The World Is Our Classroom
Extreme Parenting and the Rise of Worldschooling
Format:Paperback
Publisher:New York University Press
Published:23rd Feb '21
Should be back in stock very soon
This book examines the trend of families leaving traditional schooling to educate their children while traveling. It highlights the challenges and rewards of embracing a mobile lifestyle and the concept of worldschooling.
In The World Is Our Classroom, author Jennie Germann Molz delves into the growing trend of families who choose to abandon traditional lifestyles in favor of a life on the move. Many parents are selling their homes, leaving their jobs, and pulling their children from conventional schools to pursue education through travel. This book explores the motivations behind these choices, revealing the hopes and anxieties that prompt families to seek a more fulfilling existence outside the confines of their previous lives.
Drawing from interviews with traveling families and her own experiences with her ten-year-old son, Germann Molz provides a vivid account of life spent navigating various modes of transportation. She highlights the belief among many parents that the world itself serves as the best classroom, offering unique learning opportunities that standard schooling often lacks. By embracing technology and remote work, these families redefine what it means to live the good life, fostering a lifestyle that encourages exploration and community among like-minded individuals.
Ultimately, The World Is Our Classroom sheds light on the concept of “worldschooling,” illustrating it as not merely an alternative educational method but as a transformative way of life. Germann Molz presents a compelling portrait of modern parenting, showcasing families striving to raise global citizens equipped to navigate an unpredictable future. Through this exploration, the book invites readers to consider the possibilities and challenges of a mobile lifestyle in the 21st century.
The World Is Our Classroom goes the distance, literally. It is a marvelous book. From it, we learn why families are willing to shrug off the conventions of a tethered existence orbiting around home and school and instead forge global identities as they bring far -flung places within their reach. These worldschoolers embrace the idea of travel as education and lifestyle. They travel to parts unknown, imparting skills and sensibilities to their children that offer big dividends for an uncertain future world. Molz offers us good tools to think with, helping us to see up close how modern families navigate a world rattled by economic and social precarity and risk. She reminds us this is a world we must all weather, however. Though their mobile existence is not without emotional and social costs for them, worldschoolers are rich in resources, able to traverse a world in flux, the same world that leaves untold numbers of families insecure and largely left behind. -- 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
ISBN: 9781479834075
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
288 pages