Sociologist Jennie Germann Molz joins the podcast to discuss her book The World Is Our Classroom: Extreme Parenting and the Rise of Worldschooling. Jennie is a professor at the College of the Holy Cross whose research explores mobility, technology, and alternative forms of family life. Drawing on both academic insight and her own experience traveling the world with her ten-year-old son, she examines what happens when families move beyond traditional education models and choose to learn through travel.
We talk about how worldschooling challenges conventional ideas of parenting, risk, and education. The term itself includes a wide range of practices, from part-time educational travel to fully nomadic living. What connects them is a shared belief that learning happens outside institutional classrooms. Jennie also describes how both worldschooling and more conventional approaches like helicopter parenting can respond to the same concerns about preparing children for the future.
The conversation looks at worldschooling through the lens of a sociologist, covering how travel shapes emotional adaptability in children, how standardized testing limits our understanding of learning, and how digital tools and post-COVID shifts have expanded possibilities for mobile education. For listeners interested in alternative education, digital nomad families, or learning outside school systems, this episode offers a grounded academic view of the worldschooling movement.
🗓️ Recorded June 10th, 2025. 📍 Åmarksgård, Lille Skendsved, Denmark
🔗 Learn more about Jennie Germann Molz
- https://www.holycross.edu/academics/people/jennie-germann-molz
- https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jennie-Germann-Molz/author/B005OSBMGO
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jesper Conrad (00:00):
So today we're together with Jenny German-Mals.
First of all, Jenny, it'swonderful to meet you and for
you taking the time right now.
Thank you.
Jennie Germann Molz (00:10):
Thank you.
Thanks for the invitation tojoin you.
Jesper Conrad (00:14):
Yes, and the world is our classroom.
It is both our reality, butit's also a book title, so maybe
we should start there.
What made you dive into thewhole area of world schooling.
Jennie Germann Molz (00:30):
Sure, yeah, the world is our classroom, and
the subtitle is ExtremeParenting and the Rise of World
Schooling.
I had written a book about theintersection between tourism and
technology, and I was reallyinterested in how technology was
allowing people to be social,even while they were on the move
(00:51):
and even with social networksthat were distant and dispersed,
and so I had done some casestudies of couch surfers I don't
know if you recall the days ofcouch surfing before Airbnb and
I had also studied travelbloggers and mobile apps those
apps that were being developedfor smartphones for travelers to
(01:14):
engage with the places, thedestinations where they were, or
to sort of stay in touch withother travelers or with their
family back home.
And while I was doing thisresearch, one of the travel
bloggers in my sample was afather of two kids from
Washington DC, and he and hiswife were traveling.
(01:35):
This was like 2010, 2011.
They had taken their kids outof school and they were
traveling around the world withtheir kids and trying to keep
them on the curriculum withtheir school back home.
So a lot of his blog wastalking about those kinds of
experiences and challenges, andI thought, oh, that's going to
be my next project.
Who are these families that aretaking their kids out of school
(01:58):
and educating them whiletraveling around?
A few years later, I had aFulbright in Finland, in Lapland
.
Fulbright is like a scholarshipgrant that allows scholars from
the US to go and stay in othercountries, and then also funds.
And I took my husband and myson with me, and so we were
(02:19):
living up on the Arctic Circleand I knew I had a sabbatical
coming up, and so I asked my sonand my husband what would y'all
think about maybe doing thislike world schooling for a year?
And I could do research onworld schooling families.
And my son was eight years oldat that time.
He got down from the table, hewent in the other room and he
(02:41):
came back.
I was like, oh, he's not intoit.
But he came back with a pieceof paper and a pencil and he
said, okay, let's start writingdown all the places we're going
to go.
Jesper Conrad (02:52):
Nice.
Jennie Germann Molz (02:52):
Yeah.
So I thought, okay, he's up forit.
My husband was definitely upfor it.
We had done a lot ofbackpacking and traveling in our
20s before we started a family,and so that's what we did.
I had the sabbatical a coupleof years later, so when my son
was 10, we took him out of whatwould have been the fifth grade
for him and we traveled aroundthe world.
(03:12):
I got to meet lots of otherfamilies, interviewed them, did
a lot of research on their blogs, and this was even before the
word world schooling kind ofexisted.
It was just sort of coming intocirculation at that time.
It comes from Eli Gerzon.
He had sort of developed theword world schooling because he
(03:34):
was promoting this idea oftravel as education.
He was also a proponent ofunschooling, but he didn't like
the word unschooling because itsort of has a negative
connotation.
Right, yeah.
Jesper Conrad (03:50):
We know that problem.
Yeah, and so he came up with theterm world schooling, and then,
I think Lainey Liberty startedusing it after that been
traveling now for around sevenyears full time with three kids,
two dogs and occasionally ouroldest grown-up daughter with
her boyfriend comes visiting us.
(04:11):
I can still be in doubt how todefine world schooling.
It's a nice term.
It's a term many people usewhen they talk about what
they're doing.
Sometimes it can look likepeople are just taking a
sabbatical one or two years outand just enjoying life and then
kind of like to have that backfree.
(04:33):
They call it something withschooling.
Some of it has ended upbecoming kind of a lifestyle.
But you who have dug into itand researched it, how would you
define it?
Is there some common traitsamong the families you have
studied?
Jennie Germann Molz (04:52):
I resist being the one to define it
because I think it depends onthe families who use that term
and it depends on how theydefine it.
That's more interesting to methan me giving them a definition
, and, yes, there are a lot ofcommonalities among the families
who use that terminology, Ithink.
(05:14):
Generally speaking, what I'vefound is that when people do use
the term world schooling, whatthey're trying to get at is this
idea of expanding learningbeyond an institutional setting,
right Making, trying to havethis philosophy that learning is
a way of life and that anythingaround you can be the impetus
(05:37):
for kids to explore, becomecurious, learn something, become
curious, learn something.
And so, for the most part, whatI find is that when we start to
try to pin down definitions like, well, how long do you have to
be traveling for it to count asworld schooling, or how many
countries do you have to go to,or how frequently are you
(06:00):
traveling, these definitionsdon't really fit the empirical
reality of what people are doing, and so it becomes much broader
.
So people are using worldschooling to refer to anything
from we take trips on theweekends to people like you who
have adopted it completely astheir lifestyle.
(06:21):
But I think what it reallycomes down to is a mindset or
kind of a life philosophy, andso even families who aren't
necessarily traveling at themoment might think of themselves
as world schoolers because ofthat philosophy that they have,
that schooling is something, orlearning is something, that is
(06:43):
just embedded in family life andin everyday life.
Cecilie Conrad (06:48):
I mean, I totally agree and I will give
you a gold star for not definingit.
I think that's the right thingto do, because it's one of the
beauties of the community,really, that anyone can world
school in any way they feelworld schooling works for them,
and no one can really say whatexactly is it.
And I just wanted to add thatin my experience, there are
(07:09):
quite a few world schoolers whohave some sort of curriculum
with them, so even worldschooling can even be traveling
around the world while studyinga curriculum under some sort of
online school or umbrella schoolor something like that.
Jesper Conrad (07:27):
Or even people put their school into a local
school for three or four monthsand explore it.
Cecilie Conrad (07:33):
So it's not even just the ones that look like
unschoolers in their style, italso can be homeschoolers, and
even schoolers can definethemselves as world schoolers,
and I wouldn't object.
Jesper Conrad (07:44):
I mean.
Cecilie Conrad (07:45):
I don't own the word either.
Jesper Conrad (07:50):
Jenny, there's something about the subtitle
that intrigues me and it is thatsometimes when I talk with
other people or when Cecilia andI talk about our way of being
parents, we sometimes say thatwe might be a little extreme or
it might be very different fromhow other people do it.
I find us very normal as parentsin some way.
(08:12):
I don't think it's in theextreme parenting and also I can
be in doubt if we are radical.
Sometimes people are likesaying, oh, but you're also a
little radical and I feel we arekind of very normal.
But I can also see that itmight be taking it to the
extreme, the way we arelistening to our children's
(08:36):
wishes, having dialogue withthem of how our days are going
to unfold.
And I'm just in doubt maybewhat normal looks like nowadays,
because maybe it is that whatis considered the norm for me
that looks extreme to fit intothat box of life.
(08:59):
But maybe that's where a lot ofpeople who step outside the
norm and go world schooling,exploring the world as parents,
they find the commonality andmight be extreme.
What are your thoughts on that?
I am sorry I'm rambling alittle, but I'm trying to figure
out what I mean here.
Jennie Germann Molz (09:20):
Sure, I can explain a little bit more why I
use that terminology and how itfits in with my broader
argument in the book.
I mean, I agree with you as asociologist normal is just what
we agree is normal, right, thereis no objective normal or
extreme.
It's all relative and it's allsocially constructed.
(09:41):
But the reason I use extremeparenting is because of some
media coverage around familieswho were taking.
There was some media coveragearound a family who had a
toddler on a sailing trip aroundthe world and the baby became
very, very ill and they had tocall in an emergency helicopter
(10:03):
to rescue the family.
And in the media coverage therewas a lot of critique about the
family's choices being tooextreme.
There was another book that cameout around that time
chronicling a family that wasbasically world schooling and
took their very young childrento Nepal and again the father
(10:25):
became very, very ill and kindof risked the health and safety
of the family, and so some ofthe coverage of that was is this
too extreme?
And so I thought, oh, is therea line?
How is society kind of decidingwhere that line is of what's
extreme or what's not extreme?
And as I was doing researchwith families, of course,
(10:48):
there's this concept of radicalunschooling, which a lot of
people might consider an extremeapproach, but then there's also
helicopter parenting, whichothers might also consider an
extreme approach, and so I beganto look at some where these
(11:09):
examples of parenting getlabeled as extreme.
