I recollect how in our school and even college days…..the moment the last exam got over, the vacation for play and fun would begin from then onwards. Within minutes all our friends would gather to form a team to play cricket, fix up games and matches, plan a picnic, cycling etc. Of course parents too would have planned by advance booking of railway tickets for visiting the native place/ village every year. But we would still yearn for train travel and village life meeting cousins and relatives etc.
I also remember how my cousins and friends would join to play scrabble ,Carrom, Badminton, even till mid night! Yes….those were the days. Now…better not to describe….as everything is only career oriented and people have become very competitive! Still I do come across boys and girls excelling in Carnatic music, dramatics, music band and so on.
One school of thought enlighten that, the irony is when parents meet their cousins and so on after many years then they spend time talking about the good old days spent in innocence and even wonder why those magic moments seem to be lost but are unwilling to recreate the “magic” for their kids. Further, the organizers of such summer camps mint good money but parents are unwilling to accept that they are being taken for a ride. Kids also are not comfortable while communicating with their parents as they are glued to their tablets/phablets and so on. Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have said that they strictly monitor the internet activities of their respective kids. Steve Jobs children didn’t have access to mobile phones!
But, there are people who see the positive side of such camps and defend by saying how useful some of these extra classes can also be. Hence, the same brush should not be used to paint all these camps / classes etc. Further, where both parents work – increasingly common these days – these camps play a useful role in exposing the child to other useful pursuits.
All in all, it is felt that parents need to be aware of this issue and ask organisers what they are doing to protect children in their care. While some organisers of classes and camps said they did not have child protection policies as such, they said they trained staff members on working with children.
If a parent is sending a child to a summer camp, they must tell the child about what is safe and unsafe. “Allow the child to openly discuss any issues with you,” said child protection specialist at Unicef Chennai, G. Kumaresan. Stressing the importance of child protection policies in organisations that work with children, he said such policies have to be displayed prominently to make spaces child-friendly.
S. Krishna Kumar
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
