fail to convey their strengths on paper. A few succeed; precious few are admitted. Thus, the promise of a university diploma is only a shadow of reality. To complicate this prestigious sales pitch further, many young people who never went to camp are admitted to selective colleges and universities every year. So while pitching Harvard (or any other school) to status-focused families may pique their curiosity, there is no reliable link between camp attendance and college admission. By the same token, pitching the articulate but familiar message about 21st-Century Skills to achievement-conscious Yuppies and trendy Grups (grown-ups who don’t want to grow up) may indeed whet their appetites. However, there are not yet hard data to correlate career success with campbased character development. (We will all be elated when such data do finally exist.) For now, it’s another shaky promise that has drifted away from camp’s rugged reality. The benefit of recasting camp registration as a diploma ticket or career foundation is that it brings new families through the gates; families who might not otherwise have considered camp as a summer option; families who would have enrolled their children only in test-prep or gifted-andtalented academic programs. And while such programs have merit, they lack the character-building challenges and spirit of an authentic camp experience. Such qualities are hard to design, harder to endure, and the hardest of all to sell. But if we want strong kids, we can’t weaken camp’s mission. Fidelity and Infidelity Honing our fidelity to camp’s original mission also requires molting some skin that is so comfortable we’ve come to believe it’s our own. If we really want a seat at the youth development table and a place in parents’ hearts, we need to shed our selfimposed misconceptions. So just what is camp not about? • Camp is not about slick advertising. A camp’s popularity rises and falls on the tongues (and thumbs) of youngsters. Positive memories are shared by word-of-mouth or online messages from child to child, and sometimes through parents. For kids, it’s simple: They want to be treated well by both peers and caregivers, 26 CAMPING magazine • November/December 2013 and they want to experience an adventurous brand of fun and discovery. Camps that can’t offer that will never be buoyed by glossy self-promotion. • Camp is not about copying the guys down the street. It’s about developing and celebrating your unique traditions and rituals. Most camps, for example, offer swimming as an activity. Have you ever thought about how you offer swimming? Think about what makes swimming at your camp special. Idiosyncrasies winnow the magnificent from the mundane. • Camp is not about one week vs. seven. The real growth comes over multiple seasons. Constructs like loyalty, emotion-regulation, and conflict resolution take years to develop. Stop seeing camp in terms of weeks and start seeing (and marketing) it in terms of a multi- year investment. • Camp is not about the food. There’s a reason why you keep changing the menu and kids keep complaining: Menu details are trivial. Complaints are driven by young people’s sense of entitlement and lack of appreciation for what they have. Stop catering to their every whim and start engendering some gratitude. Focus on nutrition and wholesome treats, not scrunched noses. • Camp is not about trying something new. It’s about trying something really hard. Self-esteem comes from skills and work, not instant gratification. Stop giving kids premade birdhouses to paint and ribbons simply for participating. Consider the merit of hard-earned accomplishments and the value of heartfelt public commendations. • Camp is not only adult-driven. To succeed, it must be largely child-driven. Even when staff are well-trained, they must recognize that one of the most important things they can do is take a step back and let kids interact with one another. Charismatic staff are a blessing, but only a peer can prove to a young person what a young person is truly capable of. The research on unstructured free play is abundantly clear: It increases creativity, intelligence, and social skills (Ginsburg, 2007). Staff must provide supervision, of course, but they also need to get out of the way and let campers be partners in the program (O’Donoghue, Kirshner, & McLaughlin, 2006). • Camp is not about the activities. Those are epiphenomena at camp. It’s about what happens between the activities. The homesickness, the camp duties (Yes, chores!), the activity set-up and cleanup, the good night’s sleep, the absence of electronics, the getting dirty, the getting clean, the giving a cheer after losing, the giving a cheer after winning, the physical exercise (walking to the next event rather than changing the channel to get there), the waiting (rather than instant gratification), the reflection (rather than the logorrhea of snap-chatting your first, uncensored thought about everything), and the hand-written letters all matter. Stop buying new toys for a while and start training your staff to simply be with children. • Camp is not about the equipment. At some level, all equipment is a crutch for staff. The more equipment there is, the less interpersonal interaction and creativity there is. If it were up to children, they might choose a camp solely based on whether it has model rockets, sailing, or water slides. It’s all fun, of course, and that’s wonderful. But parents choose camps based on what their children will come away with, not what they’ll have while they’re there. The Gratification of Grit Overcoming adversity creates strength, so it’s time to start selling camp not as scripted entertainment but as a legitimate challenge. Let’s be honest about transporting children from the comfortable predictability of their homes and schools to the capricious natural world, thunderstorms, bugs, and all. We can avoid intense homesickness, harsh bullying, and other unnecessary hardships and still introduce well-supervised personal and interpersonal trials. What kind of person do we really think gets admitted to a top school or hired by a top corporation? That resilience can be earned at camp. And what kind of person do we really want to be a parent, spouse, or leader someday? That kindness can be learned at camp. What kind of person do we really want to create great works of art and literature? That appreciation of beauty and culture can be absorbed at camp. And what Parents choose camps based on what their children will come away with, not what they’ll have while they’re there.
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