How Education is Like Traveling

Education is like traveling. There are many different styles and flavors of traveling, and there are many styles and flavors of educational experiences.

Even within schools, there’s a lot of variability – but out here in homeschool land, beyond the brick and mortar buildings, there are literally endless ways to learn. This post is going to highlight some of the biggest differences. Before I get started, I want to emphasize that there are many excellent ways to get an education. Each family has the right to choose for their own child what that looks like.

Public school is like a huge group tour.

You get on the bus at a specific time with lots of other people that you may not know. A perky tour guide who’s an “expert” gets up with a microphone and tells you all about where you’re going while the bus drives. The people in front of you start chattering, so you can’t hear it all. Or YOU’RE the one who’s tuning out, since you already know this stuff, or you got signed up by someone else and you couldn’t care less. At least, unlike school, you’re not going to be tested on this information at the end of the trip.

Your bus whizzes by places that could be interesting stops, but all you can get is a blurry photo out the window on your way to the actual destination. Maybe someday you’ll stop back this way and actually see what you missed – but who are we kidding? You’re probably never gonna come back this way again.

But wait, what’s this? Why are you stopping at a leather factory? Sure, it’s 15% off all prices (that you suspect were marked up 15% to begin with) but this isn’t a great use of your time at all. Still, you buy a souvenir at the gift shop because hey, you have 20 minutes to kill. And now you’re going to have to drag it around for the rest of the day.

Right before the bus is scheduled to leave, you realize that this is your only opportunity for a bathroom break, and of course the line is out the door because everyone else has to go too. Your tour is not going to make an unscheduled stop just so you can keep everybody waiting while you take care of business.

Don’t get left behind…

Finally, you’re at the destination! You’ve got an itinerary – it’s printed out, with times specifying exactly how many minutes you’ve got to see the things you’ve traveled far away and paid good money to see. And you’ve got to stick to it. No wandering away from the group. No lingering when it’s time to move on. No stepping out of line or you risk gumming up the whole works.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get some time on your own to walk around and explore, but you’ve got to be back on the bus when it’s time to go, and that’s that.

If you’re with this tour for the duration of your trip, you might even be told what time you have to be packed up in the morning, what restaurants you’ll eat in, and what dishes you can choose from.

You’ll be spending lots of time with the other folks on the bus, whether you want to or not. Meanwhile, the only locals you meet will be waiters and salespeople at souvenir shops – who will either be especially polite in hopes of a great tip, or address your big, noisy group with barely concealed annoyance.

You’ll end your trip feeling satisfied that you saw the Big Sights, but possibly wondering if you really experienced the actual place you visited, or the Disneyland version set up for tourists. And you might decide, after all that walking on line and rushing to adhere to the itinerary, that you need another vacation.

Pros and cons: The good, the bad, and the generic

If I haven’t made it clear already, the “group tour” style of travel is extremely limiting. It’s designed to provide a generic, bases-covered experience to a wide range of people.

Travelers sign up for these tours because they don’t have the time or knowledge to plan out details themselves, or they’ve got such limited travel windows that they can’t fit everything in. They can’t spend a month renting a house in France, perfecting their accent; they have 1.5 days to see the Eiffel Tower and eat a few croissants.

Understand, I have personally taken tours like these many times and I am not mocking them. Similarly, I spent ALL my years from 1st-12th grade in public schools, and I am not telling you that they are awful and you should never send your child to one.

Here are some of the pros and cons of the big group/public school experience:

Safety and Predictability

For the moment, let’s assume that we’re traveling to a generally safe destination with a capable company, not a war zone or the North Pole. So with that parameter, in this analogy, we’re talking about a decent to excellent public school, not a failing or crime-infested school.

Travel: My first few times abroad, I felt comfortable and safe with a tour guide, bus, and group. I didn’t have to worry about scouting out hotel rooms, taking cabs, or wandering off into an especially risky part of town.

I really felt the difference when I did start to branch out and travel alone as a single woman – particularly when I had to get into a taxi by myself. There were a few times that I missed the “safety in numbers” feeling of a group experience, as well as the ability to pass the responsibility off to a competent guide.

School: Similarly, public school is the known option. Recent issues of gun violence aside, a good public school in a safe area seems like the default, which makes it feel like the “right” or “safest” environment in which a child is guaranteed to get a good education. And if all the child’s friends and neighbors are attending the school, a family might feel that “safety in numbers” effect of having their child be with “everyone else”. Finally, parents might feel comfortable placing their child’s education in the hands of “experts”, just like a tour guide can steer you toward what’s worth seeing when you’re traveling.

Cost

Travel: I scored excellent deals on airfares, hotels, and transfers because it was part of a group rate. This meant I was able to see more for less money, as well as fit more “key sights” in because the group itinerary was very efficient.

On the other hand, you get what you pay for – and what I was paying for was a prefabricated, generic experience that had enough of what I wanted to be… okay. Maybe even good enough.

Eventually, I realized that I actually wanted something different, so I started spending money on travel in a whole different way – which meant that I had to figure out how to make the $$$ do the work I needed it to do. Very much like the financial sacrifices I’ve made in order to be able to homeschool, and how families spend big money on private schools.

