Back in My Day: Comparing Today's Badges With Those of the Past

Back in the Stone Ages when we had the blue Junior handbook we didn't have any computer-related badges.  Of course back in those days, computers took up entire rooms, cost millions of dollars and could only be operated by experts.  Today, most of us carry a more powerful (and definitely more user-friendly) computer in our pocket/purse all day every day, and it even makes phone calls. That Girl Scout badges have changed should be of no surprise to anyone, but for some, the question is whether they have changed for the better, or the worse.  Today, I'm going to look at a badges that has  stood the test of time--the  "cooking badge"  in the Junior program--because "back in the day" there were no Daisies, Brownies did not earn badges and neither did high school girls.

FYI, the headings below are links to the summarized handbooks.

How Girls Can Help Their Country 

How Girls Can Help Their Country was the first Girl Scout Handbook, published in 1916.  One interesting thing about it was the different number of requirements for badges.  To get the Laundress badge (today's girls would be lining up to get this) or the Marksmanship Badge (Rifles) you only had to meet three requirements, but the Cook badge had eleven.

Girls had to know how to wash up, how to set a table, how to wait on a table, light a fire and hand dishes correctly at the table.  They had to be able to clean and dress a fowl and clean a fish.  Making a "cook place in the open" was one requirement and another was to make coffee, tea or cocoa, and to make bread, and be able to figure the cost of them. They had to be able to cook a dish with last night's leftovers and they had to know the order in which a full course meal was served.  They had to be able to cook two kinds of meat and two kinds of vegetables as well as to make two types of salad.  Finally, they had to be able to make preserves and can them.

Intermediate Girl Scout (1940's to 1960's)

The Intermediate Girl Scout program was for 9-11 year old girls and spanned the 1940's to the 1960's.  The handbook I reviewed was from the 1940's and I don't know to what extent the requirements changed over the years.

Intermediate Girl Scouts earned both ranks and badges.  To get the Second Class rank, girls had to, among other things, cook a simple dish or dessert.  To earn the Cook badge they had to do 10 of 14 listed activities, and at least 5 had to include cooking.

The offered activities include meal planning, learning about places where you can learn to cook at no cost, cooking at least two low cost nourishing dishes, a personal nutrition diary, cooking a food that is produced locally, and learning how it is processed and shipped to non-local places, making a collection of food labels and learning why they are printed the way they are (font size for example), making ice cream and visiting an ice cream plant, going to the grocery store and learning to comparison shop, cook a dish from a newspaper or magazine, and learn how much the ingredients would cost, as well as the preparation time, make a troop or patrol recipe book with each girl contributing at least five self-tested recipes, reviewing restaurant menus and selecting a nutritious meal within a budget, plan lunches to take to school, and with your fellow troop members, cook lunch for parents or other adults.

Junior (Blue handbook from 1960's to early '70s.)

This badge had 10 requirements and girls had to meet all of them.  They had to be able to measure dry, liquid and solid ingredients and know measurement equivalents. They had to be able to control a stove burner, preheat an oven, clean a stove safely and use five cooking tools. With their patrols, they were to develop a list of ten food and cooking terms that were new to them, and the meanings, and to list the four basic food groups and why they were important.  That's why we each had a badge notebook where we wrote that stuff.

Girls had to demonstrate that they knew how to clean up as they went, and that they knew how to store food.  They had to learn the history of their favorite food or spice (and remember, they couldn't just Google it). They had to describe three well-balanced lunches they enjoyed.

Finally, they had to cook.  To get the badge, the girls had to cook:

• A cake from a mix
• One starchy vegetable
• One leafy vegetable
• Fresh vegetable salad
• Cooked fruit dessert
• One fresh fruit for breakfast
• White sauce or a milk dessert
• Two main dishes
• A simple well-balanced dinner (plan and prepare)

Junior (Immediate past program)

The current program started in 2009 and was fully phased in during the 2010-2011 program year.  Prior to that, the program was much more badge-centered.  Juniors were in 4th, 5th or 6th grades.  The Let's Get Cooking badge had ten requirements and the requirements included both information and activities.  Girls compared the results of touching a cut apple with clean hands and with dirty hands and letting the apple sit for a week in a sealed jar. They were supposed to speak with a food expert about how long they could keep various types of foods.  Girls also developed a restaurant theme, menu etc. and then invited people to come and eat.  Another requirement was to collect food for a food bank. Girls created a recipe in which eggs were used. They used a small appliance to cook a dish. A recipe for a no-cook dessert was given and girls were supposed to make it.  The next requirement was for a "blender party"--basically making smoothies out of ingredients the girls brought. Girls found recipes from other countries, though the requirements don't mention actually cooking them.  Finally  girls were tasked with taking a recipe from a cookbook and making it healthier--doing such things as substituting applesauce for oil or ground turkey for ground beef. 

