Some Reflections On Worldschooling

Welp, Zach has finished school and is now officially grown. And, further, he’s been accepted to his first-choice college at his first-choice university, Oxford, to read History and Politics.

I’m obviously hugely proud and chuffed. We can, as I mentioned, now comfortably say that taking four years out of school to travel the world and do freeform but considered worldschooling doesn’t necessarily harm your academic chances.

I’m also now in a position to look back on worldschooling and share a few key learnings.

When You Finish, Choose the Right School

We owe a lot to Bali Island School (BIS), where Zach studied for his International Baccalaureate, for their great teaching – and for helping identify a learning disability that the staff at his last school in Canggu had managed to miss (along with those of at least two other students in his small grade cohort).

Zach was never a fan of writing things by hand. He read early but hardly ever finished a piece of writing and was egregiously reluctant to do so. In 2009, when, then as now, everything important was written on keyboards, it seemed inconceivable that writing by hand could conceivably be an important life skill in 2017, let alone 2019. So, after stabs at things like calligraphy and writing exercises, we resolved the issue by having him write on computer.

However, once he took his IGCSE exams, an international version of a set of content-heavy tests that is taken at 16 in English schools and is a major factor in university placements, it became clear that handwriting still mattered. Despite good predictions from his school, he scored below the 50^th centile – even as a native English speaker in tests taken by students from all language backgrounds.

It was clear that something was up. Either the entire family and most people who’d met him were delusional, or Zach had some form of learning disability. Dyspraxia, we wondered? But his motor skills and visual-spatial reasoning are fine.

A change of school and an educational psychologist’s report later, and there was an answer: Zach’s handwriting speed was, at 17, slower than the average nine-year-old child’s, and in the bottom 0.1% of his age group. His intelligence was at the exact opposite end of the scale. Further, his vocabulary, sentence structure and organisation of thoughts falls to pieces when writing by hand, in a way it doesn’t when on the computer.

The condition, dysgraphia, is a processing disorder that’s generally easy enough to address in the computer era: Provide the student with a laptop, a calculator and a little extra time for exams, including oral interviews, and let them use their laptop in class.

Bali Island School also provided a learning disability coordinator to work with Zach on time management — and, frankly, a lot of the sort of expertise that only good, trained teachers can provide. While Zach had an amazing time socially at his previous school, Canggu Community School, that support was lacking.

Ours is an extreme example, but picking the right school after worldschooling matters. At BIS, Zach graduated valedictorian with an IB score well above the Oxford minimum requirements. I shudder to think where he would have been headed had he not changed school.

Plan to Finish by the Time They Turn 13

I would recommend that any parent thinking about doing something similar – particularly a parent of an only child – plans to complete their journey by the time the child turns 13. Something is hardwired into teenage brains, particularly male teenagers, that urges them to go out into the world and find their own friends and peer group. Anecdotal evidence from travelling families confirms that.

There are, of course, alternative options (see the Project World School and Family Adventure Summit pages for some ideas). However, by lightyears the easiest way for any teen to achieve space from their parents and build their own circle is… school.

Perhaps not coincidentally, high school starts at 13 in many systems, which brings its own academic challenges. Content becomes increasingly differentiated; subjects are taught by specialists, not generalists; facilities such as science labs become increasingly important; and most European systems let you opt into and out of specific course areas to suit your interests.

Only a tiny subset of parents can deliver a worldschool curriculum remotely on a par with a good high school with specialist subject teachers in the sciences, humanities, languages and the arts, and even then they won’t have the lab facilities for much hands-on science let alone access to competitive sports. While sites like Khan Academy provide excellent free resources in the STEM area, they’re not a substitute for a great, inspirational teacher.

It feels to me as though the early teens are also the stage after which the inevitable gaps freeform worldschooling leaves become hard to fill. Zach was lightyears ahead in some areas; in others, he had weird gaps in his basic knowledge. (I remember noticing with horror that he didn’t know the boiling point of water because, well, because nobody had taught it to him.) Which brings me to…

You Need (Some) Structure

It’s my view (and Zach’s) that four years’ travelling and worldschooling, with a couple of short stints in school (in China, the UK and Bali) were an overwhelming positive in terms of life experience, breadth of knowledge, depth of understanding, confidence and writing skills. While the learning disability makes it difficult to assess whether travel improved his academic performance, we do now know it did no harm.

When it comes to academics, I’m quite old school. I believe that tertiary education is the single best option for any young adult who doesn’t have a clear, focused path when they finish high school. I believe that there are certain foundational elements of knowledge that everyone should have – Pythagoras’ theorem, for example, or the boiling point of water, or that World War I began in 1914 and ended in 1918.

And I believe that a parent has failed in their duty to their child if they do not empower them with both the skills and the paperwork to get a good job in a traditional sector – medicine, law, government – if that’s where their interest and abilities lie. Too many extremely online parents appear to believe that their children need only be equipped to run online businesses, just like mum and dad.

Now, I do still hold that, for younger children, as Zach’s primary headteacher said when we first set off, over 10 years ago, “Be sure to keep up maths and English, and the rest will be fine.” But there is a massive difference between a child enjoying a (reasonably) considered worldschool experience with some defined learning goals and outputs and a child running feral with unlimited access to devices.

Right now, there are a number of first-time parents of very young children who have not yet seen their journey through to anywhere near the college admission stage using an online platform to promote absolutely unstructured worldschooling. These children are experiments in the making, and the outcome may not be good.

I’m not as hardcore about curriculums as, say Jen Miller, who’s seen all her kids successfully launch after following a very structured and (secular!) homeschool programme while travelling. But I believe parents need to think carefully about learning opportunities the environment provides, do research to maximise those opportunities, and interact with their children to enhance them. Here’s a great example from Caz Makepeace, a former teacher, who’s travelled longterm with her husband Craig and their daughters for many years, on and off.

Put simply, education is a fundamental human right and no parent should deny it to their kids. Without thought, consideration and extensive parental engagement, free worldschooling is tantamount to child neglect — particularly when the parent is, as they so often are, running an online business that takes up almost all their time.

You Should Use Your Travel in What You Do

With all that said, worldschooling delivers the opportunity to use the whole world as your classroom. This post by Hannah Miller, who worldschooled following a strict curriculum, graduated college and now runs an online business, somewhat raises the bar for the aspirational parent.

For all the challenges, there is nothing quite like learning about the gods of ancient Egypt by climbing inside a pyramid, hearing about the Cambodian genocide from people who experienced it, discovering Louis XIV at Versailles, immersing in Van Gogh in Amsterdam, or exploring the retreat of the glaciers in the high Himalayas.

It’s also easy enough to pin maths and science elements onto what can feel like a very humanities-centred experience to ensure that side of things are covered. So, for the pyramids, you might want to study volume or how to fold shapes; for the Cambodian genocide, you might want to look at proportions or graphs; in Versailles, you could explore the economics that led Louis to melt down his silver furniture; for Van Gogh, you could research the reaction of paint and light that has led his paintings to change colour.

You do, however, as a parent, need a considered approach. And you also need to train your child in how to research safely and reliably online.

Here’s a post from seven years ago outlining how we did things that might prove helpful if you’re planning on doing something similar. I 100% recommend it and Zach does too.

And any specific questions, please do fire away…