Road Schooling

My family had the opportunity this week to take advantage of our freedom to travel in the middle of the school year - not an organized home school event such as our recent trip to Birmingham, but as a private family getaway. My husband's work took him to Eglin Air Force Base, including a paid for off-season condo on the beach in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. For a mere $10 additional fee per day, the family could join him, and with no attachment to a school schedule, we did just that.

I did bring on the trip a large box of our schooling materials, but aside from daily math and writing lessons, the bulk of this was ignored in favor of outings and beach trips. Over the course of the week, my children collected shells on the beach (later to be used for a science measurement exercise), learned first-hand about bio-luminescent plankton, saw dolphins swim in the wild, played in the surf and learned about tides, saw jellyfish in the wild, boarded an ocean-going vessel for the first time in their lives, visited a science center, touched a baby alligator, stopped in our state capital city, and visited the Air Force Armament Museum and learned about historical aircraft and weapons from their engineer father. Could the same have been accomplished during a week in a public school classroom, or even during a typical week of education at home?

When I first began writing this blog entry, the term "road schooling" came to mind, although a quick Google search revealed that I'm far from the first person to coin the term. The article "Road Schooling" for the Education of a Lifetime by Carol White shares more about the experience than I can in recounting our one week getaway, but our experience, especially so soon after our Birmingham trip, really afforded me the opportunity to expand my horizons in terms of what true freedom means when it comes to educating my own children. 

Travel is always an excellent way to learn. Even as an adult, I know lessons become etched into my mind through experience. What was once a vague awareness of Mediterranean culture and geography crystallized into reality once I spent two weeks in Turkey, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus. I could only logically conclude that this phenomenon is only magnified in children, who even more frequently than adults misperceive reality based upon what is gleaned from text or other media. 

Of course, long-term road schooling is not something that is practical or feasible for every family, but whether travel can be for a day, a week, a month, or a year, travel broadens the mind faster than any curriculum or method I can imagine.

I have often heard my friends with children in public school lament that they are bound to a school schedule, and strict attendance requirements make traveling on their own time difficult. Pressure from the schools drops heavy because attendance equates to funding in the world of public education. While I certainly do not advocate any decisions that diminish a child's education, the bottom line to me, as is always my theme; liberty! It goes without saying that if you homeschool, you have the liberty to take your child, where you want, when you want. 

But I affirm that if your child is in public school, you have that liberty as well. Your family is your own, and your family's time is a precious commodity. As a parent you decide what is in the best interest of your child. Do not make excuses, the choice is, ultimately, yours. I beseech all parents out there, homeschooling or not, to take the opportunities you can to expose your child the greatest of classrooms that has no bounds. If you must deal with consequences, deal with them, but do not deprive your children of unique and rare experiences that come along because you fear school administrators and social workers. This is not to suggest that truancy should be trivialized - do the responsible thing, but do not let life pass your family by because government schools try to shackle your time in their never-ending quest for maximum funding. Your time, your freedom, is yours.