This American Life goes to summer camp

On this week's episode of This American Life, they had a story about the pivital role that summer camp plays in kids' lives. The main part of the story was pretty entertaining, but the best part came during the stories that listeners called in to tell about their summer camp experiences.

One woman called in to tell a story about her parents didn't want to send her to camp because they were leftists and thought that the girl scouts were just brown shirts. (Clearly her parents should have sent her to Habonim camp instead). So they sent her to a leftist Zionist camp. (Yay! They did send her to Habonim camp) So one day at camp the counselors staged an anti-Semitic attack on the camp to teach an important political lesson to the kids (though the counselor told her that "wouldn't it have been better to just keep her mouth shut" though speaking out like the counselors would have seemed to have been the point of the exercise.) And all I have to say is that I can so see that activity being planned, right down to the people being dressed up as Klansmen. Because it would be a valuable learning experience.

But just so you don't think camp totally screws people up, we did have some bounds when I went to camp. While we would have had the learn about anti-Semitism activity, we would draw the line at activities like lead the kids out into the woods and leave them there. They can find their way back. But while they're working on that, there will be some other counselors hiding in the woods, who can jump out from behind the trees and scare the crap out of the kids. Suggestions like that are usually made by Israeli counselors and are then shot down by the Americans who realized that that was a terrible idea.