The Rise of Young Girls -- Girl Education & Girl Scouts
The Sprout of Women's Power
-- Girl Scouts & Girls' Education
Succeeding the previous sections which have a rich supply of information about the history of women and the emergence of feminism, this section directs the focus upon how the feminist activities interlaced with the life and schooling of young girls in the 20th century. Given the immense and profound impact of feminism on American society, there is no doubt that these waves of feminist influences would ripple through generations. The full picture of women's history is therefore more than a cross-section of a particular time period; we would instead have to expand our horizon to examine the penetration of feminism in younger generations and how would that impact be continued through time. This naturally leads our attention toward this particular group of people -- young girls at school age -- as they represent a group of women-to-be who would be the future hope of new waves of feminism in the States.
Apparently many feminists had the foresight that the girls needed to be educated to have a better sense of their identity and, with that self-awareness in mind, be able to deliver the message that girls deserve equal opportunities and equal rights when they grew up. It is therefore interesting to see how the feminists in the early 1900s embarked on this mission of educating young minds. While exploring the careers of these feminists who invested their time and energy on school children, we also observed that a great proportion of their attention had been invested in the development of Girl Scouts, an important form of organization devoted to training and educating young girls to be ready for society. Moreover, it is also interesting to see how former members of Girl Scouts grew up to be devoted feminists in their adulthood -- we therefore see that it is really a two-way communication between feminism and Girl Scouts as each exerted a positive influence on the other. Girl Scouts is therefore a major part of this section and information about Girl Scouts is divided into two subpages -- the first subpage would walk you through some representative women figures who contributed immensely to the growth of Girl Scouts; the second subpage exhibits some photos of the life of girls in the Girl Scouts and the kinds of activties, both physical and intellectual, they engaged in.
The second major part of this section is Girls' Education. It is interesting to investigate changes in how the girls were educated as a reflection of the impact of the rising feminism in the 1900s. What's more, the changing educational system had also created some changes in how the girls developed their worldviews and understood themselves as they grew up. In the same way as the exhibition of Girl Scouts, the Girls' Education section is also divided into two pages -- the first page focuses on the education of young girls in liberal arts, and the second page is dedicated to information about how girls were educated in maths and science. One reason of choosing these two fields is that they represent the most vital parts in education and could therefore give as a general picture of how the girls' education looked like as a result of feminist activities. Another reason is that these are the two fields that had been seriously neglected in the education of young girls prior to feminism. We could therefore observe the impact of feminism on girls' education by looking at how the science and arts began to be incorporated into the education system for young girls.
The rise of young girls represents the long-term impact of feminism. While we study the structure of a full-grown tree, it is also important not to forget how that tree looked like when it was a mere sprout, and how that sprout grew up to become a matured, blossoming tree.