What about fun in the outdoors?

Image and perceptions are important. A dynamic organization like the American Camping Association (ACA) must address its image and niche in society. All of us associated with the camp field know about the values of camp from our personal experiences. Organized camp experiences can enrich young people's lives and provide numerous developmental opportunities. Yet, ACA may be missing something essential in not promoting a greater focus on the intrinsic aspect of fun in outdoor environments. Daily living for both children and adults needs to be interjected with a lot more laughter, glee, silliness, and joyfulness. ACA camps offer those opportunities, but our organization seems to sidestep direct connections with happiness, pleasure, and fun in the camp experience.

Most Americans live in a world that is full of contradictions. Young people bring the effects of their social world to camp. For example, people in North America have access to the best food in the world and yet our diets are full of fat and sugar. Social commentators have described how many people now have more money, but have less quality things to show for it. People buy more things, but enjoy them less. We have access to more experts and more medicine, but less wellness. Some people have more time for leisure pursuits, but less fun doing them. Children today live in a world that is overloaded with violence and stress. Many young people face issues such as abuse and other addictions, divorce and family problems, obesity and inactivity, and other pressures to succeed academically as well as socially. Children feel these issues and contradictions whether they come from low-income environments or from privileged backgrounds. Having fun at camp may be one way for young people to disengage from a highly stressf ul world.

The recent opinion research that has been done by ACA points to the fact that parents say the best thing about camp experiences for their children is "fun" The bottom line is that most parents are not going to send their children to camp if the children don't have fun. Fun, then, becomes important glue that is often taken for granted and/or ignored in our endeavors to show why camp is developmentally good for children. Inherently, we assume that what we do at camp is done within the context of fun, but perhaps fun has something more to offer as both a process as well as an outcome of camp. Camp experiences may be one way to help young people find "good, clean, healthy" fun.

A major uniqueness of camp is that it can facilitate the expression of enjoyment. Over twenty-five centuries ago, Plato wrote that the most important task for a society is to teach the young to find pleasure in the right things. The "right things" may be understood differently, but the focus of camps ought to define those right things in providing opportunities for enjoyment in the outdoors. Finding pleasure in the right things is critical to helping young people grow up. Although the values of our profession go beyond "fun and games," that mirth and enjoyment is integral to our work.

Camp experiences, as much as any other endeavor that a child might undertake, offer the potential for positive and prosocial joy. The extent to which camp professionals embrace the value of fun may set a course for the future. Nothing is wrong with individuals finding creativity, imagination, merriment, exuberance, playfulness, or goofiness in what they undertake in camp experiences. Although the social and physical outcomes of camp should be articulated often, these effective components must not be overlooked in talking about why camp is important. Let's acknowledge the central existence of fun in camp programs and strive to find every opportunity we can to put joy into our campers' lives.

--Karla A. Henderson, Ph.D.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

Chapel Hill, North Carolina