American Camping Culture
American
Camping Culture is a special sort of culture which ever emerges across the
world. In 1861, an US citizen named Frederick Gunn founded a camp at his boy’s
school ground at Connecticut in United States of America. Children and
adolescents who attend camp are known as campers. This is not to be confused
with summer school, which is usually a required academic curriculum for a
student to make up work not accomplished during the academic year, whereas
summer camps can include academic work, but is not a requirement for
graduation.
Over 200 years, the camping culture has been flourishing in USA and over
several times, it has been changed its roots to the highest order. In primitive
ages, camping culture was nurturing in summer seasons.
Its spreading goes on
In 2006, the
American Camp Association reported that 75 percent of camps added new programs.
This is largely to counter a trend in decreasing enrollment in summer camps,
which some argue to have been brought about by smaller family sizes and the
growth in supplemental educational programs.
There are also religiously affiliated summer camps, such as those run by
Christian groups and various denominations of Judaism. Today, the Camp Culture
has spread across the all countries. People especially the young people take it
hilariously for fitting them smarter, healthier and productive to the nation.
Once American popular culture publications celebrated recreational vehicle
travel, and recreational vehicle manufacturing matured into a dynamic,
billion-dollar industry that gradually changed into camp culture. It generated
camp life to the Americans. In the age of 1890-1960, the culture actually
flourished in and outside, especially the surroundings of United Sates. It
revealed the relationship between technology and its social and cultural
context by experimenting the ways in which changing ideas and attitudes about
camp vehicles and leisure camping shaped recreational vehicle technology. After
gradual change and reform, recreational camping turned into recreational
vehicle technology.
It makes the Americans more active
This study
recounts the roots of recreational camping and America's relation to the
pastoral landscape to show that as "the art of camping" became more
popular, and accessible, equipment manufacturers and suppliers worked to
advance new ideas in camping goods. Accompanying the dramatic growth in auto
camping, manufacturers and suppliers expanded to meet the needs of a growing
commercial market. The role of select engineers and modern designers in
establishing the trailer coach industry and advancing new ideas are discussed
as well as the role of aircraft technology, aeronautical engineering, and
technological transfer. Americans used a variety of recreational vehicles and
camping equipment to fulfill their auto camping needs. New designs and
materials, sometimes borrowed from railroad, automobile, and aircraft
manufacturing, reflected the desires of users and the efforts of businesses in
meeting those changing needs.
It gradually includes
more items
What began
with a few manufacturers supplying tents and camp paraphernalia, within fifty
years developed into a dynamic industry producing an array of products for a
diverse American market including tent-trailers, auto-conversions, trailer
coaches, fifth-wheel trailers, truck campers, and motor homes? This study
documents those changes.
A pioneer
Ernest Balch or Frederick Gunn would have approved of Bill Murray's counseling
methods as Tripper Harrison, Camp North Star's head counselor in Meatballs. But
today, the typical American consumer is much more likely to see a summer camp
depicted as crazy or scary than as a positive place for personal growth and
character development. How did this happen? As the American Camp Association
celebrates its centennial and camp celebrates 150 years, it's a great time to
reflect, with a grain of salt, on how perceptions of our industry have changed
since the nineteenth century.
Prior to World War I, most popular culture discussions of summer camp were in
either magazine for adults or books aimed at teenagers. One of earliest was
Alfred Balch's 1893 recollection in McClure's Magazine of his brother Ernest's
pioneering camp, which operated from 1881–1889 in New Hampshire.
The story of Camp Chicora, of the healthy, open-air life, of the high standards
so rigidly lived up to, of the fun they had, of the work they did, and of the
lessons in manliness they so unconsciously learned, is really written in the
memories of the boys who, during those nine summers, spent their time on that
little island.
Optimistic view of the
camping movement
This
confident and optimistic view of the camping movement was echoed again and
again at the turn of the twentieth century with enthusiastic descriptions of
tan campers throwing off the evils of city life. Carlyle Ellis, writing in
Everybody's Magazine in 1913 is not shy in summing up his view of the camp
experience, calling it ’the nearest thing to a perfect system of education in
existence,’ and noting that the ‘chief work of the summer camp is to save
children from their parents.’ In the monthly magazine The World's Work,
educator and camp director Dr. Winthrop Tisdale Talbot (1905) passionately
promotes the effect of camp on boys, writing, ‘In camp, poor and rich lads
stripped to their swimming trunks are on an absolute equality; the best man
wins. Courage, generosity, goodwill, honesty are the touchstones of success in
camp.
