Description
Public School Camping
California's Pilot Project in Outdoor Education
By
James Mitchell Clarke
Prepared for the San Diego City-County Camp Commission under the direction of the School-Camp Steering Committee.
The school camping movement, one of the most significant of recent developments in American education, is arousing more and more interest because it has demonstrated the real value as an extension of education into rich and hihgly stimulating environments. In response to this growing interest, a number of American communities have organized camping programs to serve the interest of public education. Among these programs, one carried out in recent years by the City and County of San Diego, California, is recognized as outstanding.
A mountain camp
Camp Cuyamaca was established in 1946 among mountains clothed with oak and pine fifty miles inland from San Diego. Under a rotating plan of attendance, sixth-grade children of the San Diego City and County public schools spend one week of their school year at the camp. Here they learn the practical essentials of democracy by making and enforcing their own rules for community living. Their week of shared experiences in natural surroundings helps them develop new and wholesome attitudes toward themselves and physical environments. Above all, they have a rousing good time as they take part in a rich program of activities which supplement and vitalize the lessons of the classroom.
A pioneer experience
In Public School Camping, James Mitchell Clarke describes the development of Camp Cuyamaca from its beginning to the present time and uses this pioneer experience as the basis for a discussion of the theory and practice of school camping. This discussion includes practical details concerning development and administration of a public school camping program, as well as a valuable analysis of the educational and psychological principles underlying school camping.
For every school
Public school officials all over the country are now thinking about the advantages children may gain from supervised camping. All may profit from the discussion of methods and objectives in this timely book. Indoor and outdoor activities of the campers, the maintenance of physical and emotional health, exploitation of the camp's natural environment, problems of administration and of co-ordination between the schools and the community -- these are only a few of the topics which Mr. Clarke's book covers. The photographs of Camp Cuyamaca and its enthusiastic population of sixth-graders confirm the message of the text -- that public school camping can be greatly worth while.
This is a reproduction edition from a scanned copy of the following original edition:
Title
Clarke
Author
Public School Camping
Publisher
Stanford University Press
ISBN
0804705658, 9780804705653
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Tags:
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