Camping in the Curriculum

Abstract

History interests me now more than ever; perhaps it's only my aging, but I think more likely that I have come to understand that history's gift is the insight it gives into people's lives; how they thought, acted and coped--and it's a gift that can give us much to consider today. Pip Lynch's Camping in the Curriculum tells the story of outdoor education's beginnings in New Zealand, and yes, there is much that can be gained from its reading. Any historical review needs to decide where to start. Lynch has chosen to commence with background from the late 1800s, when formal education was "bookish and abstract" (p. 15). The introductory chapters provide a brief review of the social and educational ideology that provided the cultural basis for outdoor education in New Zealand from 1870 to 1939. They describe the growing acceptance of education as responsible for more than the mind, recognising that it is also charged with educating a healthy body. One feature of these early chapters is the fascinating collection of photographs and drawings that speak clearly of both life and schooling in early 20th century New Zealand. While there are plenty of photographs throughout the book, I found the early images most illustrative. The vogue like Otago Girls' High School Ramblers' club motif from 1934 (p. 45) is one example that tells much about how the girls of the day wanted to be seen and have their bush ramblings understood--it begs for a future, alternative, interpretative lens. Copies of early photographs are part of the historical tapestry sampled by Lynch, but she also includes interesting extracts and summative data from across the years and from a diverse range of sources. The following comment on the educational value of camping was published in 1939 and is offered as indicative of the formal acceptance of camping that signified that period in New Zealand's educational history--it still rings true today. Children learn to live together, to keep themselves clean and healthy: it teaches them to love Nature and the open country. It gives the teacher the opportunity of becoming better acquainted with the child. (Education Gazette, 1939, p. 61) However, alternate rationales that have been developed over the years in attempts to convince administrators of the value of outdoor education make for interesting reading. Outdoor activities in education of the late 40s and into the 1950s in New Zealand were, according to Lynch, part of a social and moral agenda for education, in part an attempt to counter the "adult perceptions of immoral, violent and sexually promiscuous teen cults" (p. 70); I hope that's changed! By the early 60s Lynch notes that, "outdoor education ... got students out of administrators' way at the beginning of the first term and gave the latter time to work out the timetable" (p. 102). The movement through the text from camping, to education outdoors to outdoor education and then back again, was not always easily followed but attempts at clarifying and tracking outdoor education's definitions have never been easy. Like the rationales above, the term used to describe outdoor education has been bent to .t the circumstances over time and although dealt with specifically in the text, remained a vexed issue to the end. One aspect of Camping in the Curriculum that I particularly enjoyed was the infusion of scholarship and commentary--indeed I would have preferred more. There is considerable analysis throughout the work on the influence of the political and economic climates of different eras and governments and their respective impacts upon opportunities for outdoor education. No doubt these will be of most interest to New Zealand residents, but they necessarily sketched the cultural background essential to understanding the peaks and troughs of outdoor education's development. There is also much from this analysis that the reader could translate to his or her own setting, either historically or more contemporary. …