When Carla Fisher and her husband announced plans to travel the globe with their young dau

When Carla Fisher and her husband announced plans to travel the globe with their young daughters for a year, some friends called them crazy.

    Seven years later, with wonderful memories and a book documenting their world travel, the Fishers now seem like global trailblazers (先驱者).

    “It’s really encouraging to hear that many other people want to educate their kids in that manner,” said Fisher.

Some parents are trying to raise knowledgeable and open-minded “world citizens”. Others want to give their children the skills they’ll need to compete globally.

“There is a huge amount of interest in spending time abroad at all stages of life and increasingly, as a family with children,” said Maya Frost, author of “The New Global Student…”. She knows American families in every corner of the globe who have made that choice.

    “There’s so much more to education than school,” said Tessa Hill, who recently returned to her Houston-area home, after driving her family across North and Central America and Europe in a motor home for 13 months. “World travel is an education in people, cultures, language, travel skills, street smarts and in how lucky we are to live in the United States.”

    When Hill and her husband began considering extended global travel, their middle child, Charles, 13, was surprised. “My first reaction was ‘well, are we really going to do this?’” Charles said. “But it did sound like great fun.”

    Charles said missing his friends was the hardest part. He stayed in touch via e-mail and made some new friends along the way, playing soccer with kids in France and learning about rugby from youths in Ireland.

“I’d definitely recommend this to other kids,” Charles said. “It was such a great opportunity to see different countries and learn geography a different way.”

To make re-entry smoother, most school officials prefer that families work out an educational plan before they leave town.

“It sounds out-of-date, but it really opens up your mind and your eyes to the world,” said Robbin Goodman, 17, a senior student who spent his junior year skateboarding across Beijing, China, when he wasn’t studying Chinese history and other core subjects.

Had he not already taken a school-sponsored spring break trip with his mom to China in 2007, Robbin said he probably would not have been able to convince his parents to let him go alone for a year. “I knew I would learn Chinese and all that, but my goal was to have a great time,” Robbin said. 

“The biggest problem for those seriously considering going abroad is dealing with those who are against the idea,” said Frost.

“They gain the ability to take risks and to have confidence in themselves,” said Liz Pearlstein, founder of a global education consulting firm. “When we came home from London, my daughter, who had been painfully shy before we left, said ‘Mom, now I know there’s nothing I can’t do.’”

No one knows exactly how many American families are choosing the global education path,

but global education consultants say a growing number of parents are traveling for a year or more with their children.

71. education      72. global / world       73. decision / choice / plan       74. e-mailed 75. staying / travelling / study 76. enables 77. increasing 78. smoother / easier 79. Conclusion

80. tend / choose / plan