Educational Work in Summer Camps

In our days, we used to go to “pioneer camps.” In other places there are summer camps, boy and girl scout camps, and so on. They exist in your system as well, and you also have practical experience. Why do you need camps like that? What’s the point of having them?..

There are several thousand children of different ages in our international educational organization. We begin this work with children aged 3 and continue through age 18. This is a very wide span...

We hope that in time we will be able to present the same method to adults as well so they will also be able to experience the state of emotional comfort and will realize that a person’s life can be completely different. There are many psychological exercises that enable people to start looking at life, society, and themselves differently, to see different possibilities of living and to be thankful for being alive. Then they won’t be depressed, like half of humanity, and won’t constantly feel dejected, stressed, anxious, protective, and on the defensive. This is what we are increasingly observing in our society...

There are already events like this for adults, such as psychotherapists getting together for summer courses. To facilitate it, we have to determine several things for it to work properly. Does a camp have to be a summer event, or can it be done several times through the year?..

For this system to be adopted by the masses, we can use the internet. But it would also be interesting to find ways for the people who constantly communicate over the internet to meet physically. These camps can be a place where children from all over the world, who already communicate over the internet, could get together and meet in real life. How long should these gatherings be, a week, two weeks, a month, or perhaps the whole summer?..

Should there be permanently operating centers so children could come there, leave, and return? And should the groups that get together there be small or large?..

Say we create this kind of camp and we have children of different ages who are ready to take part in it, and who are already imbued with this method of integral upbringing. There are many organizational questions: Should the groups of children be fixed? Meaning, should a child be in one group for the entire camp or can we mingle them?..

How comfortable should this kind of place be? Should it be like a five star hotel or a tent in an open field? And accordingly, should there be self-service there?..

When people go to the countryside, they come into closer contact with Nature. In that case should they wake up at dawn and go to sleep at sundown? How can we use these opportunities of enhance man’s interaction with Nature?..

Is there any point in organizing hikes and trips of various difficulty levels, such as a bicycle trip, a hike on foot, or a trip on a rowboat? These can all be used as challenges that allow unification to be expressed in action rather than verbally...

There are several types of camps—huge camps, with thousands of children, or small, local, summer or winter camps. Which is better? Which is more suitable for the integral principle?..

You said that a child’s temporary space must be well organized. What’s the best way to do that?..

The next question I have is about nighttime. We know that half of all adventures in places like this happen after “lights out.” How can this be arranged? After all, it’s impossible to force them to go to sleep. Or should there be no lights out?..

How should this reshuffling occur? Can it happen as a game or a lottery?..

How does the communication with the outside world and with parents occur? It is very important to immerse a child into this special environment so he would be there for a long period of time. But should he still have an external connection through the internet or telephone? Can he connect to his relatives and the people close to him?..

How strict should the discipline be?..

Should there be flag raising in the morning and anthems at the end of the day? Should there be uniforms, and so on?..

Should we conclude events by drawing some kind of conclusions or presenting some kind of product such as a movie, or is it simply a process, so we come out of this event and enter a new process?..

Should we have separate camps for boys and for girls or should they be in one camp? Or, should we take the boys to one place for a month and girls to another place?..