What's actually going on onthat continuum between being
extremely, let's say, free rangeor extremely unschooling, or
being extremely involved like ahelicopter parent?
When I use the term helicopterparenting, is that something
(11:31):
that has reached Denmark?
I?
Jesper Conrad (11:34):
heard the term before, but it doesn't ring a
children's bell.
I think we call it curlingparents, probably.
Cecilie Conrad (11:40):
I mean we just have to.
I understand what you mean.
What do you call it?
We have the term curlingparents.
You know the sport curling,yeah yeah.
So you run like it's paving theway, making everything easy and
making sure they're going inthe right direction, and I think
that's what you're talkingabout you just call it.
Jesper Conrad (11:58):
Yes, exactly the reason we call it that is that
Denmark, for some reason, isvery good at this stupid sport
and we had someone winning theworld championship.
Cecilie Conrad (12:06):
So everyone knows the terminology.
Jennie Germann Molz (12:09):
But it's the same kind of.
Cecilie Conrad (12:11):
Is it a bit like tiger parenting as well?
Jennie Germann Molz (12:13):
I mean that has more push though.
I think these are all kind ofrelated, right?
Yeah, it's the other end of thespectrum, relative to radical
unschooling, I would say yeah,exactly, we also have the terms
like snowplow parenting, right,like kind of clearing the way
for the kids, like curling Ilove that I haven't heard
curling parenting, I like thatone.
Cecilie Conrad (12:34):
We say that.
Maybe it's just in Danish.
We say it.
Jesper Conrad (12:36):
Yeah, maybe.
Jennie Germann Molz (12:37):
Yeah, well, in any case, what I realized
was that all of these forms ofparenting could be considered
extreme depending on theperspective you're coming from,
but even though they seem likethey're on completely opposite
ends of the spectrum the curlingparents or the helicopter
parents, who are soover-involved and so kind of
(12:59):
like managing every aspect oftheir children's lives.
And then the free rangeparenting I think I saw you had
interviewed Lenore Skenazy onyour podcast, right, and her
idea of free range parenting andradical unschooling on the
other end.
But what I came to understandis that all of these parents are
(13:21):
operating with a similar set ofanxieties and aspirations about
the world their children aregrowing up in, and that these
families understand that thefuture is very uncertain.
The world we live in is veryuncertain politically,
(13:42):
environmentally, culturally.
I mean, there are just a lot ofthings that we just don't know.
Not that the future has everbeen certain, but there was a
sense in the 1900s, I think fora while of kind of like if you
do this, your life will unfoldlike this, right, and you could
kind of like if you take thesesteps, you will have this kind
(14:03):
of a life.
But that's really notguaranteed in today's society,
especially in places like theUnited States I don't.
Maybe in Denmark there's astronger sense of security or
predictability.
Cecilie Conrad (14:16):
Well, security we have a lot of, but
predictability, I think, is thesame.
Jennie Germann Molz (14:20):
Right.
So these parents are raisingchildren for an unpredictable
future, for a world that theyaren't quite sure what will set
their kids up for success inthis world.
Different calculus the curlingparents or the helicopter
(14:42):
parents are making the calculusthat if they keep their kids on
a straight and narrow path, ifthey make sure that they tick
all the boxes, do all theextracurricular activities, get
into the right college, thatthat will somehow help them keep
a foothold in the middle class.
And the parents who arechoosing world schooling, the
middle class, and the parentswho are choosing world schooling
, unschooling, free rangeparenting, are making a
(15:03):
different calculus, which is tokind of embrace the uncertainty
and to teach their kids skillsto live in uncertainty and to
kind of leverage uncertainty tocapitalize on it in a way right.
So rather than battening downthe hatches and sort of like
protecting their kids againstuncertainty, they're like
(15:26):
teaching them how to surf on thewave of uncertainty.
Cecilie Conrad (15:31):
I can relate.
And also I mean, if I can add toit as just one little sample of
this segment, to me as well,it's about not living for the
future, not trying to strategizeit, to live a life that makes
sense here and now.
Not that I think it doesn't setus up for a good life tomorrow,
(15:52):
but I think a lot of life isspent trying to set us up for
success later, spend trying toset us up for success later, and
so we're not in the moment andI'm trying to teach my children
and my husband and myself thatwe're here now, that's what we
know, and not to make the mostof it, but to make something
(16:13):
meaningful out of it and stayingpresent.
So it's not about what can Ibecome, but what am I and where
am I and who am I with?
What are we doing?
Jesper Conrad (16:25):
What you said, Jenny, made me think of a
dialogue I had with my dad.
I wanted to make movies when Iwas young, around 16.
High school didn't interest me.
College didn't interest me, butmy parents asked me to finish.
It's called high school college, it's like from 15 to 18.
They're like please finish this,then it would be easier.
(16:47):
If you go another directionlater and the dialogue I had
with my father was basically hesaid to me but Jesper, if I look
back at my career, what I'mworking with now wasn't invented
when I took an education 30 or40 years earlier.
So I don't know what would bethe right education for you.
(17:09):
If you want to do this, do it,but then do it good, and it's
kind of the same I wish for mychildren is that I believe they
will find a way, but I believethat if they know themselves
good and proper, if they knowhow to learn, know how to obtain
knowledge, and that they havethis rest in themselves, then
(17:34):
life would be easier.
Where for me you can sayacademic skills is more an
add-on, it will come.
Those I'm not afraid of, but Ican be afraid of them living a
life of personal insecurity ornot being able to, not stand
their ground but not being ableto go out and meet the world.
(17:57):
I've met many people during mylife who what is against them is
not being able to interactproperly with people on their
workplace or stuff like that.
More than the skillset I mean,skills can be learned.
Jennie Germann Molz (18:14):
What you're describing, what you're
outlining here, is somethingthat I refer to in the book as
the emotional curriculum ofworld schooling.
And one of the things Idiscovered in my research is
that a lot of families would gointo world schooling with quite
a bit of concern about how theirchildren were going to master
(18:38):
an academic curriculum right.
How are they going to learnwhat they needed to learn?
For some families they wentinto world schooling already
understanding what unschoolingwas and already having that
philosophy.
But not all of the families Alot of the families went into it
very much with a, you know,with a schooling mindset
embedded in them and they kindof had to unlearn that and
(19:03):
realize that unschooling justkind of fits better with
traveling.
It's just right Then having tohave all the books and the
schedules and the tests andeverything.
But the other realization thatthey often came to was that
traveling was teaching theirkids things that weren't
necessarily things you couldtest in an academic way.
(19:26):
It was teaching them how tocommunicate.
Well, a lot of the things youwere just describing, jesper,
like teaching them how tocommunicate with other people,
how to be attuned to otherpeople, how to feel a sense of
compassion, how to deal withchange, how to become
self-reliant.
So it was a lot of what I calllife lessons, sort of learning
(19:50):
how to feel about themselves,how to feel about other people
and how to feel about theirplace in the world as a result
of traveling, and a lot of theparents would sort of make this
justification that, okay, well,my kid can't list all the US
presidents in chronologicalorder, but they can play with
(20:12):
kids who don't speak the samelanguage as them, or they can
buy ice cream in a differentlanguage and get the change in a
different currency, or they'relearning these other kinds of
skills.
So, of course, that leaves thebig question.
So they are learning all ofthese life lessons and all of
(20:34):
these sort of emotionalintelligence, emotional skills,
but what is happening to theacademic part of it?
Right, like there hasn't reallybeen any longitudinal research
on where world-schooled kids arein terms of some of the
academic metrics that their homecountries might expect them to
(20:58):
have mastered.
Jesper Conrad (20:59):
I was as a parent earlier, I was more fear-based.
I was not the one thinking thatthe homeschooling, unschooling
was a good idea.
That was my wonderful wife andmy kids, and it took me some
time to open up to it andunderstand it.
But what I see now is that itis kind of a waiting game
(21:19):
because if they are led to theirown devices not technical
devices but their own time inlife, I see it comes and it
comes around.
For the boys I've seen it inour family just 14, 15, there
comes a loss for the academics.
The waiting period until then.
(21:41):
Oh my God, I have been afraid, Ihave been fearful, I've been
like will they ever learn stuff?
And then looking at my kidssitting watching psychology,
behavioral psychology, and ourson who is now 13, I can see it
growing in him, this loss forsomething.
It's kind of like the brainneeds to maybe go through
(22:03):
puberty and then some centersopens up.
I'm not sure about it, but Ican just see it's a waiting game
and I think some people don'thave the.
The fear is bigger than thetrust in this sense and of
course every family is different.
I can be lucky with our kids,but that it has come I don't
know.
Cecilie Conrad (22:22):
But well, if you're a true unschooler, you
don't have to have academicscome.
Jesper Conrad (22:27):
No, but it's not important if it's academics or
not.
It's seeing the developmentfrom going from a playing to a
someone who wants that deeperknowledge, whatever area it is,
it doesn't need to be academic.
With Fjord, for example, someof what I see is the guitar.
How he's going deep with that.
Cecilie Conrad (22:47):
We're talking a lot about our own case.
I was thinking.
One problem I have with thiscomparing the academic skills of
the world school teenager tothe academic skills of the
school teenager is the format.
So the school teenager has aspecific way of displaying and I
(23:09):
think it's worse in theAmerican school system than it
is over here and especially herein the North, whereas things
are softer in a way.
But they have been studying forthe test for such a long time.
They know exactly how to showthat they know or they at least
have memorized.
So if you put a world schoolkid into these tests they might
(23:31):
fail big time, even though theydo have deep knowledge of math
and of world history.
