When the Field Trip Never Ends – What is Worldschooling?
Over the last few decades, homeschooling in the USA has grown from a tiny movement that was seen as a bit odd at times into a thriving option for educating kids. Part of what makes homeschooling so appealing for so many is the freedom that it gives families to choose the method for educating their own kids. One of the many methods that came out of this freedom is something called Worldschooling.
What is Worldschooling?
Simply put, worldschooling is the process of teaching children experientially through intentional travel and exploration of the world around them.
Essentially, it’s taking field trips with your kids!
Most families that call themselves “worldschoolers” travel from place to place while exploring, and return to their home-bases infrequently, if ever. Many families choose to do worldschooling while traveling internationally, and that’s great! Other families choose to only travel domestically, and still others stay close enough to home to be able to come back between trips. The world is everywhere, including right outside your own door, so how far and how often you travel is all up to you!
The one thing that all these families have in common is a desire to help their kids learn about life through travel.
Is Worldschooling Safe?
Especially for families who haven’t done a lot of traveling, the prospect of traveling with kids seems like it’s just asking for trouble. But the truth of the matter is that international travel is most often a completely safe activity, whether you’re with your kids or without.
Fish-related injuries not withstanding….
That is not to say that there is no risk involved at all, but realistically speaking, there is always at least some risk involved any time you choose to leave the house! Treat new places as you would the area around your home. Look both ways before you cross the street, wash your hands before eating, and don’t wander down deserted alleyways after dark.
Arguably, traveling with kids is safer than traveling without them, as I’ve found many people all around the world will go out of their way to make sure that kids are comfortable and having a good time!
Is Worldschooling Legal?
This mostly depends on what country you are from and what you mean by worldschooling. If all you mean by worldschooling is supplementing whatever educational system you are already using by taking every opportunity to teach your kids experientially through travel, then, yes, it is 100% legal! However, if you intend worldschooling to be the primary source of education for your children, then it’s a little more complex.
Homeschooling itself is completely legal in the United States, but the laws dictating what that homeschooling looks like changes from state to state. Some states, like Texas, are extremely lenient on their standards for homeschooling and would absolutely accept worldschooling as a viable option so long as you meet all the minimum education requirements.
Other states, such as New York, are much stricter on what does or does not qualify as homeschooling, and they would not accept a curriculum based solely on experiential travel as being legal. However, even in the strictest areas, deciding to supplement your children’s education with travel is completely fine!
You can check out your state’s homeschool requirements at the
Home School Legal Defense Association’s website for more details.
You can check out your state’s homeschool requirements at the Home School Legal Defense Association’s website for more details.
If you’re from outside of the States, the legality of homeschooling varies widely from place to place. There are some countries where it is not only legal, but encouraged. And there are a lot of countries where it’s not allowed. Before deciding to do worldschooling with your kids, I highly recommend looking up your specific country’s laws regarding homeschooling.
If you plan on staying in other countries for longer periods of time, you should also be aware that, for short-term tourists, it is completely fine to homeschool your kids even while traveling in a country that does not allow homeschooling. But, if you plan on getting a residence visa, you can be held accountable to that country’s laws. This doesn’t really affect most worldschooling families, since they rarely stick around long enough to get a residence visa, but it is worth knowing about.
Is Worldschooling worth doing?
For the purposes of this section, when I say Worldschooling, I specifically mean traveling educationally with your kids for a longer period of time without returning to a “home base.” Taking shorter family field trips as an addition to whatever school you’re already doing is absolutely worth doing.
Ultimately, whether long-term worldschooling is “worth it” for you and your family depends on what you and your family want to get out of it. For my family, the answer is a resounding YES. Travel has always been a part of our family life, and we’ve been full-time travelers since 2020. But I also know people that felt like it wasn’t worth it for them.
As with most things in life, worldschooling has its ups and downs, but is largely composed of many in-betweens.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the advantages and disadvantages that come with Worldschooling.
What do kids get out of Worldschooling? (Advantages of Worldschooling)
First and foremost, worldschooling is about the kids. So, it’s really important to consider the impact that full-time travel can have on them! That said, worldschooling has several major benefits that make it worth considering.
Worldschooling makes memories
Worldschooling kids get the chance to have absolutely amazing experiences all across the globe! In the three years that my family has been traveling full-time, our kids have swum with wild dolphins in Mexico, roasted marshmallows over lava on an active volcano, explored the ruins of ancient cultures all over the world, and gone on an African Safari! All of that before age 10!
