Travel is Education

Jun 24

When I first had the opportunity to really travel in high school it was amazing. I remember being challenged but also exhilarated at all I was experiencing. It’s also amazing how many things I still remember from my first trips.

26 years later I still remember a handful of colors, basic greetings, and how to count to 10 in Euskara (the Basque language). I even randomly remember how to say “happy New Year” (urte berri on).

Even more importantly, I remember the way travel made me feel. I remember the awe as I walked through centuries old cathedrals. It is absolutely mind boggling the things people were able to accomplish with so few tools. The design, art, and beauty is something to behold.

I remember the calm and joy I felt in beautiful natural places. The appreciation for nature and its amazing feats of artistry and beauty. The happiness at seeing wildlife and the curiosity while observing them. I remember marveling at the awesome power of the elements when faced with seemingly impossible geologic sites.

Each new location is an opportunity to not only expand our views but to expand our knowledge.

Those cathedrals I marveled at have stories waiting to be discovered. The lives of the people who created them, religious doctrine and desire that led to their creation, styles of architecture and art movements, the significance of the artifacts they contain, historical people involved in their creation. Each one of these things can be further explored and those things will open new trails to explore. The learning opportunities are endless.

Those geologic features and natural places also have stories. Weathering, erosion, minerals, sedimentation, plate tectonics, botany, zoology… So many trails for further exploration and learning.

Even the map you used to guide you there is an exercise on latitude and longitude, map features, street patterns and naming, directions, and coordinates.

In life we are always learning, and traveling has a way of turning learning into something we experience instead of something we simply study.

Travel is education in itself. Every road we take is a history lesson, every new place an experiment, and every unexpected detour an exercise in problem-solving.

Just the act of visiting someplace new is educational. Even if you only travel to different places within your own state or country there is so much to be learned from seeing how different people live. City life is different from rural life. Large cities are different from smaller cities. Different climates, different landscapes, different cultures. Remember education is more than just book learning.

For our neurodivergent kids, the social and life skills learned from traveling may be even more important than their book learning. Some of the most valuable lessons happen outside of a workbook. Travel creates opportunities to practice flexibility, communication, self-advocacy, problem-solving, and independence in real-world situations. Those skills can be difficult to teach directly, but they naturally emerge when navigating airports, ordering food, reading maps, asking questions, or adapting when plans change.

The best part is that educational travel doesn't require a passport, an RV, or months on the road. Some of our family's most memorable learning experiences have happened on weekend trips, day trips, and visits to places only a few hours from home. Curiosity matters far more than distance. Every new place has stories to tell and lessons to teach if we're willing to look for them.

There are so many different ways to integrate education with traveling. The world is a classroom, use it.