World history, not just locals.
So for American kids it wouldbe American history, for our
over here it might be Europeanhistory or just Danish history.
But our kids and the kids inthe community, they have very
deep knowledge because they'vebeen to the places, they've been
(23:52):
puzzled about the things,they've met the people They've
seen the artwork or a goodexample.
Reason from our life is that wespend a lot of time two years
ago in Normandy, france, andobviously we learned a lot about
D-Day and the end of the SecondWorld War.
So it reveled back a lot of theSecond World War stuff.
(24:14):
And then, hey, what about thefirst one?
What happened there?
And so there was a lot ofthings and this just happens in
an organic way Conversations.
You drive by another museum oranother memorial or something
and you talk about it and yousee it, you've been there.
There's the bell church towerwhere that guy got stuck with
his parachute and what happenedto him and he had to pretend to
(24:35):
be dead for six hours.
You know all the things andthese stories stick because you
were there, you know and youwere actually just out buying
bread.
But then you learn and theyhave very deep knowledge.
And now, just six months ago wespent a month in Krakow, poland
, and they went to Auschwitz andwe lived in the Jewish ghetto
area where the Jewish ghettoused to happen during the war.
(25:00):
So these things are so deep inthe cells of the knowledge of
our children.
Now they might not be able tospit out names and dates.
They might make a fail andmultiple choice test on the
Second World War, but I canguarantee you they know a lot
about it.
You know they read Primo Levi,they saw the movies, they had
(25:21):
all the conversations.
They still have them and thisis the kind of knowledge that
might be a little bit fragmentedcompared to the ambition of a
curriculum, but it looksdifferent and it feels different
.
So I think if we did a longterm study of world school
(25:43):
children and how their academicsevolved during their teenage
years, I don't think it would beright to measure with the same
instrument, because my kids havenever had a multiple choice
test ever.
They've never been to school,they've never written an essay,
they don't know how to performin an exam, but they know a lot
(26:05):
of stuff.
So that's one thing and theother thing is, I think very
often when we try to compare theworld schooled and unschooled
children and their level ofacademic knowledge to the
schooled children, we tend tocompare it to the ambition of
the curriculum, not to thereality of the kids coming out
of school.
It becomes this do they knowall of this stuff that most of
(26:28):
the kids who come out of schoolactually don't know?
And that's another very, I find.
As a mother I've been doingthis for what now?
12, 15 years, something likethat, unschooling my kids, our
kids.
I feel when I sometimes have todefend our lifestyle, I have to
(26:50):
defend it up against thestandard Very few teenagers of
the traditional or normal,whatever mainstream life
actually meet.
So why do I have to do that?
Because most world school kidsthey don't fail in life, whereas
a lot of school kids actuallyfail the exams.
(27:12):
They don't know all the stuff.
Jennie Germann Molz (27:15):
I'm curious when are you kind of asked to
defend your lifestyle?
Cecilie Conrad (27:21):
not very often any longer no, but I mean just
just recently.
We were at a wedding and thatwas curiosity oh, there were
other people talking there wasone couple.
They were curious andinterested.
We talked to them for a longtime and that was fun.
But we are the traveling circus.
Sometimes, when we arrive insettings with people who live
(27:42):
mainstream life and a wedding isa good example when we meet
people who are not part of thecommunity, of course we're
surrounded very often by othertravelers and other home
educators, so we don't have todefend our lifestyle.
But then again, you know, thenmaybe the sister of a home
educating friend shows up, or afriend of a friend, or a
(28:04):
mother-in-law, or sometimes itcan even be the bus driver, you
know, asking why they're at thesame school.
Jesper Conrad (28:11):
I think it's a very wonderful question, jenny.
I think it's a very wonderfulquestion, jenny.
There's some skewed realitythat I think we as parents doing
something outside the norm aremore often asked about the
validity of our choices than thepeople following the norm.
I find this is, at the sametime, natural, because when
(28:35):
people do something outside thenorm, people get curious and it
can also be a mirror thatreflects their own choices in a
way they maybe don't like.
So it would be better for themif our lifestyle sucked and it
wasn't good in a sense.
I see, if I look back at when westarted traveling seven years
(28:58):
ago, my life changed from beingat work talking with colleagues
who knew we homeschooled, togoing traveling, and one of the
things I saw was that it changed.
Where people earlier had beenmore critical against
(29:18):
homeschooling, then they werelike oh, are you going on a
world adventure?
I always dreamt about that.
So there is this fun differencejust based on that.
Now we do it locationindependent.
But I think the overall thingis that maybe we sometimes still
feel a need to stand our groundagainst the norm and that can
(29:42):
end up coming something where wedefend ourselves and then there
often also are people asking atweddings other things, and one
of the things or their argumentswhen we talk with them is oh,
but you can do it, we couldnever.
And I think that makes iteasier for people that we do
(30:03):
something different, if they candefine it as luck or a world
where it's not possible for them, but we are lucky in some sort.
Jennie Germann Molz (30:13):
So it sounds like most of these
situations are social, notdefending to I don't know, your
local school district or thestate government.
Cecilie Conrad (30:23):
No problem with authorities Crossing borders?
No, not that.
Jesper Conrad (30:29):
Denmark is wonderfully free, Well
everywhere.
Cecilie Conrad (30:31):
We've never had any problems with taking our
kids over borders or with localpolice authorities, schools,
anything like that.
We're lucky enough to come froma country.
We don't live here any longer.
We just happen to be in Denmarkright now, where it's a
constitutional right tohomeschool.
So if there was ever anyone toask us locally somewhere, what
(30:52):
are you doing, we can just leanon our constitution and say we
have the right to do this in ourcountry.
But we have actually never beenasked.
No, when I actually do feelattacked.
I've been thinking about it,yeah, for the past 10 minutes or
whatever, okay, of thisconversation.
I feel sometimes attacked withthese questions.
You know what would happen if?
(31:13):
And are you sure they'relearning that?
And how can you but all ofthose things.
Sometimes it feels like anattack and it feels like I have
to defend.
And that brings me back toextreme parenting and I'm
thinking you know the risktaking.
You talked about getting sickon a boat or getting sick in
Nepal.
I mean, in your country you getsick from having the school
(31:39):
lunch, it just takes a longertime.
Who's taking the larger risk?
The mental health of childrenthese days it's declining
rapidly.
Most of them, a lot of themfeel really really poor.
Jesper Conrad (31:54):
No, it's not.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm notattacking your country but, we
don't have school lunches.
Cecilie Conrad (32:00):
So I can't attack the school lunches here,
but I mean even just feedingyour kids things you can buy in
the supermarket can get themsick.
This lifestyle, the mainstreamlifestyle with the school life,
it's clear that it's attackingthe mental health of the
children and the young people.
It's clear that it's attackingthe mental health of the
children and the young people.
It's clear that there's a greatrisk of a very, very bad life.
(32:20):
There's a risk to their healthand to their mental health and
we have to defend taking them toa country that might have some
disease that we weren't preparedfor, or drinking water that
might be poisoned.
I mean, the water is prettyoften poisoned in Western
countries.
Just take it out of the tap andit's full of crap these days.
(32:42):
So why is the risk that I'mtaking so much more
irresponsible compared to therisk everyone's taking all the
time?
Jennie Germann Molz (32:54):
The point you're making is one that a lot
of the parents I interviewedalso made that they felt like
taking their children to traveland to world school was a much
lower risk than having them stayin conventional institutional
schooling, especially in theUnited States where school
(33:15):
shootings are actually quitecommon, where a lot of schools
you know well, like you pointout, the food, the school
lunches, the health of thoselunches is questionable bullying
.
So families have a lot of likecounterpoints right of why maybe
(33:36):
staying in school is riskierthan not staying in school yeah
and sorry if it came out.
I'm not attacking you personallyoh no, I know, I know yeah yeah
, no, no, of course not.
Cecilie Conrad (33:51):
I'm just thinking.
You know why is even?
It's just funny how you knowshit can hit the fan for
everyone.
Really.
I mean, that happened to thatfamily on that boat, but it
could really happen, you know.
Jesper Conrad (34:08):
At home.
Jennie Germann Molz (34:08):
that's right, there are probably a lot
of people sailing around theworld who don't get very sick
world who don't get very sick,and I think that world schooling
and really any kind ofalternative lifestyle or
countercultural lifestyle, Ilike to think in terms of how
these things reveal anxieties.
So, for the families that arechoosing this lifestyle, they're
(34:30):
doing it because they have someanxiety about the status quo.
Right, there's something aboutthe status quo that just is it
working for them?
Or they have anxiety about howtheir kids if their kids don't
really toe the line or fit intothe school setting.
Maybe they've been diagnosedwith a learning difference or
(34:51):
with ADHD, or they're not goodat taking standardized tests,
like you were pointing out,cecily like that, your kids have
never even taken a multiplechoice test.
So there's a lot of anxiety thatcomes from trying to fit into a
system that doesn't feelauthentic.
But there's this other anxietyfloating around.
(35:12):
When we have alternativelifestyles and people who are
pursuing these alternativelifestyles, it creates anxiety
in the broader society becauseit's like, oh wait, things could
be different.
And so we start to see whatsome of the deeper held, like
the anxious zeitgeist of asociety is at the moment.
(35:36):
People like yourselves who arekind of like oh wait, no, we
don't actually have to do that,stirs up that kind of
existential anxiety like, ohwait, if we could be doing
things differently, why aren'twe?
And so I think it's interestingto look at it from both of
those angles.
Cecilie Conrad (35:55):
And I think that's exactly why I feel I have
to sometimes defend mylifestyle.
