EducationWorld

Best Summer Camps 2006

EducationWorld

A new genre of specialist firms that employ research teams to design innovative programmes delivered by highly-trained facilitators is offering a plethora of summer camps featuring activities ranging from creative writing, pottery, painting and theatre to swimming, tennis, trekking and telephone etiquette, reports Summiya Yasmeen.

They are the new status symbol of urban middle-class India. Now that summer (April-June) holidays have begun, the search for aptitudinally appropriate summer camps for the children has become frantic in upwardly mobile households. While politicians continue to accord low priority to education — or at best pay lip service to it — the Indian bourgeoisie, dazzled by celebratory reportage of well-educated IIM and IIT graduates bagging jobs with five-figure dollar salaries, has fully absorbed the reality that sound education is the passport to job security and prosperity. The more the better.  

Hence the scramble for enrollment in summer camps where children are schooled in life skills, extra-curricular and sports education. The typical summer vacation of yore in which bourgeois children spent holidays with grandparents, or just stayed put at home playing in backyards or staring at the television set with a maid servant and colouring books for company, is definitely passe in post-liberalisation India where every new skill learnt adds value to education and curricula vitae.

Where there’s demand, inevitably there’s supply. Therefore a new genre of education entrepreneurs are offering a plethora of summer camps featuring activities ranging from elocution, creative writing, pottery, ikebana, painting, theatre, frame-making to swimming, tennis, trekking, telephone etiquette and personality development education.

“During the past two-three years there’s been an almost 50 percent increase in the number of people/ organisations conducting summer camps. The primary reason for the spurt in summer camp enrollments is the phenomenon of nuclear households with two working parents. Tending to the children through the long two-month summer break is a difficult proposition for such young professionals. For them, summer camps are a boon, offering children safe and secure environments and teaching useful life skills. Moreover, there’s general awareness in middle class India that if children learn new skills, it could give them an edge in the highly competitive job markets. A growing number of teachers and education professionals are cashing in on this demand for extra-curricular education in summer camps,” says Ratnesh Mathur, a Bangalore-based postgraduate of IIM-Lucknow who gave up a corporate career in 1998 to found Geniekids, a supplementary learning centre for children which also offers support programmes to parents and teachers. This summer Geniekids has about 250 children enrolled in its summer camps (see p.61).

A contributory cause of the rising popularity of summer camps is also the over-emphasis of school managements on academic education. Obsessed with syllabus completion and pass percentages, schools allocate precious little time for sports and extra-curricular education. Summer camps provide children the opportunity to catch up, discover or develop their sports and hidden talents, acknowledged as important for holistic development and workplace success. 

Says Smita Deepak Bedre, a Chennai-based mother whose 15-year-old son has been attending summer camp regularly: “During term the pressure of academics, tuition and exams leaves no time for children to pursue extra-curricular activities. Summer camps keep children busy and focussed on their hobbies and sports. My son Anubhav loves playing table tennis and learning computer animation. Summer camp provides him the time and opportunity for enjoying these activities. Moreover being an only child, summer camp helps him make new friends.”

Simultaneously with professional educationists entering the life skills and sports education sectors, vacation schools and community classes of the 1970s where children typically learnt about religion, language, culture and family crafts, have been replaced with specialist firms which employ research teams to design innovative programmes delivered by highly-trained facilitators. For instance the Delhi-based iDiscoveri Pvt Ltd, an educational consultancy firm promoted by four former Harvard and XLRI alumni, which has established five life skills education campuses across the country, offers its painstakingly conceptualised Youreka outdoor education programme to nine-14-year olds. The basic premise of Youerka is that children learn best outdoors in the company of peers.

“The Youreka programme has been designed by experts bearing in mind the natural physical and mental development processes of children. Through activities such as rock climbing, wilderness backpacking, river rafting, kayaking and mountain biking, children learn life skills such as self-reliance, innovation and team work in joyous, fun-filled environments. Facilitators in our camps are specially trained to handle children in areas like safety and first aid. In fact international safety practices are the cornerstone of our programmes,” says Anubhav Das, the Delhi-based spokesman of Youreka.

However it’s not just expert life skills education firms that have jumped into the summer education market but also schools, which use their vacant classrooms and auditoria during vacation time to promote non-academic activity. Says Padma Vaswani, principal of the Hiranandani School, Mumbai: “Last year we conducted a camp where former IIT students trained children in aero-modelling and robotics. This was something very novel and the kids absolutely enjoyed the experience. We plan to re-run the programme this year.”

Although there is a general agreement about the utility of summer camps which deliver useful extra-curricular and life skills education to children, education experts warn organisers and parents against transforming them into schools by another name. They emphasise that they should be designed and run as pleasurable learning holidays, wholly divorced from classroom teaching.

This warning is timely because with competition for admission into education institutions of excellence becoming intense, parents are tempted to enroll children into tutorial academies disguised as summer camps. “The best summer camps are those which compensate for the sedentary boredom of school. I’m not in favour of them being used to deliver learning skills which are strictly part of school curriculums. Parents should exercise caution while selecting summer camps and choose the better reputed programmes run by experts,” advises Sonali Nag, a Bangalore-based clinical psychologist, who together with her husband Dr. Gideon Arulmani runs the Promise Foundation, a Bangalore-based education consultancy firm with clients in India and abroad.

Ratnesh Mathur of Geniekids also advises parents to check out summer camps for their fun and games quotient. “Summer holidays are a time for free play, fun and enjoyment for children. If a little learning happens incidentally, it’s a bonus. We ensure our camps are fun-oriented and stress free. Indeed we don’t promise parents any radical learning improvement in their children,” says Mathur.

With the weight of expert opinion advocating careful evaluation of summer camps, to help parents choose wisely, EW correspondents across the country fanned out to check and detail the best summer camp options under three categories: sports and outdoor education; cultural and co-curricular activities and life skills education. Read on for what’s on offer in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi.

Sports and outdoor education camps

Bangalore

Mumbai

Chennai

Delhi

Cultural and extra-curricular activities

Bangalore

Mumbai

Chennai

Delhi

Life skills education camps

Bangalore

Mumbai

Chennai

Delhi

With Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore); Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai); Autar Nehru (Delhi) & Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Also Read: Are summer camps just a fad or mount pressure to children?