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The World Is Our Classroom
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23 February 2021

How travelling the world allows new ways to educate children and perform family life on the move
A growing number of families are selling their houses, quitting their jobs, and taking their children out of traditional school settings to educate them while traveling the globe. In The World is Our Classroom, Jennie Germann Molz explores the hopes and anxieties that drive these parents and children to leave their comfortable lives behind out of a desire to live the “good life” on the move.
Drawing on interviews with parents and stories from the blogs they publish during their journeys, as well as her own experience traveling the world with her ten-year-old son, Germann Molz takes us inside a fascinating life spent on trains, boats, and planes. She shows why many parents—disillusioned with standard public schooling—believe the world is a child’s best classroom. Rebelling against convention, these parents combine technology and travel to pursue a different version of the good life, one in which parents can work remotely as “digital nomads,” participate in like-minded communities online, and expose their children to the risks, opportunities, and life lessons that the world has to offer.
Ultimately, Germann Molz sheds light on the emerging phenomenon of “worldschooling,” showing that it is not just an alternative way to educate children, but an altogether new kind of mobile lifestyle. The World is Our Classroom paints an extreme portrait of twenty-first century parenting and some families’ attempts to raise global citizens prepared to thrive in the uncertain world of tomorrow.
— Amy L. Best, author of Fast Food Kids: French Fries, Lunch Lines, and Social Ties
"The World Is Our Classroom provides the first comprehensive examination of worldschooling families. This whirlwind of a book takes the reader on a journey through the lives of worldschooling families from Argentina to Thailand. With the use of mobile virtual ethnography, Germann Molz provides detailed insight into worldschooling as a way of life that emphasizes risk taking, resilience, and ultimately family as parents prepare their kids to be “future-proof” global citizens at the same time as holding family very close. Anyone interested in education, families, globalization, technology, or just a good read should pick up this book."
— Gayle Kaufman, author of Fixing Parental Leave: The Six Month Solution
"Jennie Germann Molz's investigation into "worldschooling" provides an important contribution to understanding homeschooling, unconventional education, and intensive mothering in response to an uncertain world. Privilege, social class, and global worldviews intersect in this rich ethnography of parenting in the twenty-first century."
— Jennifer Lois, author of Home Is Where the School Is: The Logic of Homeschooling and the Emotional Labor of Mothering