Summer for fun or work?

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

When I was a child - a long, long, long time ago - for me the very pinnacle of summer camp was the couple weeks spent in a structured programme at the St Thomas Parish Library in Morant Bay. Sure, it was a very familiar place - I spent lots of time there after school anyway - but to be actually there during the day and get to really go through the adult section, plus the ring games and the pretty little girls all dolled up in summer gear (never got to kiss one, although I vowed to every summer and, I suspect, a similar desire lay behind the scowls and 'cut eye' on the other side) was heaven.

That was then. That was when there were two television channels - the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation and off (both black and white). There were two radio stations and the VCR was not even in the appliance store's window.

Now, at eight and 10 years old our daughters are in the 'summer camp' mode once again. But this is a different era, with way different expectations and, similarly, vastly different summer-camp options. From swimming to hiking, from chess to sailing, languages to sports and every blend in between, there are summer camps aplenty to choose from. (With the attendant prices, naturally.)

A simple choice

However, there is also a thing called the Grade Six Achievement Test, which does not take holidays. I swear that thing is more involved than the first to third-form programme at Munro College in the early to mid 1980s. So, with the long summer holidays almost upon us, we have a choice - shall it be work (as in schoolwork) or shall it be play?

I have it a little easier. The parents with a child going into grade six must be sweating bricks, as I guess I will this time next year. Still, there is nothing like setting a pattern - but there is also the overwork factor. I know what the children want to do - play, play, play. I know that they need to do some schoolwork as well. Are the two mutually exclusive? Theoretically, no. Practically - in the flush of the unending summer holidays, hell yeah!

I look back at my summers, following Rin Tin Tin on his adventures in the St Thomas Parish Library, and to me it is an absolute no-brainer. Fun does it every time, certainly at this age and stage. And you all know that the more kids play, the more they learn, right? Yup. Water play, mud play, running, jumping, getting really dirty. I am not a trained educator, but I certainly figure that the more a person is comfortable in their environment, the more tactile their interaction with the world around them is, the more of those surroundings they will want to investigate.

And that, my pals, is learning.

So, strictly speaking, I should not say that I vote for a fun summer for our children. I am batting for opening up their appetite for learning by engaging their world through bowling and kicking and splashing water and tossing paint, and simply having a whale of a god time.

Now, if I could find somewhere where they do all that on the cheap.