Girls Guide to Girl Scouting (Current program)

Today's badges have five requirements, and the program was originally written to give the girls a choice of three activities for each requirement.  VTK offers more options, or leaders can come up with their own.

Today, step 1 is "Step up your skills with a pro" and girls are told to ask a great cook to tell them about cooking tools, safety, cleanliness, what makes a nutritionally balanced meal and how to present food on a plate. While the Girls Guide to Girl Scouting recommends visiting a restaurant, inviting a great cook to the meeting or touring a kitchen to meet this requirement, VTK has the girls playing a game with kitchen gadgets and practicing measuring.

Step 2 is to "Whip up a great breakfast".  In the Girls Gide, girls are asked to figure out 5 school day breakfasts that are quick, easy and good for you, or to make an egg for everyone in their family for breakfast one day, or to make a weekend breakfast like French toast or pancakes.  VTK has the girls making buttered toast or French toast, eggs, and either yogurt parfaits or roll-ups.

Step 3 is to fix a healthy lunch or dinner.  The Girls Guide choices are to make something with a flat bread, make an international sandwich or to make a pocket food like a stuffed pita, Chinese dumpling or Australian meat pie.  VTK suggests making a pizza with one or more types of flat bread as the crust, or making bagel pizzas and cooking them on stick over a heat source, like a campfire.

Step 4 is to create a delicious dessert.  Girls Guide options are to make a favorite dessert healthier, make a dessert you have never tried before, or make a holiday dessert.  VTK offers apples baked in crescent roll dough.

Step 5 is to make your own meal.  GGGS says to either make a salad using a protein, a vegetable and a starch, make a one-pot meal, or to make a meal with separate protein, vegetable and starch dishes. VTK has the girls making a one-pot chili and gathering ingredients for soup to take home and cook for their family. 

My Comments:

One big difference I've noticed between today and "back in the day" is that "back in the day" (early 1970's) our meetings may have included badge work, but they weren't all about badge work.  Most badge work was done at home and at each meeting there was time for girls to share with the troop what they had been doing for badge work.  I belonged to three different Junior troops (military family) so I tend to think this was pretty much the norm.  Some girls had lots of badges; others not so many, and fun patches weren't a thing.  

Something I found interesting while writing this post was how some programs were requirement-based, and other, activity-based.  How Girls Can Help Their Country and the blue Junior book had lists of things the girls needed to be able to do.  The others were "do these activities".

It is hard to say how the requirements for badges were interpreted "back in the day" or how girls actually went about earning the badges.  I remember going to the electric company one year and the gas company another year to a class taught by a home economist and when we finished we were awarded the Cook badge.  I remember that we all got a chance to help and we may have had homework but I doubt we cooked all the things listed above during a couple of one or two hour classes.  I do remember we got small cookbooks to take home.

To some extent the badge show the difference in what is considered "cooking" and, I think, to some extent, the differences in what we expect from kids.  That first badge has the girls cleaning fish and fowl.  Of course back in that day, if fowl was for dinner it was very possible it came from the backyard and getting it from yard to table involved more than pulling the plastic wrap off the package.  I also know that back in those days, homemade preserves and home canning were common, whereas today I'm sure you can buy most preserves far more cheaply than you can make them from fresh fruit and few families own canning jars, water baths etc.

On the other hand, despite the fact that most adults today work outside the home, or maybe because of it, kids seem to have fewer household chores and concerns that they may hurt themselves or others are more prevalent.  I wonder how many of the requirements of the older badges most girls would have earned just doing daily chores?

What do you think?  Do today's badges teach skills as well as older ones?  Do you think badges should primarily be recognitions of things done at meetings or should they be individual awards that recognize particular girls' work and interests?