Boy Scouts: A badge for video-gaming

“What’s next,” said Carly Weeks in the Toronto Globe and Mail, “a badge for watching TV?” In an arguably desperate effort to keep pace with the digital society, the Boy Scouts of America is now letting its younger members earn a merit badge for video-gaming. It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. To earn the new badge (actually a metal “belt-loop”), Cub Scouts must demonstrate an understanding of the video-game rating system, create a balanced schedule of gaming and schoolwork, and learn to play a new video game. It’s “not exactly heavy lifting,” said Judy Peet in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. Then again, with membership in the Scouts down 25 percent in the last decade, and the average American boy playing seven hours of video games a week, this may be a necessary concession to the modern world.

“What a bummer,” said the New London, Conn., Day in an editorial. We understand that video games are part of our culture, and “that Scouts need to be well-rounded.” But with so much of American childhood now happening online, shouldn’t the Scouts be trying to get kids outside? Traditional Scouting may be hokey, but it offers an increasingly rare opportunity for youngsters to let go of their joysticks and learn some vital real-world life skills, from how to start a fire and build a shelter to how to follow instructions and function as part of a team. “We keep hearing more and more about how sedentary our children have become,” said Lon Allan in the San Luis Obispo, Calif., Tribune. Rewarding them for excellence in video-gaming will just encourage kids to spend even more hours indoors in the dark. That “goes against everything the Boy Scouts of America stands for.”

Not so, said Rosemary Black in the New York Daily News. It’s not as if every traditional scouting activity is being replaced by a virtual equivalent that can be performed from the comfort of a couch. The video-game award is just one badge, and if a Scout wants to earn more of them he’ll have to master knot-tying or compass navigation, or go help an old lady across the street—just like Scouts in ages past. The video-game badge is a shrewd attempt “to make Scouting cool,” and thus introduce a whole new generation to the character-building joys of more typical Scout activities, such as trekking through the wilderness while being eaten by bugs. As they’ve taught boys to do for generations, the Boy Scouts organization is simply doing what it must to survive.

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