Making a Case for Worldschooling
I don't do debates. I just can't stand them. Probably because my writer's heart can never seem to make my mouth move like my fingers can. So when questions arise about why I think worldschooling is gold for a child's education (mainly my own children's education), I fail to eloquently express, well, anything really, and I end up standing in front of a stranger making some weird comment about homeschooling being so fun while we travel instead of saying what I really mean to say.
So here's what I really mean to say about this thing we do called worldschooling.
First, a disclaimer - one I always feel the need to give. I know worldschooling isn't for everyone, and I'm not trying to say it's the best or only way education should be. I'm just offering a big dose of encouragement for other worldschoolers, dreamers, and family travel enthusiasts, and bit of food for thought for all of the nay-sayers out there.
Also, worldschooling isn't a program, school of thought, or educational philosophy. It's just using world travel in our pursuit of learning and education, and it encompasses everything we've talked about before in these parts about homeschooling, roadschool, oceanschooling, and whatever other type of schooling fits where we are and what we're into at the moment.
#1 - Worldschooling shows us how small we really are.
I want my kids to know that everyone in this big, beautiful world doesn't look like them and that's okay. I want them to stand on ocean shores and see how small they are in comparison to this giant planet we call home and let that bring them a deep sense of comfort. I want them to encounter something that puts their worries into perspective, and the more we travel while homeschooling, allowing this world to be a teacher to our kids, the more I find these desires becoming a reality.
#2 - Worldschooling proves there's life beyond just one mistake.
When I was in high school, I walked around with this false belief that there were mistakes I could make that would ruin my life forever. Somehow I believed that if someone didn't get into the right college or got pregnant and had to leave school altogether, her life was basically over. But that's just not true. There is so much life left to be lived even if people make mistakes. I just didn't have the experience to tell me that, and my belief system wasn't challenged enough to allow that truth in until I was married with a child of my own. I want my kids to grow up knowing that there's life after mistakes, and although there are all sorts of ways to teach a kid that, I can see how their experiences out in this big world are teaching them that without me ever having to say a word. While traveling, we meet people we would have never met by staying in one place our whole lives, and those people shape our perspective and help us see life after all sorts of mistakes.
#3 - Worldschooling forces our minds to open and expand.
The people of this world have been hurt far too much by those of us who refuse to open our minds and hearts to see other people's perspectives, and I don't want my family to go that route. I dream about having adult children who choose to make peace and positive change in this world rather than sit in their Lazyboys and spout off opinions at the tv screen. I hope to one day be in a conversation at home and have my son say, "Mom, what if you thought about it from her perspective instead?" And I can see how getting my kids into different cultures, eating different kinds of foods, meeting different kinds of people leads to that kind of open mind.
#4 - Worldschooling highlights the fact that we're all way more alike than we are different.
"She reminds me so much of Aunt Mary and he totally reminds me of that guy we met in... what state was that again?" If I could count the number of times we say that in our little traveling house, the number would astonish you. So many times, we get a big kick out of finding people's doppelgangers around the country, and we marvel at how amazing it is that everyone in this big world can be so unique and one-of-a-kind and yet have at least a few look-a-likes out there. This may seem trivial to some, but I think it teaches our kids something huge. It's the idea that we're all more alike than we are different - a learning that will surely come in handy when they get into their own debates, arguments, and perhaps even politics one day.
#5 - We worldschool because kids need to see their parents love learning too.
Sometimes it feels selfish to homeschool, travel, and mash them up into worldschooling because I honestly get just as much out of it as the kids do. This wasn't the case when they were younger and we were using old textbooks to learn basic concepts of science and history, but now that they're older and I've embraced some new roadschooling/travelschooling practices, we learn new things together every single day, and they get to see their mama's love for learning fanned into flame. Only time will tell how much they will benefit from having a teacher who loves learning with them rather than standing in front of them teaching them something she already knows, but my hunch is it'll turn out just fine. Besides, there's plenty of research to back up the value of learning with a guide on the side as opposed to a sage on the stage.
#6 - We worldschool because kids need their parents.
I know kids need friends, but if one more person looks at me with a shocked look on their face when they learn that we homeschool our teenagers, asking how on earth they get the friend time they need, I think I'm going to scream. Since when did the observation that teens need friends turn into the application that they don't need their parents too? There is a delicate balance to be found here, for sure, but overall, we have to stop believing the baloney currently going around about how much teenagers need their friends. The truth is that teenagers need their parents too. We aren't off the hook just because they can feed and clothe themselves. We don't get a break because they can drive and choose their own movies. They still need us, now more than ever, and when we travel as a family, learning along the way, we get some perspective on the voices telling us that kids should do this or that, and we see that our kids are regular people - real, live humans just like us. They can make friends wherever we go and talk to their old friends whenever they want, and the reality is that they will get to make friends their whole lives (and maybe even make better friends later in life when their brains are fully developed), but they won't always live at home with their parents and be able to build relationships with us daily. Traveling together puts that into perspective for our family.
#7 - We worldschool because homeschooling is not some weird new thing - it's actually the way school first started.
Homeschooling isn't some new-fangled oddity; it's institutional learning that's the new kid on the block. When I heard well-respected education guru Sir Ken Robinson talk about this, I was so relieved to know that I wasn't trying to do some weird new thing by homeschooling my kids. When we meet teachers, principals, and school psychologists on the road who look at us like they've never heard of homeschooling before and we see them imagining our kids as wild Robinson Crusoe-type savages, I want to say, "Did you forget that Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Sandra Day O'Connor, Frank Lloyd Wright, and so many other mighty world-changers were homeschooled? Don't you know that homeschool was the original idea?" And then I want to tell them that homeschool these days has a million advantages over homeschools of the past, especially when we travel. But I don't. Instead, I question myself and I wonder how on earth we're going to explain all of this to a college one day. Thankfully, there are loads of us homeschooling and worldschooling mamas out here sharing our lives and helping each other find the resources and support we need to keep going. Honest Abe's mom certainly didn't have that.
