Badges of Honour

I see that the Girl Guide organisation is thinking about introducing courses for some new badges. Apparently, it’s going to introduce sessions on how to practise safe sex, manage debt, and reduce the size of one’s carbon footprint. They’re probably more relevant to today’s world than the badges for learning how to iron and how to milk cows (1910), or the Homemaker and Commonwealth badges of 1957.

 

The organisation has polled 1,000 of its members to come up with the subjects for the new courses. The need for knowing how to practise safe sex or manage debt I think is perfectly understandable, and laudable. I am much more perturbed by the fact that apparently large numbers of those polled felt the need for a badge for learning how to assemble flat-pack furniture. The engineer in me finds it difficult to appreciate that people do not have this capability as an innate skill. I shudder to think how I would cope without it.