VACATION CAMPS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3085, 6 January 1909, Page 4

VACATION CAMPS.

We do not suppose that many New Zealand boys are greatly troubled at the present moment about what they will do in their holidays—still less about the possibilities of moral deterioration presented by a period of no school-work and much play. Sufficient it is for them that there is no school. But in America some of the people who have the welfare of the hoy at bean are apprehensive last hi- should lose in bad company during his holidays the moral benefits he has received during the preceding year. In the United States and Canada, parental supervision is generally impossible, and boys of well-to-do folk must either stay in the city with its temptations, or go to a summer resort, with its atmosphere of luxury, or be sent off to "rough it" in some place in the country where they may get into all kinds of mischief. The vacation camp in some unsettled district is now held to be the best solution. The boys live under canvas ai,d enjoy the delights of an open-air life. At the most famous of these camps, which has been in existence for fifteen years, the boys are taught to swim, manage a failing-boat, handle a canoe, catch fish, read the signs of the woodland trails, pitch a camp, and cook. Above all they learn how to look after themselves in wild country. The correspondent of "The Times" (London), who describes the work of these camps, feels certain that a summer holiday spent in one of these open-air universities would greatly widen the ideas and improve the physique of the English schoolboy. We fancy it would be no bad thing for the youth of this country if the idea became popular in New Zealand.