Looking for a way this summer to have your kid get both lazier and stupider? Sure, aren't we all? That's certainly high on every parent's list, a key chapter in the "perfect parenting" manual we received on that glorious first day as a mother or father.
Well, simply take the 4,400-kilometre jaunt to little ol’ Fredericton, N.B. There, in that bygone town, with a steady diet of damper dogs and flipper pies, your child can yolk the benefits of the True Gaming Summer Camp. Yes, finally, a place where your growing grasshopper can slump their darkened days away holed up in front of the boob-tube playing video games, complete with vitamin D supplements and the efficiency-boosting benefits of a colostomy bag.
Sound ridiculous? Naturally, yet the True Gaming Summer Camp (TGSC) is not idle fiction. It's a real summer camp being offered in Fredericton, an innovative video game summer camp that is sadly under fire. According to an article published on cbc.ca, local professionals are in a bit of a tizz, insinuating that this camp is contributing to the province's 28 per cent obesity rate. Come on.
Firstly, it's one summer camp. Besides the fact that the program offered at the TGSC is designed to instil "a healthy balance of video game play, along with a great combination of creative projects, physical activity and social interaction" (www.truegaming.ca), it's simply one camp — one of hundreds offered throughout the province.
In the summer jumble of sports camps, language camps, riding camps, cultural camps, religious camps, nature camps, science camps, art camps, drama camps, band camps and even medieval camps, a video game summer camp is hardly a hiccup, barely a blip in the grand mix of things. Its influence on summertime youth is as minuscule as its influence on increasing provincial obesity rates.
Though fingers are pointing at Andrew Reimer, the camp's founder, this issue does not rest on Reimer nor on the children attending. The responsibility is shouldered by a much more influential demographic. Even if the TGSC's focus wasn't teaching balance, co-operation and creative team-building, and even if the camp resembled the bunkered hollow of atrophy I painted above, there is one factor that exceeds all others when judging the merit of this camp: parents.
This is a privately run, privately funded camp and parents are choosing to shell out the $150 for the five-day camp for the benefit of their children. This means one of two things: either they are as incompetent as my farcically fashioned lead would suggest, or these parents see some benefit in what the camp has to offer. In the race to find a nurturing place for video games in our youth’s society, the parents sending their kids to the TGSC are actually ahead of the curve, not rounding it in last place.
I have often soap-boxed regarding the need for balance and parent-youth dialogue when it comes to video games. Perhaps these parents recognize that this is a chance for kids to see video games in a different light, combining a hobby with positive interaction and creativity outside of the home. Perhaps they recognize that it's important for our youth to be nurtured in feeling summertime success in something, in pursuing a passion, regardless of whether it be — deep breath — sports, language, riding, culture, religion, nature, science, art, drama, band, medieval arts or even video games.
Perhaps a camp like the TGSC in our own community would do the same, given its unique blending of balance of video games, creativity, physical activity and positive interaction.
When he’s not teaching junior high, St. Albert Catholic High School alumnus Derek Mitchell spends his free time connected to a video game console.