It could look on the surfacelike an innocent, curious
question, but behind that isthis inner turmoil.
So if what she's doing makessense, then I could have done
the same thing, and maybe Iactually felt every time I told
(36:17):
my child to go back to schoolwhere he's bullied, or I left my
very young child in the care ofsomeone else and it hurt and it
felt wrong, but I suppressed itbecause the nursery teacher
told me that this is normal andthey will stop crying in three
minutes.
If I have to feel all thesethings now and I have to realize
(36:38):
that I could have donesomething else, then how do I
handle that crisis?
Oh, it's better to protect myown emotions and just attack
that woman doing her crazy stuff, and I think that's why it
becomes this feeling that I haveto stand my ground, and I
usually try to get out of it.
(36:58):
If I have that feeling thatthis is what's going on or
something, there's too muchenergy loaded in the questions I
usually ask for salt, or youknow comment on the red wine, or
just change the subjectEmotional skills.
Jennie Germann Molz (37:16):
That's an emotional skill?
Yes, it is.
Jesper Conrad (37:19):
Jenny, I am curious about why it is on the
rise.
We were not the first who didit.
To take our own story, verybriefly, we started
homeschooling because one of ourchildren didn't want to go to
school.
Cecilia has just been cancer.
They had been at home with usand it felt unnatural for him to
(37:40):
go away from mom.
That had been at the hospitalfor half a year.
And then we started slowlystill finding our grounds after
living through this difficultperiod.
And when you starthomeschooling you realize how
much of your life is turned upand circled around having a
(38:02):
child in a school.
For us it was the house welived in, the job I had and all
these things were like in acircle around our house, the
children's school and my job.
But then when the kids were athome, I was the only one going
away and then in the end it justfelt weird that we had a big
(38:23):
house.
I was never there because I hadto make the money and then we
were never there because we werealways on a day trip, always on
a day trip, and then the sunjust shined a lot more in other
countries and we ended up going.
But to take the question again,we started our travels seven
years ago and dipped our toes init before that, but have been
(38:46):
full-time traveling for nowseven years.
But you told about this guy whostarted already in 2010 and
it's 15 years since and you saythat it's on the rise.
What do you think it is insociety that is making this more
popular?
Do you see some streams of whatis happening that might make
(39:10):
people say, hey, I want to optout of this.
What are your thoughts on it?
I want to opt out of this.
Jennie Germann Molz (39:15):
What are your thoughts on it?
I think there are so manyfactors that feed into the
growth of world schooling andother kinds of mobile and
alternative lifestyles.
I see a lot of overlap betweenworld schooling and digital
nomadism, for example, which iswhat I'm studying currently.
I think I don't know if I canlike break it down into points,
(39:37):
but I'll just say a few points.
I think one is technology andthat kind of there's a lot to
that.
So technology, in the sensethat it's made location,
independent work possible and inthe social media landscape,
that has made the lifestylevisible and, I think, in a lot
of ways, more accessible.
(39:58):
A lot of world schoolingfamilies and similar with
digital nomads spend a lot oftheir online air teaching other
people how to do the lifestyle,and so I think that gives it
more accessibility.
The other factor I'm not sureexactly how I would pinpoint
this, but I believe that therehas been just a general decline
(40:22):
in trust in government and ingovernment institutions and a
general decline in the sense ofschools as a common good, and so
people are.
I think a lot of families aredisillusioned by school as an
institution and don't trust it.
(40:44):
They themselves may have had badexperiences when they were
students or their children havebad experiences of the education
market has created thissituation where, going back to
our earlier conversation,there's a lot of standardized
(41:09):
testing, standardized curriculumand families just aren't
finding that is meeting theirneeds and so they're more
willing, I think, to rejectinstitutional schooling and then
just access to travel.
I mean people, my book came outin the middle of COVID and the
publisher was like, oh well,they barely even marketed it
because they were like, well, Iguess this is over.
(41:30):
I was like, oh no, this is justgetting started, because, yeah,
I mean there's a little glitchand a lot of people stopped
traveling for a while duringCOVID.
But what COVID showed a lot offamilies was that they could do
schooling online and soschooling could also be location
independent.
(41:50):
And so I think, coming out ofCOVID kind of, we saw world
schooling and digital nomadism,kindism, turbo boosted by those
that's true, that's just to namea few.
Jesper Conrad (42:03):
I'm curious to hear your thoughts about being a
nomad, because that's not a newthing, but it feels like the
nomadic lifestyle has gottenthis revival with the tech and
the infrastructure and all thesethings.
Do you think it's somethingdeep inside of people that there
is this need?
(42:24):
Have you thought about this,studied it, because for me it
feels supernatural.
But also the nomadic part ofreturning to the different
watering holes you can say, whenwe travel we more or less have
a route places we return to,friends we return to and where
we follow the weather.
(42:44):
Denmark is wonderful in thesummer.
Today it's raining but generallyDenmark is beautiful and lush
in the summer and Spain iswonderful in the winter, so we
follow the sun or the seasons,and eternal spring is quite nice
.
But what are your thoughts onthis?
Have you looked into this inany of your other studies also?
Jennie Germann Molz (43:08):
So you're right, nomadism is the human
story.
Right, it's not new, but thekind of digital nomadism that
(43:29):
we're looking at now is also notnew.
David Manners and SugioMakimoto published a book in
1996 called the Digital Nomadand do their work that they
would follow what MandersonMakimoto called that kind of
human impulse to nomadism.
They did say something kind ofinteresting in that book, though
.
They said the one group ofpeople who won't be able to be
(43:50):
digital nomads is familiesbecause the geographical tie of
school is too strong and theywon't be able to break it.
So that's one prediction theygot wrong.
So if you ask them, yes, thereis this kind of like innate
human impulse to travel, towander.
But I think you're also gettingat another part of it, jesper,
(44:12):
by talking about returning tothe waterholes, which is that,
for nomads, for all of us, thewater holes, which is that for
nomads, for all of us, placestill matters and having a sense
of belonging to place or inplace is still incredibly
compelling.
One of the things I've beentracking in my research is this
idea of the digital nomad map,or like geographies of digital
(44:33):
nomadism, and you're probablyfamiliar with the hubs, right?
You can probably guess exactlywhat they are, where digital
nomads tend to go Medellin,colombia, chiang Mai, thailand,
bali, right.
So places that have the weather, the tourist amenities, fast
Wi-Fi, all of that stuff.
(44:55):
But what I'm also finding isthat families are charting a
slightly different map todigital nomads who are traveling
without kids.
So digital nomad families whoare traveling with kids are
tending to chart this map wherethey're more likely to go to
smaller towns or maybe rural orremote areas or, like you're
(45:16):
doing right now, to live onfarms with other families.
So it's less an urban map andmore of a kind of more slightly
more rural or small town map.
Also, as we talked aboutearlier, while a lot of these
families do unschool their kids,a lot also do want to enroll
them in schools, but not inconventional schools.
(45:39):
So places that have alternativeschooling options, like the
Green School in Bali, forexample, the Hypea Learning Hub
in Portugal, some of thesedestinations that have either
like a world schooling communityhub or that have a school with
(46:01):
an alternative curriculum,become the destinations on this
map.
So digital nomad families arekind of creating a new map and
circulating among these veryfamiliar destinations.
Jesper Conrad (46:16):
What changes have you seen since your book came
out?
Jennie Germann Molz (46:20):
Oh gosh, just the sheer growth in number
of families who are undertakingthis lifestyle.
The visibility in online andsocial media settings has been
astounding to me.
I think the kind of themainstreaming of world schooling
the mainstream media has becomereally interested in it.
(46:42):
It's still really not a topicin academic research I don't
really know that many otherresearchers who have been
looking at it from an academicperspective but the mainstream
media has definitely tuned intoit.
I've also seen the rise of awhole cottage industry of
businesses and products andservices catering to the world
(47:05):
schooling market as well in thedigital nomad family market,
which wasn't really there 10years ago.
Jesper Conrad (47:14):
Jenny, where does your curiosity come from?
Why are you curious about thedigital nomad and the world
schooling?
What is it that makes you useso many hours writing a book
doing research?
It's a kind of a nerdy thinghere.
So what is it?
Jennie Germann Molz (47:33):
Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment.
Jesper Conrad (47:35):
Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment it is
nerdy.
Jennie Germann Molz (47:39):
I moved around a lot as a kid.
I went to 11 different schoolsbefore I graduated from high
school and in my 20s I traveledall over the world.
And I remember being at ahostel in Indonesia back in 1994
(47:59):
, maybe and seeing this guy witha laptop computer and all these
wires trying to get a modemhooked up to a phone cord.
I didn't even know what a modemwas and I was like, what are
you doing?
He's like oh, I have to send mynewsletter to all my friends,
updating them on my trip.
I was like, oh my God, myfriends have no idea where I am.
Like maybe they got a postcardfrom where I was five weeks ago.
(48:22):
But like, this is crazy, right,it was just so fascinating to me
this, this desire to travel theworld on the one hand, right,
that human impulse to be nomadicon the one hand, paired with
this desire to be in touch witheverybody back home at the same
time.
To me, that was such aninteresting paradox and that's
(48:45):
kind of what all of my researchhas explored ever since.
How do we move and stayconnected?
What does that look like?
Why do we do it?
Why do we?
We want to do it.
So maybe that's where mycuriosity comes from jenny, it
has been a big pleasure.
Jesper Conrad (49:05):
It could be really great if you want to
share the title of your bookwhere they can find it and where
they can read your research ifthey want to.
And also, yeah, just how dothey dive into the world of the
subjects that interest you?
Where do they find you and yourresearch?
Jennie Germann Molz (49:23):
Where do they find me?
