Education: Camp Politics

Catching lectures, not frogs

The summer camp calls itself an "experimental lab." The director insists that even swimming is "political." The children put on plays about heroic workers. Mao's China? A Soviet youth Komsomol? No, Santa Barbara, Calif. Situated in a rundown redwood ranch house nestled among the scrub oaks and laurels in the hills above the city, a unique camp run by those indefatigable activists Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda opened this summer for 150 youngsters from 7 to 14.

Mostly the offspring of minorities and veteran left-wing activists, the children are schooled in such weighty issues as why farm workers...