Just because school’s out for the summer doesn’t mean learning stops as well. Although vacation for students has barely begun, many of them have continued to get an education, albeit in outdoor classrooms and with a noticeably more relaxed structure. This is better known as summer camp. Generally, youngsters can get away from home for a week or so, often to places where there’s woods and a lake or swimming pool.

Locally, two organizations have been offering programs that offer more than just bows and arrows. Last week, several children enrolled in a Junior Master Gardening Camp, which is part of the Regional Workforce Development Center’s Kids College. This wasn’t about learning how to pot geraniums, but instead to identify how people can live in harmony with nature, even when it presents hazards.

This week, boys and girls in the Isle of Wight and Southampton 4H Junior Camp have also been getting hands-on lessons in such things as outdoor living skills and robotics. Those are obviously more sophisticated than canoes or crafts.

To the kids, these have been just fun things to do. But we see these camps as inspiration for future careers. Each child in the aforementioned camps could develop a fascination with activities or subjects that would enable them to become environmental scientists, nurserymen, forest rangers, plant pathologists, robot designers and civil engineers…the list goes on.

We commend organizations such as the Regional Workforce Development Center and the 4-H program in Western Tidewater for offering these camps. They’re far more than a way to goof off; they’re a way to find a path in life.