Summer Camp

The term "summer camp" refers to camps away from home attended by children and youth without their parents. They follow a holistic educational paradigm in which good health, hygiene, renewal, and communion with nature play important roles. Summer camps are aimed at creating environments in which children learn in an ambiance of leisure. The first camps originated in the 1880s in the United States and Canada, responding to Victorian concerns about physical and moral fitness. They were also influenced by the pedagogical philosophies of European thinkers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who advocated an education that included the development of physical and moral qualities. By the twentieth century, the summer camp movement had spread worldwide, and represented different political, religious, and didactic philosophies. They also became an important part of American culture and education.

Brief History

The first summer camps in the United States opened in the early 1880s, in rural New England. These were mostly rustic private youth camps, meant to form upper class young men in the ways of nature, self-sufficiency, and strength of character. Some scholars have noted the influence of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854) on the camping movement in North America. In his memoir, Thoreau describes in idyllic terms his experiences of living alone, immersed in New England nature, close to Walden Pond and Massachusetts’ woodlands.

By the 1890s, the summer camp movement had extended to the middle classes, with religious organizations such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) establishing boys’ camps that offered a highly disciplined experience in military-style campgrounds. In the early twentieth century, the Boys Scouts, an organization that originated in England, had become a worldwide phenomenon. Headquartered in New York, the Boy Scouts did much to propel the development of summer camps in the United States.

The first camps for girls appeared in the early twentieth century in New Hampshire and Maine, with organizations such as the Girl Scouts spearheading the summer camp movement for girls. The purpose was similar to camps for boys, that is, building skills, character, and fitness.

The summer camp movement surged in the 1920s, with Christian organizations establishing religious camps and Jewish camps that cemented a Jewish heritage. Other camps were political in nature, such as Zionist camps meant to foster pro-Israel views among Jewish children, or socialist camps meant to teach children leftist ideas. Historians also point to the existence of fascist camps in the United States and abroad. Some camps offered a natural environment to poor, city-bound children. Despite their differences in ideology, summer camps had much in common, including the ideal of nature and health as linked to a strong sense of American culture.

By the late twentieth century, the summer camp movement had developed to the point that camps existed for all sorts of populations and interests. There are summer camps for differently abled children, the critically ill, children interested in the performing arts, tennis, cheerleading, math, science, and much more.

Overview

Summer camps were the first organizations created to teach the whole child in a natural environment, ideally providing round-the-clock supervision and an ambiance that helped develop physical fitness, appropriate socialization, and in many cases, the political or spiritual development considered desirable by parents and counselors.

The summer camp movement developed rapidly beyond North America, and spread across Europe, Latin America, and Oceania. By the early decades of the twentieth century, summer camps had spread around the world. As in North America, summer camps worldwide tended to go hand-in-hand with an ideology or pedagogical philosophy.

There were political camps that covered the spectrum of left-wing to right-wing ideologies; as in North America, summer camps worldwide tended to endorse physical fitness by including sports, calisthenics, and exposure to fresh air, water, and sunlight. As opposed to the United States, however, many camps worldwide were often supported and stringently regulated by the State.

By the 1940s, a crop of experts and professionals had risen, knowledgeable in camp development, planning, management, and activities. Programs to train older youth as camp counselors flourished. Towards the end of the twentieth century, summer camps—by then an intrinsic part of child-rearing for many Americans—remained as popular as ever, and its end goals tended to be the same.

The summer camp experience is so ingrained that a huge industry developed, which includes resort hotels, parks with camping facilities, national parks, extreme sports, and many other activities that seek to provide relief from the stress of modern urban life. The Catskills, for example, developed a series of summer resorts, camps and bungalow colonies that became extremely popular with Jewish families from New York and New Jersey, from the first decades of the twentieth century to the 1970s. Since then, other all-inclusive summer vacation facilities have taken their place.

Critics have expressed concern with the increased commodification of the summer camp experience. Summer camps were created to provide a communion with pastoral authenticity, the version of "back to nature" so cherished by nineteenth century society. A natural environment was supposed to foster the self-reliance deemed an intrinsic element of American culture.

Critics, however, claim that these views were already a social construction—an imaginary idea—in the nineteenth century, one that is even farther from reality in the contemporary world. In fact, the percentage of people living in urban areas is significantly higher now than in the nineteenth century. The vacation industry, then, has become a factory of artificially rural experiences for city-dwellers who hunger for a back-to-basics experience and feel nostalgic for their summer camp days. Moreover, summer camps for children in the twenty-first century cater to a very narrow set of preferences, rather than offering a more holistic and rounded experience. In other words, critics argue, children are treated as customers, instead of children.

Defenders, on the other hand, claim that science and the professionalization of children’s leisure have allowed the creation of summer camps that better serve children and are able to help them flourish in the best environment for each. Interestingly, research reports suggest that toward the beginning of the twenty-first century, the conventional summer camp style set on building character and a useful skill set in a more rustic environment, is the most popular again.

Bibliography

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