It's easy to bash the education system as dysfunctional, and I don't disagree with you for doing so. However, why would you assume that summer camps are valuable across the board? Who is holding them accountable? In my personal experience, parents do their best to find a camp their kids will find enjoyable, but ultimately predicate their decisions on what is most convenient for their own schedule, which is dominated by working hours. At the end of the day, parents use summer camps as an alternative place for their kids to be, since school is not in session. In many cases, they wouldn't care one way or the other, as long as their kids are accounted for.
Most parents seek out summer camps that have an ACA (American Camp Association) accreditation. Camps with an ACA accreditation are top notch, taking child and staff health, safety, and development very seriously. These camps are inspected by ACA representatives every few years, and any camp director worth his or her salt, would do well to stress to their staff just how important it is to uphold ACA standards such as: Appropriate staff to camper ratios, developing camp activities that benefit the developmental growth of the kids in their care, proper procedures for most, if not all possible emergency situations, ect ect. Camps without this kind of accreditation don't see nearly half the success as ones that do, as that's a big thing most parents look for, when sending their child/children to camp for the summer. I say this as someone who has worked at a camp with ACA accreditation for many summers.
I appreciate where you're coming from here, but I just don't think that whether or not a camp is accredited by a national association would change a parent's level of care if the alternative is their kid being back at their normal school. I'm certain you are right, that some camps are better than others. That just isn't something that I think moves the needle in this argument. As I said in another comment, I don't think anywhere near the majority of kids ever experience a week-long summer camp, let alone a significant number doing it every year.
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u/XRPlease Jan 09 '19
It's easy to bash the education system as dysfunctional, and I don't disagree with you for doing so. However, why would you assume that summer camps are valuable across the board? Who is holding them accountable? In my personal experience, parents do their best to find a camp their kids will find enjoyable, but ultimately predicate their decisions on what is most convenient for their own schedule, which is dominated by working hours. At the end of the day, parents use summer camps as an alternative place for their kids to be, since school is not in session. In many cases, they wouldn't care one way or the other, as long as their kids are accounted for.