2013 Boy Scout Requirements & Advancement Changes

[RWSmith]

2013 Boy Scout Requirements & Advancement Changes

Since its now January, the new 2013 BOY SCOUT REQUIREMENTS book should be available soon. I have an advance (PDF) copy; and, last night, I started the process of reviewing the booklet, updating the requirements on the usscouts.org site, and preparing my annual list of all changes. I will update the worksheets once the web pages showing the requirements and changes have been completed.

I haven't looked through the book completely yet to see what actually changed, but here is the list from the inside front cover of the booklet identifying the ranks and merit badges that apparently have revisions this year:

Rank requirement changes

• Second Class — requirements 3e, 3f, and 3g.
  
• First Class — requirement 4a.
• Star — requirement 5.
• Life — requirement 5.
• Eagle — requirements 4 and 7.
  
  And,
  
• Eagle Scout rank alternative requirements

Minor merit badge requirement updates

• Astronomy (3b, 9)
• Automotive Maintenance (1, 8d)
• Bird Study (7b)
• Chess (3)
• Citizenship in the Community (3a)
• Communication (1a, 1b)
• Composite Materials (1)
• Dog Care (10)
• Emergency Preparedness (2b)
• Fire Safety (7c)
• Fishing (1)
• Gardening (1, 3, 6)
• Hiking (5, 6)
• Home Repairs (1, 6b)
• Law (11)
• Oceanography (8b)
• Orienteering (6c)
• Photography (3)
• Safety (6, 7)
• Wilderness Survival (1)
• Wood Carving (1)

New merit badges

• Kayaking
• Search and Rescue


NOTE: The new merit badges were, of course, released during 2012, but are listed since they weren't in the 2012 edition of the booklet.

Eagle-required merit badge changes

As of now, the forthcoming changes to Cooking MB (Changes in 2013; Eagle-required on Jan. 1, 2014)*, and the new Sustainability MB* do not appear in the booklet yet, but there are notes concerning them and the future changes to the Eagle requirements in regard to those badges.

(*) NOTE: Threads have already been created regarding these two MBs. Please use the links above to discuss them there.

[smtroop168]

Book is on the shelves now

[PaulSWolf]

The changes have now all been incorporated into the USSSP site, and will be posted on meritbadge.org as soon as the wiki can be updated. The worksheets on USScouts.org now reflect the current requirements (but the old ones are still available as well for those who already started work). I'll upload the revised worksheets to meritbadge.org when I'm told the wiki has been updated.

My annual summary is now available at these URLs:
http://usscouts.org/advance/changes/advchanges13.asp and
http://usscouts.org/advance/docs/Advanc ... es2013.pdf

New merit badge pamphlets for Photography, Public Speaking, and Astronomy should be in the Scout Shops in the next week or two. The pamphlets for Photography and Astronomy will include the requirements changes that are in the 2013 Boy Scout Requirements Book. (There are no requirements changes for Public Speaking - just new content).

Next up - in early March - will be the new Game Design merit badge.

There will also be a few more revised merit badge pamphlets in coming months, most with revisions to both content and requirements.

[optimist]

Advancement revisions for 2013 for rank and merit badge pages on MeritBadge.org have been completed. Note that there may be other pages around the web site which may relate to these pages which also need to be updated. (I've updated some already.)

[scoutaholic]

...
My annual summary is now available at these URLs:
http://usscouts.org/advance/changes/advchanges13.asp and
http://usscouts.org/advance/docs/Advanc ... es2013.pdf
...

Paul - the .asp link has not been working for about 3 days.

[Quailman]

It's working now, at least for me.

[PaulSWolf]

ADDITIONAL MERIT BADGE REQUIREMENTS CHANGES

BSA has issued a number of new merit badge pamphlets since the list in the 2013 Boy Scout Requirements booklet was released. That list indicated THAT new pamphlets were to be issued for Astronomy, Gardening, Photography, and Public Speaking, and the booklet contained updated requirements for each of those except Public Speaking. Many of the new pamphlets include minor changes to the requirements.

There were, of course, new pamphlets for the three new merit badges released during 2013: Game Design, Programming, & Sustainability, and one for Cycling, which had a major revision (Mountain Biking option) released at the Jamboree.

In addition, new pamphlets are available for these merit badges: Archery, Art, Cycling, Fishing, Horsemanship, Leatherwork, Personal Fitness, Pioneering, Pulp & Paper, Rifle Shooting, Safety, Shotgun Shooting, & Weather.

These merit badges have revised requirements that were NOT shown in the 2013 Boy Scout Requirements booklet: Archery, Art, Horsemanship, Leatherwork, Personal Fitness, Pets, Pioneering, Pulp & Paper, Shotgun Shooting, & Weather, plus Cycling as I already mentioned.

Safety had a minor wording change between the time that the 2013 Boy Scout Requirements booklet was published and the publication of the new Safety pamphlet (to reflect a change in terminology used by Homeland Security).

Also Sustainability had a change to one requirement to accommodate Scouts whose families do not have water bills to examine, and Scouting Heritage had a change to one requirement, to allow visits to local Scouting museums, exhibits, or Scouting historians. Both of these were announced by BSA recently, and are shown on Scouting.org.

Finally, BSA recently announced that they have changed the name of Cinematography merit badge to Moviemaking, and have made some changes to the requirements along with the change in name.

UPDATE: The requirements pages and workbooks/worksheets on both the meritbadge.org and usscouts.org sites have all been updated to incorporate all of the changes listed above.