society are minimal, but I think that's missing the | indirect benefits. | | Speaking personally, I firmly believe that being an Eagle | Scout and HS Honor Society student helped me get into a | good college. | | I frequently discussed being an Eagle Scout (and scouting | in general, which I was deeply involved) during engineering | internship interviews and the interview for my first job | out of college. I do believe this contributed to starting | off my career strongly. | | Now about a decade removed from college I don't bring these | topics up, but I do still feel the positive contributions | they had on my trajectory. Not even to mention the benefits | they had on my soft skills. | aketchum wrote: | I understand what you mean, but I think you chose a | terrible example. I will never be in the Olympics, but if I | was I would definitely have that on my resume. | leephillips wrote: | Hell yes. If I were on the search committee, an olympic | _gold medal_ would make the candidate very interesting. | It tells you you're probably dealing with an | extraordinary individual. | e9 wrote: | I disagree. It shows a track record of success throughout | the life and that you are not just "one time wonder". | dctoedt wrote: | I'm an Eagle Scout (note the use of present tense) and I've | had that on all of my resumes my entire adult life. When I | got my Eagle, an uncle who was a senior executive at a Very | Large Bank said that he would always give an Eagle Scout at | least an interview. | arnmac wrote: | Not going to lie. If you submitted a resume for a job I | was hiring for and you 1. Pass the HR check 2. Had some | of what I was looking in skills 3. Had Eagle Scout on | your resume | | You are going to get an interview. Might not get the job | but I would give you a chance. | | Just like anything in life the Eagle Scout Rank is not | the same to everyone. Not everyone put in the same amount | of effort. They all should have met the same requirements | but in the end what did you personally learn? Some scouts | learn and grow in leadership others it was just a thing | they did. | | As an 11 year old scout I was almost immediately | introduced to conflict resolution, setting and achieving | goals, leading groups in small tasks. Looking back most | of the lessons didn't really take root until years later | when I got a real job. Then I had a group of concepts | that some of my peers did not and I was able to take the | early lessons and build on them more quickly. | totierne2 wrote: | Quickly? | wespiser_2018 wrote: | Me too. It's an interest award I'm proud of, and it takes | a tiny amount of space. | themodelplumber wrote: | When multimedia was a huge thing in the late '90s and early | '00s, you had a lot of small businesses with tight groups of | graphic designers, illustrators, developers (full stack web + | Flash & Director), and animators. Usually one of the | creatives was in charge of hiring. It was totally obviously | not a pro, and in many cases they'd make fun of it outright, | or politely advise to take it off. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | Well, sure. I was a quiz bowl captain, president of the | national honor society, and placed yearly at the state | science fair and I didn't list those on a professional | resume either. | | It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout. I | completed all requirements including the community project | aside from the board review before I turned 13. | | Our scoutmaster suddenly quit on us to attain his MS in | engineering (his employer surprised him by funding his | education) right after I attained the final required merit | badge and none of the adults wanted to take over, so it | would have required me to go to another troop in the area: | one was full of bullies, and one with a gigantic asshole of | a scoutmaster. I decided to go fishing instead. | dctoedt wrote: | > _It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout._ | | The actual requirements aren't that demanding for | reasonably-intelligent kids. As in so many areas of life, | one's work ethic and persistence matter a lot because of | the time-in-grade and position-of-responsibility | requirements for each of the upper ranks, namely Star, | Life, and Eagle, and those requirements must be completed | for each rank in series, not in parallel. | | > _I completed all requirements including the community | project aside from the board review before I turned 13._ | | I was an assistant Scoutmaster, and then the troop | committee chair, in my son's troop, which we think is the | largest in the U.S. (some 250 boys and around 50 | registered adult leaders during my time). The troop is | known as an "Eagle factory," but the Scouts have to put | in the work. Hardly any of them make it to Eagle before | about age 15 or 16 because they also do sports and other | activities and eventually get distracted by the scent of | gasoline and perfume (as the saying used to be in the | days of all-male Scouting). Not a few Eagle Scouts, | including my own son, complete their final requirement, a | Scoutmaster conference, with just a couple of hours to go | before they age out at 12:00:00 a.m. at the start of | their 18th birthdays. | | https://www.boyscouttrail.com/boy-scouts/eagle-scouts.asp | themodelplumber wrote: | It sounds like the audience for your memoir is being kept | waiting, but in the meantime, keep pointing out us False | Scotsmen. :-) | ilamont wrote: | > It takes very little effort to be an Eagle Scout. I | completed all requirements including the community | project aside from the board review before I turned 13. | | It really varies from troop to troop. Ours is old-school, | by the book, multiple leadership positions required for | half-year terms. No one got an Eagle who was under 15 and | the projects are very involved with construction or | logistics. Tearing down and rebuilding a long wooden | fence at a women's shelter, constructing display cabinets | at a nature center, working with a local charity to | collect hundreds of food boxes. Someone built a real | footbridge over a stream, which not only required decent | carpentry skills but also driving rebar through 8x8 posts | into the stony bank with sledgehammers. I got poison ivy | twice while clearing brush to make a nature trail and | rebuild a garden at a local temple. | | These projects are often the first time many youths have | ever picked up a power tool or project managed anything. | | The bureaucracy associated with the service project and | application was stunning. | freedomben wrote: | Likewise. I was 15 when I finished and it was a | monumental amount of work. The troop you're in matters a | great deal. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | Probably. I think I lucked out because my service project | was clearing and installing seating and paths in a new, | small park from land donated by a family who inherited it | and didn't want to deal with the taxes because there were | technically about 30 owners. | omegaham wrote: | This was also our troop. You couldn't make Life Scout | before you were 15 thanks to the leadership requirements, | and that meant that the earliest you could get Eagle was | sometime at age 16. The vast majority of them got it | _just_ before they turned 18. The projects were intended | to be ambitious and demanded that the Scout do the bulk | of the planning and dealing with the bureaucracy. | | Imagine my surprise when our troop went to SeaBase and | ran into a bunch of other troops where everyone got Eagle | at age 14. | ilamont wrote: | That's the way it is for our troop. Most of the kids | aren't able to get Eagle before they are HS juniors and | are 16 or 17. A few just made it in before turning 18. | | The bureaucracy is a mistake. I know why Scouting does it | - BSA organizational culture, abuses in the past, trying | to apply standards across local troops - but a lot of it | falls on troop volunteers to and parents to nag scouts to | death and fix the inevitable problems that crop up. It's | not right. | wespiser_2018 wrote: | that's me and my friend: we both made eagle scout at 17, | and the ceremony for me was after I turned 18. | | My first troop was very by the book, and the last eagle | scout in the troop was the scoutmasters son, maybe 5 | years before I joined. That troop disbanded, and I | finished my award at another troop were it was a bit | easier, but still a lot of work. | | For me, earning Eagle scout required me to stay active in | scouting through age 17, and do one (or maybe 2) extra | weeks at summer camp to earn enough merit badges. Once I | was older (16/17) and in my second troop, I already had | the leadership requirements, so I just went to meetings | and help out with the kids that were much younger than me | while I planned my project. | jghn wrote: | I am an Eagle Scout. I would never put it on my resume, | and I roll my eyes when I see a resume with it on there. | Ignoring the always present "it was harder back then" | (fwiw, in my day average ages started to plunge from | 15/16/17 to 13/14/15), my point still stands. | | I can see it being okay as a first job out of college or | similar. I got my Eagle at 17, and I could imagine | someone with no real work experience thinking that's | something to help pad the books. But once one hits 30, | 40, 50, beyond there's no reason having done an Eagle | project should be cited as a major accomplishment in | their life. At least not from the perspective of seeking | employment. I'm 100% in favor of people feeling proud | about what they did, the whole point of that project was | to have done right by people. | acrobatsunfish wrote: | Life for life? | arnmac wrote: | This made me laugh. Many a scout has been 1 merit badge | away. | colechristensen wrote: | It's not a quick take, it's just modern infantilization of | children to the point that many people in their 20s have | difficulty with basics. | | Everyone starts as a beginner and age doesn't change that, | except maybe by making things harder as you get older. | | Do you object to the pacing or the starting age or are you | imagining that the people teaching this were reckless? | throwawayboise wrote: | At the time this was written, boys learning to face danger, | fight, and possibly getting injured was considered normal. | troon-lover wrote: | prometheus76 wrote: | Part of learning to defend oneself is getting injured along the | way. It's part of the learning process. You can't learn to | fight by reading a book about it. If you start to participate | and learn through that participation, sometimes your efforts | (or someone else's) will lead to injury. | themodelplumber wrote: | > You can't learn to fight by reading a book about it | | Just to say that this is untrue, as long as your opponent has | not read any books or had any training. A lot of scouts or | just bullied kids who visit the library will tell you that. | [deleted] | UberFly wrote: | Sheesh. Some of the best things I ever did involved the risk of | getting hurt. And yes, I guess I could see someone very left- | leaning hating on an Eagle Scout but it would still probably be | rare thankfully. | themodelplumber wrote: | Oh, you should see a right-leaning person screaming | obscenities at a boy scout, if you're open to new | perspectives. | | You know they have been teaching Environmental Science since | at least the '80s? I almost saw an adult fight break out | because of that one. | | Scouts always had randos protesting their indoctrination. | Zone of the political spectrum depended on the contextual hot | take. | micromacrofoot wrote: | What's the liberal complaint about scouting? | convolvatron wrote: | i think it was the 90s or early aughts, there was a lot of | media-heavy and forth about gay scoutmasters. and I guess | gay scouts too. | [deleted] | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | From one side its overt religious bias. From the other it's | being too inclusive by admitting girls. | themodelplumber wrote: | For the big ones, read about the history of scouting, | including when BSP visited Portland OR. You'll understand | right away. | micromacrofoot wrote: | what's BSP? | atdrummond wrote: | I assume this is a malformed initialism for Baden-Powell, | scouting's founder. | mikestew wrote: | That is the worst homework assignment ever: read the | complete history of Boy Scouts, including when an | unexpanded not-common acronym visited Portland. | | Was a link asking too much? | atdrummond wrote: | https://scoutingmagazine.org/issues/0811/d-wwas.html I | assume this is a reference to the political fracas that | Baden-Powell encountered with a group of Socialists in | Portland. | gcheong wrote: | There are certainly complaints to be made about the BSA | policies as an organization but I wouldn't hold that | against someone who went through scouting. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-11 23:00 UTC)