How to Worldschool

Worldschooling, Unschooling, Homeschooling

“Those who wander are not always lost,” said JRR Tolkien and, if you change one letter in this sentence, it rings even truer for those who have taken, or plan to take, the plunge into the wonderful world of worldschooling. It reads like this, “Those who wonder are not always lost.”

Is this you? Are you one of the families who has recently come across the term “worldschooling” and wondered if it’s right for your family and how to actually pull it off? Another question often crowdsourced on the many “worldschooling” pages on social media is, “How do you all make sure kids are meeting common core (academics) while worldschooling? We don’t want our kids to fall behind.” First, there’s no such thing as falling behind if you don’t subscribe to the belief the government knows your child better than you do. Government officials, not teachers, decided what kids should know by which age and stage of their school-centric childhood and this standard is what most curriculums are based on. This is not only ridiculous, but extremely limiting! If I paid attention to the public school system standards, my nine year olds would be getting prepared to graduate in the next few years because they’re already reading at a high school level, can run circles around most teenagers in science, history, world geography, composition and philosophy, and are doing advanced math, but instead, I’ve chosen to continue supporting their learning journey and see how far they’ll go without limiting them by following state standards and a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Let that shit go.

This same question of “How do worldschoolers make sure kids are learning the “real” stuff?” is almost always followed by a question of what online programs worldschooling families use because, most parents new to homeschooling assume everyone is using a virtual academy. I mean, “Why not?” It’s easy to sit the kid in front of a computer, login in and tick off the box stating they’ve completed their work for the day, right? But, what’s the point of traveling if your child is on a virtual academy learning the same sliver of information as the public school and private school kids back home are learning? Why force your kids to read a Swiss folk tale and answer multiple choice questions and the passage or about the Swiss alps when, in reality, your family may be spending December in Thailand packing bags for a morning of whale watching? Wouldn’t that be ludicrous? We do not use online programs or virtual academies because the content organised by day, or task, often does not appeal to the child at that time or place. We believe the world is the classroom and life is the curriculum.