Some people say they won’t travel with kids because the kids won’t remember it, but with our kids, I have found that they do remember a surprising amount. Plus, it’s important to remember that whether we can pull up a specific memory of an event or not, it still went into shaping us into the people we are today. Showing your kids the world now, when they are young, will have a lasting impact on them as people, whether they are able to point to the specific moments that shaped them, or not.
Experiences are the best teachers
One of the best things about worldschooling is that it gives kids the chance to learn about cultures, places, and creatures first-hand. Explaining to our kids how plate tectonics cause volcanoes is so much more powerful when we’re watching one erupt in front of us. Similarly, reading about a cultural dance is nowhere near as engaging as watching it happen in the street in front of you!
Studies have shown that kids who participate in field trips benefit in several key ways. Not only do they score higher on tests, but they also show increased levels of empathy, critical thinking skills, tolerance for others, and more!
Travel broadens kids’ world view
We all see the world around us through the lens of what we know. Travel helps kids to expand their worldview not only by letting them see the way other cultures and people do things, but also by letting them see the impact of humanity on the natural world.
This is super important, because it helps kids to understand that we need a “why” for what we’re doing. Simply doing what we’ve always done because it’s the way that we’ve always done doesn’t lead to change. Showing kids that there are options, and helping them understand that there are different ways to complete the same task helps them to appreciate differences in others and can even help them solve problems more effectively!
What do kids miss out on while Worldschooling? (Disadvantages of Worldschooling)
While my family loves worldschooling, not even the absolute best of experiences are totally perfect.
Despite this section’s title, I really wouldn’t consider any of these to be disadvantages, per se. Rather, these are challenging things about the Worldschooling life-style that need to be considered and accounted for in order to cultivate a successful worldschooling journey.
Worldschooling requires planning and effort to be most effective
Flipping through Instagram or reading blogs, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the worldschooling life is all fun and games. After all, worldschooling families get to go so many places and do so many amazing things!
However, there’s a lot more to it than just picking up and going. For kids to learn from their travel experiences, they have to already have a knowledge base in place. As a parent, that normally means that if I want my kids to have an awesome educational experience, I need to do some studying myself, ahead of time, so I can get them primed for learning. Afterwards, it’s worth asking the kids questions about what they did and saw so that the ideas will stick.
Neither task is hard, exactly. But there is some effort involved.
Worldschooling can’t teach everything
As great as experiential learning is, there are some topics that it just isn’t well-suited to teaching. Experiential learning is perfect for teaching “big picture” ideas or for helping put things in context. And fun trips are great motivation for learning!
But we have yet to find a trip that helps them memorize their multiplication facts.
We have a separate curriculum that we use for our kids’ school time, and I wouldn’t suggest completely dropping book learning in favor of field trips, for anyone. Even so, kids who take field trips do score higher on tests across the board, so I feel like it’s worth doing both!
Travel can be uncomfortable at times
Yes, traveling families get to relax on beaches, and see amazing sights, but there’s a lot of less-than-Instagram-worthy moments that happen in getting there. Exhausting hikes, hungry kids, and broken down buses are all on the table here. So are moments of loneliness, bouts of homesickness, and wondering how much a ticket home would cost.
I personally think it is all worth it, and I’ve met other families that feel the same way, but it’s worth knowing that traveling isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. And even though there’s a lot of fun to this life-style, it isn’t a permanent vacation, either.
What benefits does Worldschooling have for the whole family?
Yes, worldschooling is about providing amazing educational adventures for the kids, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t also be awesome for the rest of the family!
Worldschooling is fun for the whole family
More often than not, when we decide to take our kids on an educational excursion, it’s something that ends up being fun for everyone. When we stayed on a farm in Honduras so the kids could learn about things like harvesting cacao pods and animal life-cycles, my wife and I had just as much fun playing with the baby geese and watching eggs hatch. And cacao beans fresh from the pod is now one of my favorite fruits!
Worldschooling promotes life-long learning
We learned about sea turtles by releasing babies with a conservation project in Mexico, helped feed the animals at a rescue center in Costa Rica, and learned about Africa’s Big 5 while on safari in South Africa. And, yes, we visited Petra to help the kids learn about a Wonder of the World, but I learned so much while I was there.
Teaching kids the importance of being life-long learners starts with setting an example. Worldschooling helps by giving us plenty of opportunities to do just that.
I want to take a moment here to reiterate that you do not have to spend thousands of dollars on plane tickets around the world in order to add experiential travel to your children’s education. Worldschooling is about learning about the world around us through seeing, doing, and experiencing new things.
And you don’t need to travel far to do that.
