Conversations with parents and children living on sailboats have proved surprising. The parents get home-schooling kits to keep their children moving along at grade level. The folks we talked to said that it takes the kids about two hours per day to get through the material, consistent with other home-schooled kids that I’ve talked to. The kids spend the rest of their day running the sailboat, exploring new islands, learning about weather and navigation, and reading a lot of books (no Internet most of the time).
What surprised me was the attitude of the children. One 13-year-old girl, soon to be heading home to her friends and the Mall, said that she wished that she could stay out for another year, crammed together with her parents and siblings on a small boat. “What about your friends?” I asked, sure that this pretty socially adept girl would have had quite a few good ones. “I make new friends down here,” she replied.
We spent several winters on a sailboat in the Bahamas where maybe three or four hundred boats will congregate at Georgetown in the Exumas. It’s sometimes called “chicken harbour” because lots of boats try the more open waters to the south and decide that Georgetown is a nice place.
We’ve seen the same things you did with boat kids. They act and speak like adults because they spend a large portion of their time with adults. They are responsible because they have jobs to do on their boats – a bit like kids who grow up on ranches. It’s neat to see them in places like Georgetown where they immediately make friends with the other kids. Invariably they are inclusive, with the older children looking out for the littler ones.
When they go to college, most of them are ahead academically, have good study habits and have no trouble socializing. Somewhere in there are lessons for our school systems
Two hours/day is depressing, but not unsurprising. When I observe the sheer amount of time my kindergartner’s teacher has to spend on the 3-4 “spirited” boys (read ADHD or whatever), while everyone else is often in waiting mode, it’s worrying. But I am not home-schooling my kids!
I also noted when my son, one of Philip’s nephews, qualified for the Maryland State Geography Bee, that of the 10 finalists from whom the entrant to the National Bee would be chosen, 2 were home-schooled kids. In the end, a boy from the Jewish Day School prevailed, but the 2 home schoolers were impressive. Geography is very poorly taught in the public schools (not sure about private schools), and some of the teachers, themselves products of this system, are completely clueless about geography and history.
So being on a boat studying maps may be the way to go!
I would guess that people living on sailboats have an above-average education and a below-average stress level. Both qualities probably make them better teachers than many other home-schoolers. In the rural area where my mother lives in GA, homeschooling seems to be done commonly for religious reasons. I get the impression that it’s more about what they don’t want their children to know, than about what they want their children to learn. Like most forms of schooling, I would guess that the privileged children get a better deal with non-public education and the less privileged generally do better with public education.
My old friends, the Bell’s raised their two on a 36 foot boat Chris built. About 15 years ago they finished a 50 footer and headed out to do the “Milk Run” around the Pacific. They got as far as Guam and found the living easy and the money hard to pass up.
The 9 year old stood watches as did his 13 year old sister. My impression of these kids is the same as posted above. Last time I met them they had returned for the graduation of the daughter from Mills College.
They are a great family with interesting stories to tell. A teenage romance in Turkey – elopement from Hawaii to the mainland on a 20 foot sailboat.
Glen wrote: “I get the impression that it’s more about what they don’t want their children to know, than about what they want their children to learn.”
It’s actually more of the latter. Frustration with public schools is borne of the excessive focus on politically-motivated activities at the expense of legitimate academic pursuits. It’s the “at the expense of” part that irks people.
I know a math teacher in the Bronx whose school has a “human rights group” that writes letters of support to Gitmo detainees because they are “political prisoners.” Those students rarely complete their math homework, but somehow find time for rallies and protests against the federal government (again, these are high schoolers). My old high school has a “civil rights group” that plasters the school with posters reminding kids not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation (is this really a problem in rural Maine?). My brother and his wife took second jobs to pull their 3 daughters out of the public schools and put them into a Catholic school (they’re not even Catholic). They had to teach their daughters basic reading and math after school because the school was focused on teaching the children sex education and how to embrace diversity (this is in Maine and the kids are all under 10 years of age). Now they’re learning algebra and Latin. Unfortunately, my brother and his wife must still pay taxes at the same rate as when their daughters attended the dysfunctional public schools.
I noticed similar objections while in Georgia. Lots of military families show up to Georgia, are appalled at the schools, and choose to homeschool. There is simply too much occurring at the expense of learning. The frustration in each case is that the children are not learning the basics because the teachers choose to focus on political agendas.
It’s really simple. Yacht-schooled children have no easy and free access to TV, video games, and the usual around the block teenage challenges. On the yacht, they are very much under 24/7 surveillance by their parents.
Compare this to non-Yacht-schooled children. The issue isn’t with the public school (or private). It’s with the parents. Until when parents stop thinking of the school system as drop-off and pick-up “port”, they have only themselves to blame if their children doesn’t become what they hope they will be.
“What surprised me was the attitude of the children.”
When we moved on the boat and started homsechooling, the most frequent question asked by family, friends, strangers and ourselves! was “What about socialization?” What about it?
What about putting a child in a room with 30 other children precisely the same age and telling them when to eat, pee, and speak, what to read, learn and make provides her with real life experience that she can translate as an adult.
Real life is much messier. You deal with people from many cultures and economic backgrounds. Some are younger, some older. Some smart, some loopy. Homeschoolers in general and boat schoolers in particular experience this messy variety.
Most boat kids adapt quickly. Few, given the tremendous excitement and challenge of their aquatic gypsy lives, would exchange beach amateur musicals, exploring small coastal towns, playing with local children, and the pleasure of being counted as integral responsible crew members for the artificial hot house emotional maelstrom of the average American school.