For a short period of time in boy scouts, they offered skill Awards.
My troop was very tiny – I ended up being the last final member – for 6 months I ran a meeting all by myself with just me at the end.
But before that, they were up to a couple dozen members.
But we went through Scout leaders like water so there was no real merit badge stuff.
I was however able to get skill Awards because they didn’t require as much from adults
I’m very proud of the skill Awards – I had to work for them.
But they were phasing out the skill Awards even while I was there because they were considered ” participation trophies ” and “not real merit badges”.
Have they not existed, I wouldn’t have gotten much advancement at all Beyond senior patrol leader.
the Boy Scouts became fully super conservative by the late ’80s, and stayed that way for 25 years
I was lucky because I was at the tail tail end of liberal Boy Scouts / the conservatives were in power but their full forces hadn’t been felt yet
There was a coup just before I was involved – they moved to the headquarters of Boy Scouts to Texas and started conservatizing everything
Those political chsnges took place in the late ’70s early ’80s
I didn’t know all these politics though.
But when I found out about them later, a lot of weird things made sense.