Well, I am not very active onsocial media, but you can Google
Jenny German Molls and thatwill take you to my account at
College of the Holy Cross, whereI teach sociology.
My book is the World is OurClassroom Extreme Parenting and
the Rise of World Schooling,published by NYU Press, and it's
(49:47):
available anywhere you buybooks.
Jesper Conrad (49:50):
So, to round up, it has been really interesting
and it has been fun for me tohear an academic view of the
lifestyle we have walked downand I know I will ponder of some
of the questions that havearisen here.
So thanks a lot for your time.
Jennie Germann Molz (50:08):
Thank you, it's been a real pleasure, it
was.
Cecilie Conrad (50:10):
It was fun.
So today we're together with Jenny German-Mals.
First of all, Jenny, it'swonderful to meet you and for
you taking the time right now.
Thank you.
Jennie Germann Molz (00:10):
Thank you.
Thanks for the invitation tojoin you.
Jesper Conrad (00:14):
Yes, and the world is our classroom.
It is both our reality, butit's also a book title, so maybe
we should start there.
What made you dive into thewhole area of world schooling.
Jennie Germann Molz (00:30):
Sure, yeah, the world is our classroom, and
the subtitle is ExtremeParenting and the Rise of World
Schooling.
I had written a book about theintersection between tourism and
technology, and I was reallyinterested in how technology was
allowing people to be social,even while they were on the move
(00:51):
and even with social networksthat were distant and dispersed,
and so I had done some casestudies of couch surfers I don't
know if you recall the days ofcouch surfing before Airbnb and
I had also studied travelbloggers and mobile apps those
apps that were being developedfor smartphones for travelers to
(01:14):
engage with the places, thedestinations where they were, or
to sort of stay in touch withother travelers or with their
family back home.
And while I was doing thisresearch, one of the travel
bloggers in my sample was afather of two kids from
Washington DC, and he and hiswife were traveling.
(01:35):
This was like 2010, 2011.
They had taken their kids outof school and they were
traveling around the world withtheir kids and trying to keep
them on the curriculum withtheir school back home.
So a lot of his blog wastalking about those kinds of
experiences and challenges, andI thought, oh, that's going to
be my next project.
Who are these families that aretaking their kids out of school
(01:58):
and educating them whiletraveling around?
A few years later, I had aFulbright in Finland, in Lapland
.
Fulbright is like a scholarshipgrant that allows scholars from
the US to go and stay in othercountries, and then also funds.
And I took my husband and myson with me, and so we were
(02:19):
living up on the Arctic Circleand I knew I had a sabbatical
coming up, and so I asked my sonand my husband what would y'all
think about maybe doing thislike world schooling for a year?
And I could do research onworld schooling families.
And my son was eight years oldat that time.
He got down from the table, hewent in the other room and he
(02:41):
came back.
I was like, oh, he's not intoit.
But he came back with a pieceof paper and a pencil and he
said, okay, let's start writingdown all the places we're going
to go.
Jesper Conrad (02:52):
Nice.
Jennie Germann Molz (02:52):
Yeah.
So I thought, okay, he's up forit.
My husband was definitely upfor it.
We had done a lot ofbackpacking and traveling in our
20s before we started a family,and so that's what we did.
I had the sabbatical a coupleof years later, so when my son
was 10, we took him out of whatwould have been the fifth grade
for him and we traveled aroundthe world.
(03:12):
I got to meet lots of otherfamilies, interviewed them, did
a lot of research on their blogs, and this was even before the
word world schooling kind ofexisted.
It was just sort of coming intocirculation at that time.
It comes from Eli Gerzon.
He had sort of developed theword world schooling because he
(03:34):
was promoting this idea oftravel as education.
He was also a proponent ofunschooling, but he didn't like
the word unschooling because itsort of has a negative
connotation.
Right, yeah.
Jesper Conrad (03:50):
We know that problem.
Yeah, and so he came up with theterm world schooling, and then,
I think Lainey Liberty startedusing it after that been
traveling now for around sevenyears full time with three kids,
two dogs and occasionally ouroldest grown-up daughter with
her boyfriend comes visiting us.
(04:11):
I can still be in doubt how todefine world schooling.
It's a nice term.
It's a term many people usewhen they talk about what
they're doing.
Sometimes it can look likepeople are just taking a
sabbatical one or two years outand just enjoying life and then
kind of like to have that backfree.
(04:33):
They call it something withschooling.
Some of it has ended upbecoming kind of a lifestyle.
But you who have dug into itand researched it, how would you
define it?
Is there some common traitsamong the families you have
studied?
Jennie Germann Molz (04:52):
I resist being the one to define it
because I think it depends onthe families who use that term
and it depends on how theydefine it.
That's more interesting to methan me giving them a definition
, and, yes, there are a lot ofcommonalities among the families
who use that terminology, Ithink.
(05:14):
Generally speaking, what I'vefound is that when people do use
the term world schooling, whatthey're trying to get at is this
idea of expanding learningbeyond an institutional setting,
right Making, trying to havethis philosophy that learning is
a way of life and that anythingaround you can be the impetus
(05:37):
for kids to explore, becomecurious, learn something, become
curious, learn something.
And so, for the most part, whatI find is that when we start to
try to pin down definitions like, well, how long do you have to
be traveling for it to count asworld schooling, or how many
countries do you have to go to,or how frequently are you
(06:00):
traveling, these definitionsdon't really fit the empirical
reality of what people are doing, and so it becomes much broader
.
So people are using worldschooling to refer to anything
from we take trips on theweekends to people like you who
have adopted it completely astheir lifestyle.
(06:21):
But I think what it reallycomes down to is a mindset or
kind of a life philosophy, andso even families who aren't
necessarily traveling at themoment might think of themselves
as world schoolers because ofthat philosophy that they have,
that schooling is something, orlearning is something, that is
(06:43):
just embedded in family life andin everyday life.
Cecilie Conrad (06:48):
I mean, I totally agree and I will give
you a gold star for not definingit.
I think that's the right thingto do, because it's one of the
beauties of the community,really, that anyone can world
school in any way they feelworld schooling works for them,
and no one can really say whatexactly is it.
And I just wanted to add thatin my experience, there are
(07:09):
quite a few world schoolers whohave some sort of curriculum
with them, so even worldschooling can even be traveling
around the world while studyinga curriculum under some sort of
online school or umbrella schoolor something like that.
Jesper Conrad (07:27):
Or even people put their school into a local
school for three or four monthsand explore it.
Cecilie Conrad (07:33):
So it's not even just the ones that look like
unschoolers in their style, italso can be homeschoolers, and
even schoolers can definethemselves as world schoolers,
and I wouldn't object.
Jesper Conrad (07:44):
I mean.
Cecilie Conrad (07:45):
I don't own the word either.
Jesper Conrad (07:50):
Jenny, there's something about the subtitle
that intrigues me and it is thatsometimes when I talk with
other people or when Cecilia andI talk about our way of being
parents, we sometimes say thatwe might be a little extreme or
it might be very different fromhow other people do it.
I find us very normal as parentsin some way.
(08:12):
I don't think it's in theextreme parenting and also I can
be in doubt if we are radical.
Sometimes people are likesaying, oh, but you're also a
little radical and I feel we arekind of very normal.
But I can also see that itmight be taking it to the
extreme, the way we arelistening to our children's
(08:36):
wishes, having dialogue withthem of how our days are going
to unfold.
And I'm just in doubt maybewhat normal looks like nowadays,
because maybe it is that whatis considered the norm for me
that looks extreme to fit intothat box of life.
(08:59):
But maybe that's where a lot ofpeople who step outside the
norm and go world schooling,exploring the world as parents,
they find the commonality andmight be extreme.
What are your thoughts on that?
I am sorry I'm rambling alittle, but I'm trying to figure
out what I mean here.
Jennie Germann Molz (09:20):
Sure, I can explain a little bit more why I
use that terminology and how itfits in with my broader
argument in the book.
I mean, I agree with you as asociologist normal is just what
we agree is normal, right, thereis no objective normal or
extreme.
It's all relative and it's allsocially constructed.
(09:41):
But the reason I use extremeparenting is because of some
media coverage around familieswho were taking.
There was some media coveragearound a family who had a
toddler on a sailing trip aroundthe world and the baby became
very, very ill and they had tocall in an emergency helicopter
(10:03):
to rescue the family.
And in the media coverage therewas a lot of critique about the
family's choices being tooextreme.
There was another book that cameout around that time
chronicling a family that wasbasically world schooling and
took their very young childrento Nepal and again the father
(10:25):
became very, very ill and kindof risked the health and safety
of the family, and so some ofthe coverage of that was is this
too extreme?
And so I thought, oh, is therea line?
How is society kind of decidingwhere that line is of what's
extreme or what's not extreme?
And as I was doing researchwith families, of course,
(10:48):
there's this concept of radicalunschooling, which a lot of
people might consider an extremeapproach, but then there's also
helicopter parenting, whichothers might also consider an
extreme approach, and so I beganto look at some where these
(11:09):
examples of parenting getlabeled as extreme.
What's actually going on onthat continuum between being
extremely, let's say, free rangeor extremely unschooling, or
being extremely involved like ahelicopter parent?
When I use the term helicopterparenting, is that something
(11:31):
that has reached Denmark?
I?
Jesper Conrad (11:34):
heard the term before, but it doesn't ring a
children's bell.
I think we call it curlingparents, probably.
Cecilie Conrad (11:40):
I mean we just have to.
I understand what you mean.
What do you call it?
We have the term curlingparents.
You know the sport curling,yeah yeah.
