My son and I were recently rummaging through an old box where he found my Scouting materials, including old handbooks, a neckerchief and my merit badge sash. As he unrolled the green cloth, his eyes lit up as he counted the scores of badges on the sash with varying symbols and images, and we spent time talking about my time as a Boy Scout, eventually working my way toward Eagle Scout.
I loved sharing stories of the adventures I had and amazing people I met during my Scouting years. I recalled learning to shoot at Treasure Island Scout Camp and doing various community service projects around the Philadelphia area where I grew up. I told my son about learning to fish and kayak down a river and the many unique personalities of the other Scouts in my troop. And I remembered the 40 merit badges I had completed while a Scout for six years and the many projects I immersed myself in — from archery and coin collecting to botany and first aid.
As my memories came flooding back, I realized that many lessons from the merit badges that I “earned” in my early and mid-teens helped shape me into a person who thinks about the larger communities in which I am embedded. Earning these badges kept me from being selfish and turning inward and genuinely helped me connect with many different communities — ethnic, religious and socioeconomic — where I learned about their differences along with our many shared values and dreams. To make Eagle Scout, a Scout must earn several required badges that impart what I now realize is a clear theme and purpose: responsibility with competence. Some badges include skill development in areas like first aid, personal management and cooking, but the remainder are explicitly about how to be consequential citizens of varied communities.
To receive the Citizenship in the Community badge, for instance, Scouts must have exposure to their local communities and engage with the issues impacting the community. Scouts are asked to “attend an in-person meeting of your city, town, or county council or school board, local court session” and then with the badge supervisor “choose one of the issues discussed at the meeting where a difference of opinions was expressed, and explain to your counselor why you agree with one opinion more than you do another one.” When I speak with middle school students today, almost none are familiar with how local government works, let alone have attended or understood what they experienced at a town hall.
The badge requirements go further. Scouts are also asked to find a charitable organization outside their troop which brings “people in your community together to work for the good of your community.” Then, they are asked to research the organization — “Using a variety of resources (including newspapers, fliers and other literature, the Internet, volunteers, and employees of the organization), find out more about this organization” — and then, with supervision, contact the organization and “find out what young people can do to help.” Scouts are then asked to volunteer at least eight hours for the organization and discuss the experience with a counselor.
Beyond identifying and connecting with a local organization and doing service work, the Citizenship in the Community badge asks Scouts to develop a public presentation about important and unique aspects their communities including “information about the history, cultures, and ethnic groups of your community; its best features and popular places where people gather; and the challenges it faces.” Scouts are then expected to present their work in front of their troops and engage with their peers, helping them become comfortable speaking and sharing in a more public setting and creating dialogue and understanding about local and varied communities.
Simply put, these badges create informed, engaged, consequential citizens, and these requirements are only part of what Scouts do for the Citizenship in the Community badge. And there are other transformational badges, too. Citizenship in the Nation asks Scouts to read and then discuss the “Declaration of Independence; Bill of Rights; and ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ the traditional United States motto.” Considering how few Americans know their rights and are familiar with the founding documents, Scouts are gaining a solid civic foundation with these requirements.
Looking back, I am indebted to the Scouts and how these badges helped me think outside myself and appreciate our diversity, history and institutions. With the combination of a decline in civic education, social media and suburban sprawl disconnecting young Americans from their local communities, the experiences and teachings from these badges are not making it to those in Gen Alpha — the current generation of Scouting age — who would be well served to have experiences from those badges that I had.
As a nation with a new presidential administration and rhetoric of an America returning to greatness, the fact is that if we are going to make this country truly great, we must figure out a way to make the lessons that I had from these merit badges commonplace, whether through schools, Scouting or something else entirely. I certainly hope that my son will have similar experiences to my own in a few years, for citizens are not born, they must be made; they must understand how to lead, how to have character, manage civic responsibility and live a moral life, how to work through difference, how to be part of civil society, associations, and the state, and know how to be part of a collective and polity. These merit badges offer a framework to help teach how to do just that; we should be talking now about citizenship and how Americans can rise to help restore our union.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.