Finding “Hidden Heroines”

This article explores girls’ participation in 1976 American Revolution Bicentennial celebrations through their national organizations. Members of the Girl Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls were deeply involved in the nation’s displays of civic pride. Girls’ organizations linked their ordinary service projects to the Bicentennial and created new projects as they caught the national bandwagon. To some extent, these efforts emphasized unquestioning patriotism, but each organization, propelled by second-wave feminism and social history, also absorbed and advanced efforts to recover multiple perspectives. Girls’ organizations became public history spaces and girls in them saw the understanding of and dissemination of history as an important part of female citizenship.

Testing impacts of goal-oriented outreach with the Girl Scouts: Can a single activity change attitudes towards insects?

Most people meet insects with fear and disgust but this reputation is largely unfounded, as few insects pose health risks. In fact, many are beneficial and their absence would adversely affect human life; thus insect conservation is important but unpopular. We have begun addressing these concerns as part of a broader effort to establish an ongoing outreach partnership between graduate students at the University of Kansas and the Girl Scouts of Northeast Kansas/Northwest Missouri. To explore ways to advocate for insect conservation, we held an insect collecting activity at a Girl Scout summer camp and surveyed changes in attitudes towards insects afterwards. This activity positively changed reactions to insect encounters and increased confidence in identifying harmful insects but did not strongly reduce fears or increase curiosity towards insects. Beyond these proximate results, this project highlights the potential of Girl Scout troops as targets for informal science education that can benefit both academics and the broader community.