English girls scouts were hard core
Found in an archive of papers from an early troop of Girl Guides: semaphore flash cards. I mentioned this at a coffee morning and one of the old girls got up and gave me the whole alphabet.
But why? What possible use would a visual system of long-distance communication used by the Navy be to little girls?
I’ve Googled high and Googled low. I can confirm there was a lot of it about. All girls. The Girl Scouts got up to it in the States, too.
I found this quote from an old women’s encyclopedia: “A semaphore parade. Even the youngest children will enjoy a lesson on this subject, and will acquire a sense of discipline and a quickness of perception by its help” but the rest of the article goes on to describe teaching children to build a pretend field hospital and splint broken bones. Cheerful!
A lot of what is captioned as semaphore is just pictures of people waving flags around.
I guess it’s a simple as making kids memorize something. We had to memorize stuff. But why semaphore and why girls?
January 31, 2024 — 8:23 pm
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