Bozonorth wrote:Can you tell me when the personal fitness merit badge was revised in 2006?
It is my understanding that if a scout had started the merit badge, he is governed by the requirements at the time it was started versus the new requirments. Is that true?
BSA issued a new edition of the
Personal Fitness merit badge pamphlet sometime during 2006, but the exact date is unknown, and varied from place to place. The new pamphlet just appeared at National Supply and in Scout Shops when stock of the old edition was gone. That pamphlet has requirements that differed from the previous edition.
OFFICIALLY, the requirements changed on January 1, 2007, when the 2007 edition of
Boy Scout Requirements was issued, but even that date is misleading, as the booklet wasn't actually available for purchase until late in January.
If a Scout had the new merit badge pamphlet before 1/1/2007, and used the newer requirements, that is fine - no one will object.
If he started the badge with the OLD requirements, before the new
Boy Scout Requirements booklet was available, that too is fine. He may indeed use those requirements until he finishes the badge.
To be honest, there isn't a great deal of difference between the two sets of requirements. Most of the changes were simply a series of wording changes, with no real net effect in what is required of the Scout. The only substantive changes are in requirements 6 & 9. In the "Strength Tests" portion of req. 6, the Scout must do pull-ups AND push-ups, instead of choosing between those two tests, and a new "career exploration" item was added as req. 9. The old text from req. 9 was added to req. 8.
The details of everything that changed can be seen here:
http://usscouts.org/mb/changes/mb010-06.htmlPaul S. Wolf, P.E.(Ret.) mailto:pwolf@usscouts.org
Secretary, US Scouting Service Project, Inc.
