How Traveling with Kids Gives Them a Competitive Edge

Do you ever worry that taking your children on an extended travel experience (and out of the traditional classroom) could harm their academic and professional future?  Do you vacillate over whether or not an extended time of family travel is really “worth” it?  Is one of your main barriers to traveling with your family the issue of education?  Well, hopefully, this post will encourage both those who are currently on the road with their kids and those who are considering extended family travel.

You might be surprised to discover that some of the most prominent institutions place high value on unique, cross-cultural experiences.   Thomas Watson, best known as the founder of IBM, saw the value in cross-cultural experience. Watson discovered that his best employees were those who had world experience, those who had ventured outside of their own culture.  Watson himself had great interest in education and world affairs.  In Watson’s honor, his children founded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a prestigious fellowship awarded to the best and brightest graduating seniors from some of the finest educational institutions in America.  The fellowship awards $25,000 to individuals to travel the globe the year following their collegiate graduation.  The program self-describes itself as “a year of independent, purposeful exploration and travel — in international settings new to them — to enhance their capacity for resourcefulness, imagination, openness, and leadership and to foster their humane and effective participation in the world community.”  Some of the most notable Watson Fellows include the following people:

• Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize winning author and columnist
• Peter Child, professor of music at MIT and composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic
• Tom Cole, U.S. Congressman from Oklahoma
• John Garang, late Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army and Vice-President of Sudan
• David Grann, American journalist and best-selling author
• John Payton, civil rights attorney
• Steve Raichlen, BBQ chef, author, and PBS cooking show host
• Eric Rosengren, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
• David Shipley, The New York Times Op-Ed Editor
• Julie Taymor, Oscar-nominated, Emmy- and Tony-award-winning director

Obviously, as Watson believed, those who have experienced other cultures are able to think creatively, communicate well with people, extend understanding to those different from themselves, and contribute innovative ideas to the world.

No wonder Ivy League schools like Harvard say that they admit students who, not only excel academically, but who “bring perspectives formed by unusual personal circumstances or experiences.”

Many of you are already doing with your children the exact things that the Watson Fellowship seeks to promote.  By traveling with your family, you are helping to raise a generation of individuals who are informed global citizens, who perhaps speak multiple languages, and who may have witnessed poverty in a more raw and authentic way than their peers.  You are raising people who will be innovators, creators, and compassionate humanitarians.

You are doing a good thing.

So, relax, and bask in the fact that you are setting your children up well to succeed.

What academic and professional advantages do you think children gain from traveling?