So you run like it's paving theway, making everything easy and
making sure they're going inthe right direction, and I think
that's what you're talkingabout you just call it.
Jesper Conrad (11:58):
Yes, exactly the reason we call it that is that
Denmark, for some reason, isvery good at this stupid sport
and we had someone winning theworld championship.
Cecilie Conrad (12:06):
So everyone knows the terminology.
Jennie Germann Molz (12:09):
But it's the same kind of.
Cecilie Conrad (12:11):
Is it a bit like tiger parenting as well?
Jennie Germann Molz (12:13):
I mean that has more push though.
I think these are all kind ofrelated, right?
Yeah, it's the other end of thespectrum, relative to radical
unschooling, I would say yeah,exactly, we also have the terms
like snowplow parenting, right,like kind of clearing the way
for the kids, like curling Ilove that I haven't heard
curling parenting, I like thatone.
Cecilie Conrad (12:34):
We say that.
Maybe it's just in Danish.
We say it.
Jesper Conrad (12:36):
Yeah, maybe.
Jennie Germann Molz (12:37):
Yeah, well, in any case, what I realized
was that all of these forms ofparenting could be considered
extreme depending on theperspective you're coming from,
but even though they seem likethey're on completely opposite
ends of the spectrum the curlingparents or the helicopter
parents, who are soover-involved and so kind of
(12:59):
like managing every aspect oftheir children's lives.
And then the free rangeparenting I think I saw you had
interviewed Lenore Skenazy onyour podcast, right, and her
idea of free range parenting andradical unschooling on the
other end.
But what I came to understandis that all of these parents are
(13:21):
operating with a similar set ofanxieties and aspirations about
the world their children aregrowing up in, and that these
families understand that thefuture is very uncertain.
The world we live in is veryuncertain politically,
(13:42):
environmentally, culturally.
I mean, there are just a lot ofthings that we just don't know.
Not that the future has everbeen certain, but there was a
sense in the 1900s, I think fora while of kind of like if you
do this, your life will unfoldlike this, right, and you could
kind of like if you take thesesteps, you will have this kind
(14:03):
of a life.
But that's really notguaranteed in today's society,
especially in places like theUnited States I don't.
Maybe in Denmark there's astronger sense of security or
predictability.
Cecilie Conrad (14:16):
Well, security we have a lot of, but
predictability, I think, is thesame.
Jennie Germann Molz (14:20):
Right.
So these parents are raisingchildren for an unpredictable
future, for a world that theyaren't quite sure what will set
their kids up for success inthis world.
Different calculus the curlingparents or the helicopter
(14:42):
parents are making the calculusthat if they keep their kids on
a straight and narrow path, ifthey make sure that they tick
all the boxes, do all theextracurricular activities, get
into the right college, thatthat will somehow help them keep
a foothold in the middle class.
And the parents who arechoosing world schooling, the
middle class, and the parentswho are choosing world schooling
, unschooling, free rangeparenting, are making a
(15:03):
different calculus, which is tokind of embrace the uncertainty
and to teach their kids skillsto live in uncertainty and to
kind of leverage uncertainty tocapitalize on it in a way right.
So rather than battening downthe hatches and sort of like
protecting their kids againstuncertainty, they're like
(15:26):
teaching them how to surf on thewave of uncertainty.
Cecilie Conrad (15:31):
I can relate.
And also I mean, if I can add toit as just one little sample of
this segment, to me as well,it's about not living for the
future, not trying to strategizeit, to live a life that makes
sense here and now.
Not that I think it doesn't setus up for a good life tomorrow,
(15:52):
but I think a lot of life isspent trying to set us up for
success later, spend trying toset us up for success later, and
so we're not in the moment andI'm trying to teach my children
and my husband and myself thatwe're here now, that's what we
know, and not to make the mostof it, but to make something
(16:13):
meaningful out of it and stayingpresent.
So it's not about what can Ibecome, but what am I and where
am I and who am I with?
What are we doing?
Jesper Conrad (16:25):
What you said, Jenny, made me think of a
dialogue I had with my dad.
I wanted to make movies when Iwas young, around 16.
High school didn't interest me.
College didn't interest me, butmy parents asked me to finish.
It's called high school college, it's like from 15 to 18.
They're like please finish this,then it would be easier.
(16:47):
If you go another directionlater and the dialogue I had
with my father was basically hesaid to me but Jesper, if I look
back at my career, what I'mworking with now wasn't invented
when I took an education 30 or40 years earlier.
So I don't know what would bethe right education for you.
(17:09):
If you want to do this, do it,but then do it good, and it's
kind of the same I wish for mychildren is that I believe they
will find a way, but I believethat if they know themselves
good and proper, if they knowhow to learn, know how to obtain
knowledge, and that they havethis rest in themselves, then
(17:34):
life would be easier.
Where for me you can sayacademic skills is more an
add-on, it will come.
Those I'm not afraid of, but Ican be afraid of them living a
life of personal insecurity ornot being able to, not stand
their ground but not being ableto go out and meet the world.
(17:57):
I've met many people during mylife who what is against them is
not being able to interactproperly with people on their
workplace or stuff like that.
More than the skillset I mean,skills can be learned.
Jennie Germann Molz (18:14):
What you're describing, what you're
outlining here, is somethingthat I refer to in the book as
the emotional curriculum ofworld schooling.
And one of the things Idiscovered in my research is
that a lot of families would gointo world schooling with quite
a bit of concern about how theirchildren were going to master
(18:38):
an academic curriculum right.
How are they going to learnwhat they needed to learn?
For some families they wentinto world schooling already
understanding what unschoolingwas and already having that
philosophy.
But not all of the families Alot of the families went into it
very much with a, you know,with a schooling mindset
embedded in them and they kindof had to unlearn that and
(19:03):
realize that unschooling justkind of fits better with
traveling.
It's just right Then having tohave all the books and the
schedules and the tests andeverything.
But the other realization thatthey often came to was that
traveling was teaching theirkids things that weren't
necessarily things you couldtest in an academic way.
(19:26):
It was teaching them how tocommunicate.
Well, a lot of the things youwere just describing, jesper,
like teaching them how tocommunicate with other people,
how to be attuned to otherpeople, how to feel a sense of
compassion, how to deal withchange, how to become
self-reliant.
So it was a lot of what I calllife lessons, sort of learning
(19:50):
how to feel about themselves,how to feel about other people
and how to feel about theirplace in the world as a result
of traveling, and a lot of theparents would sort of make this
justification that, okay, well,my kid can't list all the US
presidents in chronologicalorder, but they can play with
(20:12):
kids who don't speak the samelanguage as them, or they can
buy ice cream in a differentlanguage and get the change in a
different currency, or they'relearning these other kinds of
skills.
So, of course, that leaves thebig question.
So they are learning all ofthese life lessons and all of
(20:34):
these sort of emotionalintelligence, emotional skills,
but what is happening to theacademic part of it?
Right, like there hasn't reallybeen any longitudinal research
on where world-schooled kids arein terms of some of the
academic metrics that their homecountries might expect them to
(20:58):
have mastered.
Jesper Conrad (20:59):
I was as a parent earlier, I was more fear-based.
I was not the one thinking thatthe homeschooling, unschooling
was a good idea.
That was my wonderful wife andmy kids, and it took me some
time to open up to it andunderstand it.
But what I see now is that itis kind of a waiting game
(21:19):
because if they are led to theirown devices not technical
devices but their own time inlife, I see it comes and it
comes around.
For the boys I've seen it inour family just 14, 15, there
comes a loss for the academics.
The waiting period until then.
(21:41):
Oh my God, I have been afraid, Ihave been fearful, I've been
like will they ever learn stuff?
And then looking at my kidssitting watching psychology,
behavioral psychology, and ourson who is now 13, I can see it
growing in him, this loss forsomething.
It's kind of like the brainneeds to maybe go through
(22:03):
puberty and then some centersopens up.
I'm not sure about it, but Ican just see it's a waiting game
and I think some people don'thave the.
The fear is bigger than thetrust in this sense and of
course every family is different.
I can be lucky with our kids,but that it has come I don't
know.
Cecilie Conrad (22:22):
But well, if you're a true unschooler, you
don't have to have academicscome.
Jesper Conrad (22:27):
No, but it's not important if it's academics or
not.
It's seeing the developmentfrom going from a playing to a
someone who wants that deeperknowledge, whatever area it is,
it doesn't need to be academic.
With Fjord, for example, someof what I see is the guitar.
How he's going deep with that.
Cecilie Conrad (22:47):
We're talking a lot about our own case.
I was thinking.
One problem I have with thiscomparing the academic skills of
the world school teenager tothe academic skills of the
school teenager is the format.
So the school teenager has aspecific way of displaying and I
(23:09):
think it's worse in theAmerican school system than it
is over here and especially herein the North, whereas things
are softer in a way.
But they have been studying forthe test for such a long time.
They know exactly how to showthat they know or they at least
have memorized.
So if you put a world schoolkid into these tests they might
(23:31):
fail big time, even though theydo have deep knowledge of math
and of world history.
World history, not just locals.
So for American kids it wouldbe American history, for our
over here it might be Europeanhistory or just Danish history.
But our kids and the kids inthe community, they have very
deep knowledge because they'vebeen to the places, they've been
(23:52):
puzzled about the things,they've met the people They've
seen the artwork or a goodexample.
Reason from our life is that wespend a lot of time two years
ago in Normandy, france, andobviously we learned a lot about
D-Day and the end of the SecondWorld War.
So it reveled back a lot of theSecond World War stuff.
(24:14):
And then, hey, what about thefirst one?
What happened there?
And so there was a lot ofthings and this just happens in
an organic way Conversations.
