Positive Outlook for Camping.

What Should Camps Stress in Our Affluent Society?

The 1960s brought concerns about land use as urban sprawl began to put a squeeze on the amount of land available for camps. Campers were getting younger, and the number of adolescent campers served was declining due to competition from sports and other school activities.

In spite of this, the future of camping was looking up. Automation and mechanization had made everyday tasks easier, giving people more leisure time and more time for camp experiences. Adult camps and school camps were growing in popularity, and experts predicted that more camps would be operating year-round.

In the last twenty years, a new condition has emerged in this country in which the production of necessities occupies only a fraction of the productive capacity of the nation, in which luxuries are so taken for granted that many now consider them imperatives, in which so many people have wealth that its still unequal distribution is not a subject of much national interest or concern.

This new affluence has changed the external physical structure of society in many ways. The change from country to urban life is one example. The change from physical, hand labor to mechanization is another, with automation coming on fast. The increasing mobility of the population, with one-fifth of the people moving every year to accommodate the needs of the big corporation, is third. The vast increase in leisure time, with more to come, is fourth.

Such social changes have brought serious problems to both children and adults. Camp has important contributions to alleviate their bad effects. City children need the open air and the wilderness in ways a rural population did not.

A mobile population which moves every two to three years avoids community responsibility and the holding power of neighborhood roots. Children of such families desperately need the sense of belonging to a community, even if only for a couple of weeks, where they are important members, as important as anyone else, making their own contributions on the basis of what they have to offer. A good camp provides this opportunity.

The challenges of camping to help people learn to constructively use their leisure time is so apparent as to need little emphasis, but every newspaper we read yields new evidence that the challenge has not been met. We read of college students in the spring, teenagers before school starts, going on senseless destructive rampages as an evidence of boredom and misuse of leisure. Tennis, baseball, swimming, sailing, hiking, canoeing, and the like, learned at camp and enjoyed as hobbies, can be excellent antidotes to this poison of bored leisure.

The influence of camping is also needed to counterbalance some of the attitudes that flourish in our affluent society. Fierce competition between corporations and the men who run them is the soil from which affluence grows. Out of this soil, tension in the home can arise, leading to discord and emotional crack-ups.

Today's attitude is that since there is plenty of everything, nothing needs to be conserved. Camping can teach the opposite by offering a real experience such as a wilderness trip where food must be portaged and conserved because life depends on it. It must not be lost or wasted. The age of abundance needs experience of this kind, and camp is one of the few places where such can be had.

Teach Needed Values

The agency most able to effectively teach these needed values, if it has the chance, is the summer camp. This is true because camping is a living experience, in a controlled environment, created for the total education of boy, mind, and spirit. The value system learned in camp includes judging a person on what he is and can do instead of by external labels of skin or social pedigree. Camping teaches through living experience that honest effort and application will bring rewards in satisfaction, friendship, and skills that are worth having.

The Camp Leaders We Seek

by Mrs. Lois Orr

When you are seeking counselors, what are the qualities and characteristics most desired in those who will be guiding your campers? Camp Kehonka's director, A. Cooper Ballentine, offers the following criteria:

* A wholesome personality appealing to youth.

* Radiant health, resulting from firmly established habits and restraints, wise attention to food, and well-balanced days of work, play, and rest.

* Joyousness in simple daily tasks, and a sense of humor that smooths out wrinkles in difficult situations.

* Exuberant enthusiasm which adds zest to each day and keeps the heart young.

* Unfailing kindness, integrity, fairness, and consistency in all personal relationships.

* Unbounded and untiring interest in campers.

* Moral and spiritual preparedness to sense a camper's mood and to guide an awakening mind.

* Resourcefulness, versatility, and initiative to enliven work and play with young people.

* Creative spirit to inspire imaginative youth.

* Personal neatness and unquestionable good taste in such features as hair style, cosmetics, clothing.

Ruth Howe, co-director of Skylake Camps, California, sent Mrs. Orr's comments to Camping Magazine.

Mr. Cavins was the director of Camp Mishawaka.