How camp programs serve as moral and interpersonal beacons
High-quality, summer youth programs combine five elements that no other experience does:
- Community Living
- Young Adult Leaders
- Beautiful Natural Settings
- Separation from Home
- Recreational Activities
To the mid-19th-century educators who organized the first overnight camps in North America, this five-faceted educational gem solved two problems: It was the ideal complement to traditional classrooms, and it was the bucolic antidote to urban perils. Today, camps and other youth-serving organizations still solve those problems, along with several new ones, such as excessive, recreational screen time and the glut of realistic but phony online content.
To support the important work of all PRB+ readers, regardless of political persuasion, this article invites leaders to consider how effectively their youth-serving organization provides the five elements above. This article also encourages all readers to buttress their mission against whatever forces may erode it. I hope you find enlightening my observations about how American politics has shaken young people. I also hope my observations prompt you to consider how your program provides moral and interpersonal stability.
Risks And Benefits
During the Industrial Revolution in the U.S.—roughly 1850-1920—children were often treated as commodities, forced to work on farms and in factories at young ages, typically in toxic conditions. Many adults recognized that elements of industrialized America were unhealthy for children. According to a recent United Nations report, “As the country rapidly industrialized after the Civil War and many families relocated from the country into loud, crowded cities, [parents became concerned about] the detrimental effects of urbanization. Suddenly, instead of spending their days outside working on the family farm, kids were languishing in cramped apartments or enduring long shifts in dark factories.”[1]
Even before they were old enough to work, children’s lives were at risk during the Industrial Revolution. In the 1860s, about 340 out of every 1,000 children did not make it to their fifth birthday.[2] In 2022, that number is just 7 in 1,000. Scientific and clinical advances in disease prevention and medical treatments account for most of that improvement. Laws passed in the 1930s and 1940s, limiting child labor and requiring school attendance, also helped.
Summer youth programs also offered a partial antidote. According to history professor Michael Smith, “There was a lot of anxiety about what industrialization was doing to the character of children.”[3] A few months away in nature, adults hoped, “would help children reclaim the physical and spiritual heritage of their hardworking pilgrim and pioneer forebears.”[4] Although summer camps may not have directly improved children’s chances of survival, parents realized that camps excelled at shaping children’s character. At the turn of the 20th century, there were fewer than 100 organized summer camps in the U.S.; by 1918, there were more than 1,000. Today, there are about 7,000 overnight camps, 5,000 day camps, and 10,000 parks & rec departments[5] across the country.
Good And Bad
The growth of camps and other summer youth programs gives us plenty to feel good about. Over the past 160 years, monumental advances in healthcare, education, and character-building experiences have helped children and adolescents in this country live longer, happier, and more productive lives than their Civil War-era ancestors.
Tragically, the first half of 2025 has been catastrophic for health care, education, and character-building experiences. For example, in fewer than 40 days, the current administration terminated $1.81 billion in National Institutes of Health grants[6] and signed an executive order that “authorized the Secretary of Education to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”[7] The biomedical research that has fueled advances in healthcare, along with the educational policies and programs that have ensured all American children and adolescents have access to adequate nutrition and public education, now risk extinction. Experts offer bleak forecasts for the future of American children’s health and education.[8] At a time when international competition is keener than ever, America is self-immolating two cornerstones of its leadership.
As for character-building, which depends on both healthy risk-taking and sterling role models, youth have been hard-pressed to find good examples in our most prominent public figures. Be it politics, the arts, sports, or the media, people in positions of power have demonstrated the full spectrum of bad behavior—everything from name-calling and finger-pointing to assault of all kinds, incitement of violence, and criminal conviction. Individuals who have been positioned as leaders in their respective industries and vaunted as beacons of American society have proven time and again that they can’t be trusted, let alone admired. Yet, many of these so-called VIPs have faced only minor setbacks, if any at all; some have ridden the wave of their misbehavior to their biggest successes.
