Combat Multiplier

Thursday, October 28, 2010

I had some great talks with several parents today concerned that we may not go to camp anymore after this year. Believe me, I agree, and I hope for the best. Some things are out of our control, but for now it seems like things might stay as they are.

One thing I heard Mr. Spencer, a 5-1 father and officer in the United States Army, say today is that in the Army they have certain exercises by the name of "Combat Multiplier", in which their training and their knowledge of how combat situations work is multiplied, evidently through means that aren't synthesized combat situations. He talked about how he sees the camp experience as a "Curriculum Multiplier"; a situation that won't add new curricular information to the students, but it amplifies everything that goes on back in the school situation. He perfectly articulated something that I've never been able to put into words.

Words can't explain what makes camp such a transformational experience for classroom groups. The whole dynamic just shifts in a special way when you take a whole group of people, kids, parents, teachers, and put them in a whole new environment for a few days, where they are asked to eat meals together, sleep in the same cabins, and work as a team to get less food waste, get across a cable while blindfolded, or just to endure the cold wind together does somehow make us all into stronger individuals as well as a stronger cohesive unit.

Of course, Camp Tecumseh's coffee doesn't hurt either.