It boosted Scouting
The most
common fictional accounts of camp were in book series aimed at teen girls and
boys. For girls, numerous accounts of the Camp Fire Girls were published in
novels after 1912. Many of the books described girls' experiences at summer
camp. The founders of Camp Fire Girls of America (now Campfire USA), Luther and
Charlotte Gluck, were from a family that founded several camps that exist to
this day. Boys had pulp novels such as the High School Boys in Summer Camp,
featuring athlete and hero Dick Prescott. While Dick and his pals don't go to
an organized camp, their adventures camping and saving their town from
small-time thugs were likely enough to encourage teen boys to try a residential
camp. And it must have helped young master Prescott, because in later novels he
goes on to West Point, fights on the Western Front, and then saves America when
the Germans invade the East Coast.
In 1918, the Girl Scouts created what might be one of the earliest surviving
film depictions of summer camp. The Story of a Girl Scout, the silent film
follows a girl to a camp with her troop. Exciting moments include watching the
girls tie knots, wash-up in the morning, and learn semaphore in long skirts.
It's a far cry from today's slick DVD promotions for sure, but the film depicts
the young Girl Scout organization as a positive and organized option for girls
of the day.
How it became a popular
culture
A revolution
in how camps are portrayed in popular culture began in 1961. In that year, we
see two very different depictions of summer camp. First, there was the classic
Disney movie The Parent Trap, starring Hayley Mills as twin sisters separated
as babies and reunited by accident at summer camp. The film is an adoption of a
1949 German novel, Das doppelte Lottchen, or The Double Lottie, which has been
made into films in the UK, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Iran, and India (five
times), along with several American versions. In The Parent Trap, we still see
a respectful depiction of a summer camp. Sure, the camp leadership is a bit
comical, but the camp runs well and the campers are disciplined and expected to
follow rules.
But in the
same year as the sugary Parent Trap came publication of William Butler's novel
The Butterfly Revolution (1961). Echoing Lord of the Flies, campers at a boys'
camp take over their camp and the nearby girls' camp and impose a totalitarian
regime. Rebellion by campers would become a recurring theme in movies from this
point on. In one of the last pages of the novel, Winston, the boy that tells
the story through diary entries, states: I know one thing, though. I will never
go to summer camp again. Never! This negative view of camp is a complete
reversal from the prevailing theme of nearly all popular depictions that came
before it and can be considered the first of two important events that changed
the role of camps in popular culture.
What a novelty
The second
came in 1963 with the release of the third album by former game-show producer
Allan Sherman. My Son, the Nut contained the song Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh, a
novelty song about a boy at a horrible summer camp. The song reached number two
on the Billboard charts for three weeks in the summer of 1963. Despite an
upbeat ending, never again would the public see camp as the utopia it was often
portrayed as in the first half of the century. A second version with different
lyrics was performed by Sherman in 1964 on The Tonight Show, and then a board
game called Camp Granada was released by Milton Bradley in 1965. In the game,
players had to drive a broken-down bus in an attempt to be the first to escape
a rotten summer camp. Not exactly LIFE Magazine.
Adaption to the camp way typically goes well; camp professionals are adept at
orchestrating it. But that may not be the case in the health center, an area of
camp where culture-bound beliefs can be extremely impactful. Indeed, culture
bound beliefs color all aspects of camp, but the focus here is on those
associated with health services.
What do you routinely do to keep yourself healthy? For example, how often do
you bathe/shower? What do you eat, how much, and when? Do you avoid drafts? Do
you strike a balance between exercise and rest?
When you get sick, what
do you eat and drink?
When you get
sick, what do you eat and drink? At what point are you “too sick” to go to
work/school? Who makes that decision? How do you express pain — by crying,
moaning, quiet withdrawal? Do kids express pain differently than adults? Does
your gender or sex make a difference to these things?
These are examples of how acculturation influences health and the expression of
it. Our campers and staff typically learn these expressions in their home
environments, most often under the tutelage of that esteemed sage called ‘Mom’.
Their health practice- as and beliefs come to camp with them.
When feeling good and in the
perceived ‘safe space’ of camp
When feeling good and in the perceived ‘safe
space’ of camp, it is easy to enjoy. But all it takes is for someone to get ill
or injured and the personal health beliefs come roaring into play. For example,
an international counselor got admitted to the health center because of flulike
symptoms. The nurse brought a classic ‘sick person’ breakfast the next morning:
dry toast and some ginger ale. No way would the counselor eat that: ‘It’ll make
me throw up!’ He wanted a bowl in which there was an apple that had been grated
and allowed to turn brown. That’s ‘sick food’ in his country.
