Would you believe it if we told you that getting kids to spend more time outside is not a modern problem? In fact, parents have been struggling to get their kids outside for 150 years. Well, that’s at least when someone decided to do something about it - and thus began the creation of summer camps in America.
In 1877, Reverend William Parsons, from New York City, moved to Sherman, Pennsylvania, to pastor a rural congregation. Savoring life in the country, Parsons said he “couldn’t shake the feeling that poor children he had ministered to in New York City should experience the beautiful countryside.” So, in his first summer in Sherman, he arranged for 60 poor tenement children from New York to have a two-week country stay with members of his congregation.
Spiritually Innocent & Physically Feeble
Parsons said it was a way to “redeem spiritually innocent and physically feeble children.” It was so successful that Parsons established the “Fresh Air Fund” - maybe the first camp scholarship fundraiser - to help children living in tenements in New York spend time in the country. Eleven years later, in 1888, the Fresh Air Fund was sending over 10,000 children per year to host families in hundreds of towns across New England. Parson’s idea spawned the Fresh Air Movement, a movement to get kids out of the polluted city air and into the fresh air of the countryside. The Fresh Air Movement inspired the creation of hundreds of summer camps in New England around the turn of the 20th century.
An Un-modern Roadblock
Isn’t it interesting that children’s time outdoors was a concern 150 years ago? We think of “screen time” as a modern roadblock that keeps kids from the Great Outdoors, but this is not a new problem. No matter the century, summer camp remains a powerful response to that concern.
