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Girl Scouts Are Taking Over STEM

Catwell

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Even though the STEM program is not new in the Girl Scouts organization, the new badges may create a new breed of women leaders. Some of the new STEM badges (Image via Girl Scouts)

 

Started in 1912 by Juliette Gordon Low, the Girl Scouts organization was just a movement, an idea born from a desire to better prepare young girls for the adult life. At 51-years-old, Gordon Low aka “Daisy” gathered eighteen girls from her hometown Savannah, Georgia to teach them what she has learned through her numerous travel. At a time when women didn’t have much of a voice, her initiative served as a quiet statement about “girl power.” Despite the limitation society has placed on women, the Girl Scouts organization encourages young girls to explore the world beyond the frontiers of the “normal”; from the beginning, girl scouts learned things that were not part of the curriculum in school: telling directions by looking at the stars, played sport and organized themselves to have a positive impact in their communities. Today, the Girl Scouts organization continued the tradition of empowering their members and taking them to unchartered territories.

 

The most recent field the organization has opened its members to is STEM: Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. For the girl scouts, it is not a matter of challenging men or trying to prove something, but it is about opening doors that used to be closed. For example, girls who earned STEM-related badges proved to be better decision makers with a more developed critical mind. They also grow up to work more lucrative jobs. This year, the Girl Scouts organization is issuing thirty new badges that the girls can earn as a result of successfully completing activities related to coding, designing robots, spotting online crimes, or protecting the environment. The new badges are meant to ignite girls’ interest in engineering and widen the list of fields they could dip their feet into. Participants of this program should be between the age of 5 and eighteen.

 

Anyone can look at the new badges as an opportunity to increase the number of women working in fields that are still considered “men’s world,” in the future. And, it probably will change the face of the world of engineers or scientists. However, there is no telling how much pressure will be on the women those girl scouts are becoming.

 

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  • in reply to jomoenginer

    There was one very inquisitive member of the troop and I could see she would more than likely be an Engineer someday.

    That is my observation of the mixed classes I've helped out with.

     

    I think that peer pressure amongst boys tends to focus on function, while with the girls doing this work their peers see form.

    Good design is all about form and function, but at this level of engagement, making the things work as expected is more important than being pretty.

     

     

    I was asked to assist with a robot building class at one school.

    The originator had an overseas trip/work for 8 weeks, the class had already started, but the teacher was struggling, so I was asked to assist when my shifts allowed.

    These pupils all wanted to do it, were there during their lunch break, so they were the keen and interested ones, rather than those taking an easy option.

     

    Unfortunately the quality of the builds of most of the girls was less than functional .... and I'm not sure why.

    The design was the same, the build process the same, yet the quality was far less.

    Ultimately there was dissapointment when it didn't work, but no real drive to investigate why.

     

    Once I looked at the issue, and showed them what the problem was, and how we can fix it doing this, they were much happier.

     

    The next issue was working out how to program them, and I guess they had either lost interest or simply had no idea.

    Again there was little or no drive to find out or investigate, giving up was an option and that's what they chose.

     

    So more help and at least it moved, even if it wasn't doing all the things it should have done.

     

     

     

     

    If this is the experience these female students receive, then it's unlikely their friends are going to want to join in.

    You're always going to get the 'different' ones that want to do it and will excel at it, but motivating and making it a pleasurable experience for the others might yeld better results.

     

     

    So good on the the Girl Scouts for introducing it, but please make sure it is something the others want to undertake otherwise we're not encouraging them.

     

     

    Mark

  • We had a Girl Scout Troop attend one of the meetings of the Robotics club I belong to a couple of months back and from I had seen it might be more appropriate use the acronym STEAM rather than STEM.   I applaud the Girl Scouts for adding such badges and attempt to get them involved in something more technical. However, the projects that were brought to the meeting , from what I had heard by folks in the club who either have kids in Scouts (sorry, can't call it Boy Scouts anymore) or are Scout leaders, were not what the boys would have been assigned or expected to do.  These girls were at the final phase of getting one of the Robotics badges and were looking to get more data regarding the Engineering Process when designing a product.  The projects that were brought, well at least the ones that had survived, looked more like something I would expect from an Arts and Craft session.  The material used were things like feathers, cloth, cardboard and such.  I guess there was some sort of recycle usage requirement.  One did have a used 3 1/4" Floppy Disk attached, but I passed to ask if anyone knew what it was.  They seemed to be only taught theory rather than put together some sort of functioning devices or use a LEGO MindStorm kit.  Having a daughter myself, I could tell the majority of these girls were less than excited with the whole thing and just wanted to get it over with and go play. There was one very inquisitive member of the troop and I could see she would more than likely be an Engineer someday.

     

    To me , this is where there are issues.  Although girls are quite capable of learning technical subjects, I believe it is the way it is presented to them and the lack of expectation which gets them disinterested.  This, of course, is not factoring in peer pressure as well.  

     

    Its a very good step in a very cool direction for the Girl Scouts though.

  • in reply to 14rhb

    We have a woman in our team and there is no difference based on gender.

    I've had other postions where there were two and apart from the individual differences in everyone, there was also no difference based on gender.

     

    I don't think there is enough data to support any conclusions that x is better than y at this task, as everyone is so different.

     

    Unless the parents are involved in technology, I feel the step into "that world" is going to take a very motivated and strong self belief, young women who will need to ignore the stereotypes.

     

    Good on the Girl Scouts for introducing the technology, although I feel your title might be more appropriate as

    Girl Scouts Are Taking On STEM

     

     

    Mark

  • in reply to shabaz

    Hi Shabaz,

     

    Those make more sense than mine (especially the amusement park one !). Bridges and support structures would be great fun - learning about I-beams by making some cardboard models and loading them up, cantilever trade off between balancing the forces and sheering the supports etc..

     

    Badge 4 could well be Dynamics although they look a bit like the hands from a Lego person, or spanners, or tuning forks or even an upside-down crow ?!

     

    Rod

  • The badges are (Left to right, top row):

    STEM - Mechanical Engineering - Fling flyer

    STEM - Robotics 3 - Showcasing robots

    STEM - Mechanical Engineering - Roller coaster

    (Left to right, bottom row)

    STEM - Robotics 3 - Design a robot

    STEM - Robotics 1 - Designing robots

    Outdoors - Primative camping (not STEM)

    Gene