While it’s still a little early for the East coast, here in the Midwest, it’s back to school time. In two days time, kids all over the city will be piling into classrooms to learn the state mandated curriculum for their particular grade. And while I value education as much as the next person, I’d be the first to say that schools are not necessarily the best place to learn!
Two years ago at this “back to school time,”our family was in Ljubljana, Slovenia. We didn’t go shopping for school clothes or school supplies. We were not preoccupied with bus schedules or bell schedules. We were “just” traveling. With no intention of going to school the next day, next week or even the next year, school was the farthest thing from our minds; but education was not. We took on the attitude of Mark Twain, “Why let school get in the way of a good education.”
So while other kids were in the classroom reading books and memorizing facts, we were out in the real world seeing the sights that others were reading about and experiencing the life that others were studying. Our daughters learned geography first hand, ancient Roman civilization by standing in the Colosseum and the effects of high altitudes by living and cooking in them. The Vietnam War is not a textbook item when you see signs to stay clear of land mines and censorship is not theoretical when you attempt to get on a website that you can not access due to government restrictions.
If you asked my girls if they learned anything during our year of travel they would respond “Yea, I guess so.”When kids learn through experience, it doesn’t even feel like learning, but never doubt that it is. Just put my kids in the same room with others their age and you will see how their worldly experiences have impacted them and how much they learned over the course of the year. Does this make them better? No. But it does make them more well rounded with minds that are expanded beyond the microcosm in which most kids live.
When we returned home after our year away, the school asked us for “proof” of a fourth grade education. We typed up a syllabus (pages 95-98 of my book) to present to the school after the fact. And while the school was satisfied with this document, we all know that there is a difference between what is taught and what is learned. Travel, in my opinion, works the exact opposite of the classroom: in the classroom, more is taught than what is learned, with travel, more is learned than what is taught.
