What is the BSA interpretation of "pre-requisite"?

I volunteer with a Youth Group (Saint John Ambulance of Canada) that has "Proficiencies", which are roughly equivalent to the Merit Badge program. (If the youth member obtains 12 proficiencies, with at least one from each of 7 categories, they get the Grand Prior's Award.)

On the Labour Day weekend, we ran a 3-day course to teach two proficiencies for 5 of our members. (We were hoping for more members, but my policy is not to cancel these events if I don't have to.) One of the proficiencies, the Basic Rescuer I (Search and Rescue) proficiency, has a "prerequisite" of Wilderness First Aid (WFA).

Now, I'm a St. John Ambulance WFA Instructor, and I saw nothing in the course requirements that built on the WFA course. Only one of the 5 students had previously completed the WFA course, but we taught the proficiency anyway; I figured I would run a WFA course in the fall (which we did in October) and sign them off after they had completed that course. Our Area Admin officer got very upset when she found out about this, and insisted that "prerequisite" meant we couldn't teach the proficiency unless they had taken the WFA course first. (This struck me as ridiculous, btw.)

As it turned out, only one of the 4 students who needed the WFA course was able to take it in October.

I submitted the paperwork for the two cadets that I felt had qualified for the award, but we have not yet received a response.

Coming from an academic background, my understanding of "prerequisite" means "this is knowledge that you must have in order to understand the course material"; for example, you can't take Advanced Statistics unless you have taken Introductory Statistics (but the professor can waive the prerequisite if he feels your understanding of Introductory Stats is sufficient).

The SJA Proficiency guidelines seem to interpret it as "this is material that we think you should know, even though it's got nothing to do with the actual listed requirements". In other words, it's not intended as a prerequisite, but as one of the course requirements in itself. IMO, this is a misuse of the word "prerequisite".

You say that "earning the First Aid merit badge is a prerequisite to completing the merit badge in Emergency Preparedness". Does this mean you need the First Aid Merit Badge before you can take the EP training, or before the paperwork for the EP MB can be submitted?