#8 - Worldschooling promotes passion, organic learning, and experience.
"What would you study if you could study anything in the whole wide world?" It's a question I don't remember ever thinking about when I was a student, but it's something we say a lot in our house. Certainly, any type of school can promote passion, organic learning, and building experience, but I've found that these things pop out so much easier when we're traveling. We walk into an art studio for a quick rainy day project and learn that one of our boys has a passion for glassblowing. We visit the Guggenheim and learn that someone in our family really appreciates architecture and wants to learn more about it. We meet a family heading to Brazil to spend three months in a surfing school, and I suddenly realize that I would really like to learn to surf one day before I'm too old to try it. We find a fish struggling in the surf, rescue him, take pictures of him, set him free, and rush home to look him up in our field guide. We visit a military museum and start telling stories about all of our friends and family members who have served in the various branches of the military. For us, this is worldschooling at its best.
#9 - Worldschooling affords kids the opportunity to see the world.
I cried the first time I saw the Grand Canyon, and my heart skipped a beat the first time I went skiing down a giant mountain. There's only one way to truly grasp how big the Grand Canyon is or how high the Tetons truly are. You have to be there. We've learned and experienced so much from visiting 49 out of 50 states in the US (and from living in Australia for a while many moons ago), and we can't wait to see what we can find next. If you didn't know already, our family is itching to get out of America and into international travel. We long for it. Our oldest son only has a few years left in high school, and we're trying everything we can to get out of the country with him and put a few international experiences under his belt before he makes his college choice. Being able to take our learning wherever we go affords us the opportunity to do that.
#10 - Worldschooling teaches kids that their age is just a number.
I love hearing my kids talk with adults and stand up and show that they are a regular member of society - not subpar because of their age or lack of experience. And I love to hear them cut into a conversation that I thought they wouldn't care about in the least. I love hearing education revolutionaries talk about how the institutionalized classroom is the only time in a person's life when he will spend all day every day with people his exact age, and as a person who has spent her entire working life constantly learning from women 20 or 30 years or more older than me, I recognize how valuable it is to live life with older and wiser humans. Getting out of our own ruts at home and into the world helps us gain perspective on our age and thrusts us into learning with those older and younger than ourselves.
#11 - Worldschooling turns wanderlust into learning.
Many years ago, I heard someone aptly describe our family's wanderlust with a quote:
For our grandparents, their community was the whole world. For our kids, though, the whole world is their community.
source unknown
That person was a genius. Those words are so true for us. When I was growing up, I would read about Australia, Japan, India, and Africa in textbooks at school and dream about what it would be like to go there and experience those places, but when I told my grandparents we were moving to Australia back in 2007 to experience a new culture, they thought I had lost my mind in a very "Why leave your whole world behind?" manner. Meanwhile, when we read a book in our home about Italy, Greece, France, China, or some other faraway place, my kids either say, "When can we get there and what will we see?" or "Mama, I really don't want to go there right now - okay?" It truly is a whole new world.
#12 - Worldschooling helps us love all the books.
Today my kids were on a break from school, and as we walked to the playground together in a town we're only staying in for a couple of months, one boy carrying a stack of comics, a drawing book, and a pen, and the other carrying a thick middle-grade novel, I couldn't help but smile and say a quick prayer of thanks. They're tweens and teens now, so a playground doesn't hold the same kind of magic it used to. Instead, we use it as a place to meet kids, get some monkey bars exercise in, and do some reading or drawing with happy kid noises in the background. And my kids totally decided to bring these books and drawing pads with them - it wasn't an assignment. "I am so lucky," I thought.
Actually, I don't know if luck is the right word. I dreamed about this day. I've been dreaming about it since I was a young mom stuck in the toy aisle of Barnes and Noble watching moms with teenagers lugging stacks of fun novels to the counter thinking, "I sure hope my kids love to read when they're teenagers." And now I'm the mama of teenagers with more books than we can carry to the Barnes and Noble counter, smiling sweetly at the young mom in the toy aisle, saying, "Hey, I see you. You're totally on your way."
Worldschooling didn't start a love for books in our home, but it sure does feed our love for good books because so many times traveling a lot means driving a lot. And driving a lot means listening to Audible - a lot. Traveling also means visiting bookstores all over the country and popping into libraries in many different states. Honestly, I think our family would love all the books wherever we chose to do school, but traveling definitely feeds the hunger.
#13 - Worldschooling opens a world of possibilities.
The truth is I'm not an education expert or a psychologist or anything of the sort, but my kids and I love to read big books for fun - fiction, nonfiction, and even books those genres can't define. We love to experience new things in nature and hop into a top-notch museum and see what we can learn. And we do it for the joy it brings us, for the feeling we get when another book or sunset or exhibit has drawn us in - not for a grade or acceptance into some fancy program.
I don't know how all of this will shake out when college applications are submitted and SAT dates scheduled, but having children who are engaged and excited about discovering this world and all of the intricacies and wonders present in science, history, literature, and in the depths of their own minds through creativity is gold for education and learning in my opinion, and we're sticking to it as long as we can.
That's all this mama knows how to do.
If you're someone interested in traveling but not sure how it would work because of school for your kiddos, I hope this article gives you so much encouragement.
And if you'd like to know more and be connected to more resources, here are a few related posts to check out: