Summer camp in Florida recreates ‘Hunger Games’ tournament
Aug 7, 2013, 5:04 PM
If your kids this year couldn’t make it to the Boy Scouts of America National Jamboree, they might have shown an interest in a “Hunger Games”-themed tournament in Largo, Fla.
NBC News reports that Country Day School has been running a “Hunger Games” tournament during the summer.
The tournament consists of 26 participants that must “fight one another to the death” just like in the books. But no one actually gets killed.
The children “kill” one another by pulling flag belts from their enemy’s waists, and the camper with the most “lives” at tournament’s end wins.
A Tampa Bay Times story about the camp quoted Susan Toler, a clinical psychologist, who said the idea of creating a “Hunger Games” tournament would make kids think that the act of “killing” someone was no big deal.
“When (children) start thinking and owning and adopting and assuming (those killer) roles, it becomes close to them. The violence becomes less egregious.”
But the school says the only offered the camp to the children because of a high interest in the books.
“Our decision was predicated on the development of a curriculum that replaced any subjects of violence with positive themes of character development and team building.”
The camp ended up changing the rules, where instead of killing everyone off, the youngsters were now “collecting lives.”