You drive by another museum oranother memorial or something
and you talk about it and yousee it, you've been there.
There's the bell church towerwhere that guy got stuck with
his parachute and what happenedto him and he had to pretend to
(24:35):
be dead for six hours.
You know all the things andthese stories stick because you
were there, you know and youwere actually just out buying
bread.
But then you learn and theyhave very deep knowledge.
And now, just six months ago wespent a month in Krakow, poland
, and they went to Auschwitz andwe lived in the Jewish ghetto
area where the Jewish ghettoused to happen during the war.
(25:00):
So these things are so deep inthe cells of the knowledge of
our children.
Now they might not be able tospit out names and dates.
They might make a fail andmultiple choice test on the
Second World War, but I canguarantee you they know a lot
about it.
You know they read Primo Levi,they saw the movies, they had
(25:21):
all the conversations.
They still have them and thisis the kind of knowledge that
might be a little bit fragmentedcompared to the ambition of a
curriculum, but it looksdifferent and it feels different
.
So I think if we did a longterm study of world school
(25:43):
children and how their academicsevolved during their teenage
years, I don't think it would beright to measure with the same
instrument, because my kids havenever had a multiple choice
test ever.
They've never been to school,they've never written an essay,
they don't know how to performin an exam, but they know a lot
(26:05):
of stuff.
So that's one thing and theother thing is, I think very
often when we try to compare theworld schooled and unschooled
children and their level ofacademic knowledge to the
schooled children, we tend tocompare it to the ambition of
the curriculum, not to thereality of the kids coming out
of school.
It becomes this do they knowall of this stuff that most of
(26:28):
the kids who come out of schoolactually don't know?
And that's another very, I find.
As a mother I've been doingthis for what now?
12, 15 years, something likethat, unschooling my kids, our
kids.
I feel when I sometimes have todefend our lifestyle, I have to
(26:50):
defend it up against thestandard Very few teenagers of
the traditional or normal,whatever mainstream life
actually meet.
So why do I have to do that?
Because most world school kidsthey don't fail in life, whereas
a lot of school kids actuallyfail the exams.
(27:12):
They don't know all the stuff.
Jennie Germann Molz (27:15):
I'm curious when are you kind of asked to
defend your lifestyle?
Cecilie Conrad (27:21):
not very often any longer no, but I mean just
just recently.
We were at a wedding and thatwas curiosity oh, there were
other people talking there wasone couple.
They were curious andinterested.
We talked to them for a longtime and that was fun.
But we are the traveling circus.
Sometimes, when we arrive insettings with people who live
(27:42):
mainstream life and a wedding isa good example when we meet
people who are not part of thecommunity, of course we're
surrounded very often by othertravelers and other home
educators, so we don't have todefend our lifestyle.
But then again, you know, thenmaybe the sister of a home
educating friend shows up, or afriend of a friend, or a
(28:04):
mother-in-law, or sometimes itcan even be the bus driver, you
know, asking why they're at thesame school.
Jesper Conrad (28:11):
I think it's a very wonderful question, jenny.
I think it's a very wonderfulquestion, jenny.
There's some skewed realitythat I think we as parents doing
something outside the norm aremore often asked about the
validity of our choices than thepeople following the norm.
I find this is, at the sametime, natural, because when
(28:35):
people do something outside thenorm, people get curious and it
can also be a mirror thatreflects their own choices in a
way they maybe don't like.
So it would be better for themif our lifestyle sucked and it
wasn't good in a sense.
I see, if I look back at when westarted traveling seven years
(28:58):
ago, my life changed from beingat work talking with colleagues
who knew we homeschooled, togoing traveling, and one of the
things I saw was that it changed.
Where people earlier had beenmore critical against
(29:18):
homeschooling, then they werelike oh, are you going on a
world adventure?
I always dreamt about that.
So there is this fun differencejust based on that.
Now we do it locationindependent.
But I think the overall thingis that maybe we sometimes still
feel a need to stand our groundagainst the norm and that can
(29:42):
end up coming something where wedefend ourselves and then there
often also are people asking atweddings other things, and one
of the things or their argumentswhen we talk with them is oh,
but you can do it, we couldnever.
And I think that makes iteasier for people that we do
(30:03):
something different, if they candefine it as luck or a world
where it's not possible for them, but we are lucky in some sort.
Jennie Germann Molz (30:13):
So it sounds like most of these
situations are social, notdefending to I don't know, your
local school district or thestate government.
Cecilie Conrad (30:23):
No problem with authorities Crossing borders?
No, not that.
Jesper Conrad (30:29):
Denmark is wonderfully free, Well
everywhere.
Cecilie Conrad (30:31):
We've never had any problems with taking our
kids over borders or with localpolice authorities, schools,
anything like that.
We're lucky enough to come froma country.
We don't live here any longer.
We just happen to be in Denmarkright now, where it's a
constitutional right tohomeschool.
So if there was ever anyone toask us locally somewhere, what
(30:52):
are you doing, we can just leanon our constitution and say we
have the right to do this in ourcountry.
But we have actually never beenasked.
No, when I actually do feelattacked.
I've been thinking about it,yeah, for the past 10 minutes or
whatever, okay, of thisconversation.
I feel sometimes attacked withthese questions.
You know what would happen if?
(31:13):
And are you sure they'relearning that?
And how can you but all ofthose things.
Sometimes it feels like anattack and it feels like I have
to defend.
And that brings me back toextreme parenting and I'm
thinking you know the risktaking.
You talked about getting sickon a boat or getting sick in
Nepal.
I mean, in your country you getsick from having the school
(31:39):
lunch, it just takes a longertime.
Who's taking the larger risk?
The mental health of childrenthese days it's declining
rapidly.
Most of them, a lot of themfeel really really poor.
Jesper Conrad (31:54):
No, it's not.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm notattacking your country but, we
don't have school lunches.
Cecilie Conrad (32:00):
So I can't attack the school lunches here,
but I mean even just feedingyour kids things you can buy in
the supermarket can get themsick.
This lifestyle, the mainstreamlifestyle with the school life,
it's clear that it's attackingthe mental health of the
children and the young people.
It's clear that it's attackingthe mental health of the
children and the young people.
It's clear that there's a greatrisk of a very, very bad life.
(32:20):
There's a risk to their healthand to their mental health and
we have to defend taking them toa country that might have some
disease that we weren't preparedfor, or drinking water that
might be poisoned.
I mean, the water is prettyoften poisoned in Western
countries.
Just take it out of the tap andit's full of crap these days.
(32:42):
So why is the risk that I'mtaking so much more
irresponsible compared to therisk everyone's taking all the
time?
Jennie Germann Molz (32:54):
The point you're making is one that a lot
of the parents I interviewedalso made that they felt like
taking their children to traveland to world school was a much
lower risk than having them stayin conventional institutional
schooling, especially in theUnited States where school
(33:15):
shootings are actually quitecommon, where a lot of schools
you know well, like you pointout, the food, the school
lunches, the health of thoselunches is questionable bullying
.
So families have a lot of likecounterpoints right of why maybe
(33:36):
staying in school is riskierthan not staying in school yeah
and sorry if it came out.
I'm not attacking you personallyoh no, I know, I know yeah yeah
, no, no, of course not.
Cecilie Conrad (33:51):
I'm just thinking.
You know why is even?
It's just funny how you knowshit can hit the fan for
everyone.
Really.
I mean, that happened to thatfamily on that boat, but it
could really happen, you know.
Jesper Conrad (34:08):
At home.
Jennie Germann Molz (34:08):
that's right, there are probably a lot
of people sailing around theworld who don't get very sick
world who don't get very sick,and I think that world schooling
and really any kind ofalternative lifestyle or
countercultural lifestyle, Ilike to think in terms of how
these things reveal anxieties.
So, for the families that arechoosing this lifestyle, they're
(34:30):
doing it because they have someanxiety about the status quo.
Right, there's something aboutthe status quo that just is it
working for them?
Or they have anxiety about howtheir kids if their kids don't
really toe the line or fit intothe school setting.
Maybe they've been diagnosedwith a learning difference or
(34:51):
with ADHD, or they're not goodat taking standardized tests,
like you were pointing out,cecily like that, your kids have
never even taken a multiplechoice test.
So there's a lot of anxiety thatcomes from trying to fit into a
system that doesn't feelauthentic.
But there's this other anxietyfloating around.
(35:12):
When we have alternativelifestyles and people who are
pursuing these alternativelifestyles, it creates anxiety
in the broader society becauseit's like, oh wait, things could
be different.
And so we start to see whatsome of the deeper held, like
the anxious zeitgeist of asociety is at the moment.
(35:36):
People like yourselves who arekind of like oh wait, no, we
don't actually have to do that,stirs up that kind of
existential anxiety like, ohwait, if we could be doing
things differently, why aren'twe?
And so I think it's interestingto look at it from both of
those angles.
Cecilie Conrad (35:55):
And I think that's exactly why I feel I have
to sometimes defend mylifestyle.
It could look on the surfacelike an innocent, curious
question, but behind that isthis inner turmoil.
So if what she's doing makessense, then I could have done
the same thing, and maybe Iactually felt every time I told
(36:17):
my child to go back to schoolwhere he's bullied, or I left my
very young child in the care ofsomeone else and it hurt and it
felt wrong, but I suppressed itbecause the nursery teacher
told me that this is normal andthey will stop crying in three
minutes.
If I have to feel all thesethings now and I have to realize
(36:38):
that I could have donesomething else, then how do I
handle that crisis?
Oh, it's better to protect myown emotions and just attack
that woman doing her crazy stuff, and I think that's why it
becomes this feeling that I haveto stand my ground, and I
usually try to get out of it.