This has been frustrating and bewildering for many adults. Imagine how baffled our young people are. They have been witnessing it all.
Confusion And Clarity
The elections of 2016 and 2024 confused and upset many young people. Since preschool, these kids have known about the existence of bullies. However, watching many politicians bully their opponents—and win—has made little sense.[9] Such endorsements have felt jarringly inconsistent with the way most young people understood morality (personal beliefs about right and wrong) and justice (fairness and the application of rules and laws within a society). Some children and adolescents even felt betrayed because the same adults who taught them about morality and justice ignored those principles when voting.
Amid this domestic confusion and the chaos of wars around the world, overnight summer camp and other youth-serving organizations must be brighter beacons than ever. The five-faceted gem of community living; young adult leaders; beautiful natural settings; separation from home; and recreational activities provides—as it always has—the following stable pillars:
- Relief from the stressful polarization of social groups
- Mission-driven, not market-driven communities
- Immersion in the restorative properties of nature
- Supportive role models whose morals prioritize kindness
- Opportunities for cooperation, reconciliation, and healthy risk-taking
- Interpersonal connection devoid of electronic distortion
In an era of perplexing politics and computer-generated text and images, perhaps no life skill is more important than the ability to discern fact from fiction. If we want young people to be able to distinguish what’s real from what’s really enticing—so they can make wise choices and offer meaningful contributions to the world—we must continue offering them opportunities to make choices and create contributions in our wholesome and supportive programs.
Hope And Growth
A couple of years ago, I wrote an op-ed for the Boston Globe that distinguished between healthy and unhealthy parental pressure, specifically in the context of college admissions. I expected blowback in the online comments, and I got it. But much of it was not about the substance of my article, which implored parents to broaden their definition of success beyond admission to Ivy League universities. Instead, people objected to the image of the young person the Globe’s editors had inserted to illustrate the plight of a highly pressured student. It was an AI-generated teenager whose gender and ethnicity were intentionally ambiguous. Readers so disliked that it was AI-generated that I worried its presence somehow made my thesis less believable. It was an uncomfortable lesson in people’s strong preference for authentic aesthetics.
However bewildering the world outside your youth-serving organization may be, the world inside your organization can provide the authenticity essential for human thriving. By stripping away electronic technology and getting back to basics, summer youth programs provide reassuring moral and interpersonal anchors to adults and children alike. Indeed, if you direct your program with integrity by staying true to your mission, the young people you serve will have profound experiences that teach them skills markedly different from what plays out in news headlines and on social media. And as more of those young people learn more respectful ways to treat others, healthier ways to meet one’s needs, and better ways to support others’ growth, they prepare themselves to be amazing leaders, parents, partners, and friends.
When your frontline staff members lead by example, when they show what kindness, inclusion, empathy, and respect look like in games, at meals, in friendships, and in conflicts, they are not simply showing kids how to have fun. They are also showing kids how to live.
[1] Stimpson, A. (2024). “The Anxious History of the American Summer Camp”, Atlas Obscura, retrieved June 16, 2025 from https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/american-summer-camp-history.
[2] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2019).
[3] Stimpson, A. (2024). “The Anxious History of the American Summer Camp”, Atlas Obscura, retrieved June 16, 2025 from https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/american-summer-camp-history.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Sources: https://acacamps.org and https://nrpa.org.
[6] Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nih-grant-cuts-science-funding-billions.
[7] Source: https://whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/.
[8] Cutler, D. M. and Glaeser, E. (2025). “Cutting the NIH—The $8 Trillion Health Care Catastrophe”. JAMA Health Forum. 6(5):e252791.
[9] Although young people’s political views usually mirror their parents’ views, my full-time work as a clinical child and adolescent psychologist has provided ample evidence, over the past 10 years, that young people’s confounding and upsetting feelings exist across the political spectrum. Some readers may misinterpret my motivation for sharing this fact and other factual accounts, but I wish only to shed light on the importance of the work you do.
