Master at Arms Badge for Boy Scouts (1925) [pdf]
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
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.
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.
And yes, that was the "ear bite" fight.
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.
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...
Even in the grimiest of boxing gyms, unless you are explicitly training for a competition, I have never seen this rule violated.
And soccer has the most injuries of any sport, according to an ER doc (who treated me for a football injury).
That said, I know a kid who somehow lacerated his kidney and had to spend time in the ICU. At least two others with concussions.
Helio Gracie thickened the mats for his match with him to prevent this. By all reports Kimura threw him around the ring before finally switching to ground-work for the win (And after winning with a reverse-keylock, that submission was named after him in BJJ).
And the Gracie school seems to specialize in choking. Which might be unwise with certain candidates.
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."
At least when I was growing up, it was always the kids who took karate that were quick to fight, or talk smack. So I think I agree. Although one caveat is that it's not appropriate for everyone, or that some kids need to be much older than others. So maybe it has to do with the parents and facilities not denying those kids based on their ability to control themselves.
On a side note, if a kid uses martial arts skills in real life, it could result in increased liability. That's something people don't think about.
Not that I made my daughters full size wooden practice claymores or anything. I’m asking for a friend.
There are other heavy weapons martial artist organizations out there. Jill Bearup (on YouTube) is a stage combat person, but she's also had contact with people who do martial arts in the space.
Of course, if you want to learn Japanese style sword combat, go down to your local Kendo Dojo.
For reference, it's what movie actor Jet Li was trained in and performed when he came to the White House in the 70s as part of the U.S.-China opening up.
My counterpoint being, it's good to know the skills but avoidance when possible is best.
At least, I assume so given how much time is dedicated to creating space and moving away in my boxing and krav maga training.
Boxing is a perfectly fine sport, with reputable, kid-friendly gyms all over. My favorite gym, where I trained for years, had an after-school program for kids, in fact.
And I always take the opportunity to dispel a common misconception: You can study boxing your whole life and never have anyone throw a real punch at you, or strike you violently. Just like you can study karate your whole life, and never have to kick anyone in the head. You should look up videos of boxing training techniques (not sparring) and see what it's all about.
Technique, conditioning, mental preparation, combos, footwork are what you learn. Sparring is for those who want to compete.
Honestly, why do people still believe this? Movies?
I see it as a chicken and egg problem.
It can be hard to manage situations where people from different background and culture have to intensely interact with each other, especially as they are pushed to their limits. But it is also by having multi-cultural people regularly interact with each others that you help improve their relations and make these situations better.
If it seems hard to enter the cycle, a smaller first step to have the kids get used to be around each other could help.
Still sounds more fun than the basket weaving merit badge though.
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?
Probably why I did the mile swim several times, treading water to keep leach free builds endurance.
This is backwards. Your friends aren't cheap knockoffs of a therapist. Therapists are people you pay to pretend to be your friend.
BB gun fights were a regular feature of childhood where and when I grew up. I never took part myself - my mom had already instructed me in the correct use, care, and safe handling of actual firearms, for one thing, and for another I knew she'd take my own Daisy air gun away if she heard of me doing anything so foolish - but lots of kids I knew did, and regularly had the injuries to prove it. Their folks never fussed so far as I knew.
That was in the late 80s and early 90s. So I feel like in the 1920s kids hitting each other with sticks is going to be about 50% "builds character," and the balance "well, it'll help get them ready for the next war".
Basket weaving was considered the slacker badge (for my troop at least) to work on during summer camp because it had 2 requirements and it generally took a day to complete. I was more interested in rock climbing / canoeing / forestry etc - we're in the wood for a week, why waste it?
They still have badges for shooting and archery, too.
There are also some badges that were unexpected - plumbing, fixing farm equipment, computer game design.
the sum total of all the required hikes is 70 miles: 5, 10, 10, 10, 15, 20
I had a habit of collecting unusual merit badges that few had seen before: Animal Science (hey, it's got a cow on the badge, and besides I had cows), Atomic Energy, etc. I got my Entomology merit badge at the National Scout Jamboree from a team of highly motivated active duty Soldiers who had the job of eradicating potential disease vectors from areas where our troops would live and work, even during wartime. They were so happy I stopped at their little booth — I'm guessing the majority of Soldiers treated them like the bulk fuel folks (or other unsung jobs) rather than the people who keep you from contracting some horrific tropical disease.
The head of the team was a full bird colonel with a PhD from IIRC Cornell who revelled in the fact that .mil is exempt from EPA regs. They got to use the heavy artillery of insect control means. He flatly stated, with no small amount of pride, that not a single Scout at the National Jamboree that year would get Lyme unless they went into the (untreated) woods. My father was a staff physician for the Jamboree, and as best as he could tell the colonel was right — now, they did have Lyme infections from kids going decidedly "off piste", this being Fort AP Hill, VA, in the summer.
Unfortunately I didn't stick with it long enough to go on any of the famous backpacking trips. That being said, Boy Scouts was a valuable experience that offered some cool experiences no other organization offers around that age.
None can be overnight.
The Backpacking MB requires a 30 mile trip over at least 3 days or nights (3 overnight stops).
None require a 50 mile hike, though there is a “50 mile” award that requires at least 50 miles over 5 days with no motor vehicles. Some troops (units) make a 50 mile trip compulsory in order to attend the High Adventure base trip (e.g. Philmont.)
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.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/STORIES/SCA-stories1-msg.ht...
The boxing and jiu jitsu perhaps.
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 ;-)
45 years later I can still mess with some of those knots!
Boy Scouts we’re awesome. Pity in the USA they are a little under attack now.
BSA has always been tied up with religion and churches - and particularly the Mormon church. And this is very much not the case in other countries.
Anyone who thinks that's a hot take, infantilization of kids, politically motivated, or whatever else has been going on in this thread should probably watch e.g. https://youtu.be/3bmcpjBO4a0?t=270
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.
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.
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.
Was a link asking too much?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Imagine my surprise when our troop went to SeaBase and ran into a bunch of other troops where everyone got Eagle at age 14.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I, OTOH, suffered an ascending aortic dissection that terminates in my left iliac. I survived (obviously), but it did stop me from e.g. Philmont afterwords.
Woke: My boys earning his arms merit badge in the boy scouts.
Between all the sugar cereals and cartoons, it's a wonder the people of the US aren't speaking Canadian...
I was given my first rifle when I was 6 (for Christmas). Still have it.
I turned 60 yesterday.
Different times.