(36:58):
If I have that feeling thatthis is what's going on or
something, there's too muchenergy loaded in the questions I
usually ask for salt, or youknow comment on the red wine, or
just change the subjectEmotional skills.
Jennie Germann Molz (37:16):
That's an emotional skill?
Yes, it is.
Jesper Conrad (37:19):
Jenny, I am curious about why it is on the
rise.
We were not the first who didit.
To take our own story, verybriefly, we started
homeschooling because one of ourchildren didn't want to go to
school.
Cecilia has just been cancer.
They had been at home with usand it felt unnatural for him to
(37:40):
go away from mom.
That had been at the hospitalfor half a year.
And then we started slowlystill finding our grounds after
living through this difficultperiod.
And when you starthomeschooling you realize how
much of your life is turned upand circled around having a
(38:02):
child in a school.
For us it was the house welived in, the job I had and all
these things were like in acircle around our house, the
children's school and my job.
But then when the kids were athome, I was the only one going
away and then in the end it justfelt weird that we had a big
(38:23):
house.
I was never there because I hadto make the money and then we
were never there because we werealways on a day trip, always on
a day trip, and then the sunjust shined a lot more in other
countries and we ended up going.
But to take the question again,we started our travels seven
years ago and dipped our toes init before that, but have been
(38:46):
full-time traveling for nowseven years.
But you told about this guy whostarted already in 2010 and
it's 15 years since and you saythat it's on the rise.
What do you think it is insociety that is making this more
popular?
Do you see some streams of whatis happening that might make
(39:10):
people say, hey, I want to optout of this.
What are your thoughts on it?
I want to opt out of this.
Jennie Germann Molz (39:15):
What are your thoughts on it?
I think there are so manyfactors that feed into the
growth of world schooling andother kinds of mobile and
alternative lifestyles.
I see a lot of overlap betweenworld schooling and digital
nomadism, for example, which iswhat I'm studying currently.
I think I don't know if I canlike break it down into points,
(39:37):
but I'll just say a few points.
I think one is technology andthat kind of there's a lot to
that.
So technology, in the sensethat it's made location,
independent work possible and inthe social media landscape,
that has made the lifestylevisible and, I think, in a lot
of ways, more accessible.
(39:58):
A lot of world schoolingfamilies and similar with
digital nomads spend a lot oftheir online air teaching other
people how to do the lifestyle,and so I think that gives it
more accessibility.
The other factor I'm not sureexactly how I would pinpoint
this, but I believe that therehas been just a general decline
(40:22):
in trust in government and ingovernment institutions and a
general decline in the sense ofschools as a common good, and so
people are.
I think a lot of families aredisillusioned by school as an
institution and don't trust it.
(40:44):
They themselves may have had badexperiences when they were
students or their children havebad experiences of the education
market has created thissituation where, going back to
our earlier conversation,there's a lot of standardized
(41:09):
testing, standardized curriculumand families just aren't
finding that is meeting theirneeds and so they're more
willing, I think, to rejectinstitutional schooling and then
just access to travel.
I mean people, my book came outin the middle of COVID and the
publisher was like, oh well,they barely even marketed it
because they were like, well, Iguess this is over.
(41:30):
I was like, oh no, this is justgetting started, because, yeah,
I mean there's a little glitchand a lot of people stopped
traveling for a while duringCOVID.
But what COVID showed a lot offamilies was that they could do
schooling online and soschooling could also be location
independent.
(41:50):
And so I think, coming out ofCOVID kind of, we saw world
schooling and digital nomadism,kindism, turbo boosted by those
that's true, that's just to namea few.
Jesper Conrad (42:03):
I'm curious to hear your thoughts about being a
nomad, because that's not a newthing, but it feels like the
nomadic lifestyle has gottenthis revival with the tech and
the infrastructure and all thesethings.
Do you think it's somethingdeep inside of people that there
is this need?
(42:24):
Have you thought about this,studied it, because for me it
feels supernatural.
But also the nomadic part ofreturning to the different
watering holes you can say, whenwe travel we more or less have
a route places we return to,friends we return to and where
we follow the weather.
(42:44):
Denmark is wonderful in thesummer.
Today it's raining but generallyDenmark is beautiful and lush
in the summer and Spain iswonderful in the winter, so we
follow the sun or the seasons,and eternal spring is quite nice
.
But what are your thoughts onthis?
Have you looked into this inany of your other studies also?
Jennie Germann Molz (43:08):
So you're right, nomadism is the human
story.
Right, it's not new, but thekind of digital nomadism that
(43:29):
we're looking at now is also notnew.
David Manners and SugioMakimoto published a book in
1996 called the Digital Nomadand do their work that they
would follow what MandersonMakimoto called that kind of
human impulse to nomadism.
They did say something kind ofinteresting in that book, though
.
They said the one group ofpeople who won't be able to be
(43:50):
digital nomads is familiesbecause the geographical tie of
school is too strong and theywon't be able to break it.
So that's one prediction theygot wrong.
So if you ask them, yes, thereis this kind of like innate
human impulse to travel, towander.
But I think you're also gettingat another part of it, jesper,
(44:12):
by talking about returning tothe waterholes, which is that,
for nomads, for all of us, thewater holes, which is that for
nomads, for all of us, placestill matters and having a sense
of belonging to place or inplace is still incredibly
compelling.
One of the things I've beentracking in my research is this
idea of the digital nomad map,or like geographies of digital
(44:33):
nomadism, and you're probablyfamiliar with the hubs, right?
You can probably guess exactlywhat they are, where digital
nomads tend to go Medellin,colombia, chiang Mai, thailand,
bali, right.
So places that have the weather, the tourist amenities, fast
Wi-Fi, all of that stuff.
(44:55):
But what I'm also finding isthat families are charting a
slightly different map todigital nomads who are traveling
without kids.
So digital nomad families whoare traveling with kids are
tending to chart this map wherethey're more likely to go to
smaller towns or maybe rural orremote areas or, like you're
(45:16):
doing right now, to live onfarms with other families.
So it's less an urban map andmore of a kind of more slightly
more rural or small town map.
Also, as we talked aboutearlier, while a lot of these
families do unschool their kids,a lot also do want to enroll
them in schools, but not inconventional schools.
(45:39):
So places that have alternativeschooling options, like the
Green School in Bali, forexample, the Hypea Learning Hub
in Portugal, some of thesedestinations that have either
like a world schooling communityhub or that have a school with
(46:01):
an alternative curriculum,become the destinations on this
map.
So digital nomad families arekind of creating a new map and
circulating among these veryfamiliar destinations.
Jesper Conrad (46:16):
What changes have you seen since your book came
out?
Jennie Germann Molz (46:20):
Oh gosh, just the sheer growth in number
of families who are undertakingthis lifestyle.
The visibility in online andsocial media settings has been
astounding to me.
I think the kind of themainstreaming of world schooling
the mainstream media has becomereally interested in it.
(46:42):
It's still really not a topicin academic research I don't
really know that many otherresearchers who have been
looking at it from an academicperspective but the mainstream
media has definitely tuned intoit.
I've also seen the rise of awhole cottage industry of
businesses and products andservices catering to the world
(47:05):
schooling market as well in thedigital nomad family market,
which wasn't really there 10years ago.
Jesper Conrad (47:14):
Jenny, where does your curiosity come from?
Why are you curious about thedigital nomad and the world
schooling?
What is it that makes you useso many hours writing a book
doing research?
It's a kind of a nerdy thinghere.
So what is it?
Jennie Germann Molz (47:33):
Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment.
Jesper Conrad (47:35):
Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment it is
nerdy.
Jennie Germann Molz (47:39):
I moved around a lot as a kid.
I went to 11 different schoolsbefore I graduated from high
school and in my 20s I traveledall over the world.
And I remember being at ahostel in Indonesia back in 1994
(47:59):
, maybe and seeing this guy witha laptop computer and all these
wires trying to get a modemhooked up to a phone cord.
I didn't even know what a modemwas and I was like, what are
you doing?
He's like oh, I have to send mynewsletter to all my friends,
updating them on my trip.
I was like, oh my God, myfriends have no idea where I am.
Like maybe they got a postcardfrom where I was five weeks ago.
(48:22):
But like, this is crazy, right,it was just so fascinating to me
this, this desire to travel theworld on the one hand, right,
that human impulse to be nomadicon the one hand, paired with
this desire to be in touch witheverybody back home at the same
time.
To me, that was such aninteresting paradox and that's
(48:45):
kind of what all of my researchhas explored ever since.
How do we move and stayconnected?
What does that look like?
Why do we do it?
Why do we?
We want to do it.
So maybe that's where mycuriosity comes from jenny, it
has been a big pleasure.
Jesper Conrad (49:05):
It could be really great if you want to
share the title of your bookwhere they can find it and where
they can read your research ifthey want to.
And also, yeah, just how dothey dive into the world of the
subjects that interest you?
Where do they find you and yourresearch?
Jennie Germann Molz (49:23):
Where do they find me?
Well, I am not very active onsocial media, but you can Google
Jenny German Molls and thatwill take you to my account at
College of the Holy Cross, whereI teach sociology.
My book is the World is OurClassroom Extreme Parenting and
the Rise of World Schooling,published by NYU Press, and it's
(49:47):
available anywhere you buybooks.
Jesper Conrad (49:50):
So, to round up, it has been really interesting
and it has been fun for me tohear an academic view of the
lifestyle we have walked downand I know I will ponder of some
of the questions that havearisen here.
So thanks a lot for your time.
Jennie Germann Molz (50:08):
Thank you, it's been a real pleasure, it
was.
Cecilie Conrad (50:10):
It was fun.
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