School: Cost is a massive issue that’s constantly in the news, whether it’s about vouchers or spending per pupil. Families are willing to pay top dollar in rents and mortgages for areas with “good schools”. But for those families that don’t have the funds, having an affordable quality option that’s supported by taxpayers seems like the best way to ensure equity. It’s an issue that doesn’t present with an easy solution.

Being part of the establishment

Travel: Groups get preferential treatment. There’s often a separate line at tourist attractions that moves along briskly – big groups mean big business. My tour group breezed past at least 40 minutes’ worth of line idling at the Vatican, for example – which is hours of saved time if you are hitting multiple big sights.

On the other hand, being with a big group is very limiting. You run the risk of annoying the locals or even getting ripped off because they can see the group coming from a mile away. And the time saved at tourist attraction is sucked away by scheduled rest stops at preferred places, “factory tours”, and sales presentations. You can miss all that BS if you set off on your own.

School: Public school in America, in its current form, dates back to the 1800s. That’s plenty of time for it to feel like it’s been around forever and is an essential institution of society. We’re all conditioned to think that kids are “supposed” to go to the local public school. People who choose to do something else have to explain their choices; people who follow the norm don’t have to explain why they chose to, well, be normal.

But not questioning the “norm” has its downsides. Educational practices that don’t work for students stick around way longer than they should. Kids are treated as interchangeable or as proceeding along a factory assembly line in which they receive the same parts in the same order. Students whose needs aren’t being met can have a hard time getting individualized attention; in some cases, families have to fight hard for appropriate class placement and services.

Curated by “experts”

Travel: If you get a great guide, you get information that might be harder to come by, delivered in entertaining style. My tour guide at the Vatican was a retired professor who drew us maps in the dirt with a stick and regaled us with genuinely interesting tales. He added character and context to the trip that I honestly might not have gotten otherwise.

But, you don’t often get to choose your guide, unless you’re paying private school prices for the more “exclusive” tours. You’re assigned a guide who’s been chosen by the tour company, whose name and credentials you’re not shown in advance (if ever). If you get someone terrible, you try to enjoy the sights besides the embarrassingly bad jokes, rudeness, disorganization, or disinterest of the person charged with “leading” you around.

I’ve had mostly good experiences with tour guides on my group trips – but not uniformly positive. I even got hit on once. The Vatican tour sticks out in my mind because it was so far superior, and therefore unusual.

School: Families typically get no say in which teachers are hired or assigned to their kids by the school. You’ll find no teacher bashing from me (I used to be one) but not every teacher is a great fit for every student. You won’t find a lot of schools willing to switch a child out of a particular classroom unless there’s been a significant incident.

Even if the school agrees that a child could benefit from having a different teacher, you might hear things like:

• If we grant your request, we’ll have to grant everyone’s request.
• We don’t have enough other classes at this grade level to make the switch.
• If the student behaves better/tries harder, it’ll be fine.

It’s also possible for a child to get an amazing teacher who is stuck teaching under restrictive rules. The teacher might be required to teach specific programs, or even to be on a certain page of the program on a specific date. There might be district rules about what posters must be hung up, what the teacher must write on the board, what classroom management the teacher can use, and what actual words are to be spoken during lessons!

Theoretically, public schools are governed by democratically elected school boards – but in reality, families often don’t get a say. Also, families may not agree on what’s to be done, or their children might need very different things. One family wants a “back to basics” focus on reading and ‘rithmetic, while another family wants more art and music and recess… what’s a large public institution to do? Someone’s preferences (and children) are going to lose out.

Here’s the essential difference: Signing up for group travel is voluntary. Public school is compulsory.

We all agree that education is good. We want kids to learn. What’s the best way for a particular child or family to go about it? That’s where the variation comes in.

The sort of education that is best for a particular child depends on the child. Some children need a specialized approach. Some benefit from lots of freedom and unstructured time. Others need more guidance, especially if they’re used to a very structured day.

But unlike traveling, which is considered a luxury, school is considered 100% normal and necessary. The idea of a child learning outside of school is foreign to American culture. We’re so used to the idea that schooling IS learning that people have grown to think that all learning MUST take place inside a school building. It’s almost anti-intellectual.

But that isn’t any more true than saying “If you don’t travel with Club ABC’s group tours, you’re not really traveling”.

Then again, you won’t charged under truancy laws if you don’t sign up for Club ABC’s Inspiring Italy 10 Days Excursion to Rome, Florence and Venice.

I invite you to question assumptions about schooling using the traveling metaphor.

If learning is like traveling…

• What destinations are worth going to? Will anything terrible happen if you don’t get to certain places? Are there any destinations NOT worth going to, and is that the same for every person?
• Is it better to see every country on a continent? Or spend a month in one country delving deep into its language and history?
• What “counts” as a “good” experience? How do you measure that?
• When is it better to go with a group or hire an expert? When is it OK, or even better, to go on your own?
• Should you always see someplace new? Or is there value in returning to a place (or topic) you’ve been before?

A lot of what we’ve been told is “necessary” or “mandatory” in schooling actually isn’t. It’s just a series of choices that other people have made for you and your child.

Instead of trusting someone else’s choices, think about what choices YOU would make if you were the one “planning the trip”.

And enjoy the journey!

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