Growing up I would call myself a summer camp junkie. My parents started taking us camping when we were toddlers and we attended a week long family camp every summer in Minnesota’s northwoods. When I hit third grade, my parents packed me off to Girl Scout camp for a week and while the friend I went with cried all week from homesickness I reveled in the freedom, the campfires, the wild edible talks and starlit nights. My camp adventures grew longer and more intense as I grew older, I volunteered as junior counselor at family camp, and the summer after my senior year of high school I went on a 45 day canoe trip in Canada’s Arctic. I had no trouble knowing what job I wanted to do in my summers during college. The nine months of the year not spent at camp, were essentially a long countdown. It was also during college that I realized that my love for camp, and more specifically the wild places I had the opportunity to explore and get to know, were essentially linked to science and education.
There is no question that camp and the unique individuals that were my camp counselors and mentors, were what inspired me to enter environmental education. It is because of this, that I was saddened to read Mary Beth Mccauley’ article in The Christian Science Monitor, Summer camp: Sunset for an American tradition? The article details how it is increasingly difficult for camps to cater to the life of the modern child and today’s parents. School years are longer, there is more concern about still focusing on academics in the summer, and the idea of “unplugging” from modern technology is becoming so foreign to parents and kids that it is hard to sell. Mccauley writes;…”there are other places where young people can learn the stout virtues of confidence, teamwork, and resilience; of independence and friendship; of love of nature. But few disguise the lessons quite the way summer camp does – as pure fun.”
As an environmental educator, the loss of these intense experiences in the natural world are what concerns me most. Author Richard Louv labelled this Nature Deficit Disorder, others call this a loss of a sense of place. Regardless of its name, the less positive experiences in the natural world that children have, the less connection they have and the less likely they are to feel real concern for threats to the environment. There is in fact an entire field of research in environmental education called Significant Life Experience Research that looks at how, why, when and where experiences in the outdoors are important. The results are pretty clear. The more you get people outside, the more likely they are to show an affinity for the environment.
The importance of this is obvious from the standpoint of us at the Will Steger Foundation. Without a real concern for the environment, how are we supposed to get people concerned for the effects of climate change? In the next blog I will begin to outline some of the ways we will be addressing this in our new curriculum project, Minnesota’s Changing Climate, as well as discuss the possibility of integrating technology with experiences in the natural world in a way that doesn’t take away from the experience, but enhances it.