A new genre of specialist firms that employ research teams to design innovative programmes delivered by highly-trained facilitators is offering a plethora of summer camps featuring activities ranging from creative writing, pottery, painting and theatre to swimming, tennis, trekking and telephone etiquette, reports Summiya Yasmeen. They are the new status symbol of urban middle-class India. Now that summer (April-June) holidays have begun, the search for aptitudinally appropriate summer camps for the children has become frantic in upwardly mobile households. While politicians continue to accord low priority to education — or at best pay lip service to it — the Indian bourgeoisie, dazzled by celebratory reportage of well-educated IIM and IIT graduates bagging jobs with five-figure dollar salaries, has fully absorbed the reality that sound education is the passport to job security and prosperity. The more the better. Hence the scramble for enrollment in summer camps where children are schooled in life skills, extra-curricular and sports education. The typical summer vacation of yore in which bourgeois children spent holidays with grandparents, or just stayed put at home playing in backyards or staring at the television set with a maid servant and colouring books for company, is definitely passe in post-liberalisation India where every new skill learnt adds value to education and curricula vitae. Where there’s demand, inevitably there’s supply. Therefore a new genre of education entrepreneurs are offering a plethora of summer camps featuring activities ranging from elocution, creative writing, pottery, ikebana, painting, theatre, frame-making to swimming, tennis, trekking, telephone etiquette and personality development education. “During the past two-three years there’s been an almost 50 percent increase in the number of people/ organisations conducting summer camps. The primary reason for the spurt in summer camp enrollments is the phenomenon of nuclear households with two working parents. Tending to the children through the long two-month summer break is a difficult proposition for such young professionals. For them, summer camps are a boon, offering children safe and secure environments and teaching useful life skills. Moreover, there’s general awareness in middle class India that if children learn new skills, it could give them an edge in the highly competitive job markets. A growing number of teachers and education professionals are cashing in on this demand for extra-curricular education in summer camps,” says Ratnesh Mathur, a Bangalore-based postgraduate of IIM-Lucknow who gave up a corporate career in 1998 to found Geniekids, a supplementary learning centre for children which also offers support programmes to parents and teachers. This summer Geniekids has about 250 children enrolled in its summer camps (see p.61). A contributory cause of the rising popularity of summer camps is also the over-emphasis of school managements on academic education. Obsessed with syllabus completion and pass percentages, schools allocate precious little time for sports and extra-curricular education. Summer camps provide children the opportunity to catch up, discover or develop their sports and hidden talents, acknowledged as important for holistic development and workplace success. Says Smita Deepak Bedre, a Chennai-based mother whose 15-year-old son has been attending summer…
