This article was first published in the January 2016 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Most schools organise field trips -- at THINK Global, the school is the trip. Since 2010, the travelling boarding school has been spending each three-month term in a different country, moving its 20 staff and 45 teenage students from Athens to Costa Rica in the space of a year. "I think to understand the world you have to see it," says THINK Global founder Joann McPike. "There's an empathy there that you don't get if you just stay at home."
McPike, 49, an award-winning travel photographer before THINK Global, came up with the idea when she was looking for schools for her son Alexander. "We didn't want him to be dropped into a high school that would teach him one way of thinking," she says. "So we decided to start a school." THINK Global hires hosts and partners with local schools, tailoring its International Baccalaureate curriculum to each country's conditions. Studying Homer in Greece, for example, pupils took a boat trip to the locations mentioned in The Odyssey.
THINK Global, which will travel to Sweden, Bosnia and Italy over the next school year, costs $79,000 (£50,000) a year to attend, although McPike, who funds the non-profit from a foundation which covers 86 per cent of the school's running costs, emphasises that "it's not a school for rich kids -- but for the right kids." Entry, at tenth grade (or UK year 11), is selective and tuition fees can be adjusted to suit families' finances. "We do what we feel is fair," says McPike, who is looking for ways to bring the THINK Global model to a wider audience.
All this travel, of course, brings the odd mishap. Studying in the Serengeti, students and staff had to be evacuated from a mud pit; and after getting caught up in the Boston Marathon bombing, teachers were forced to run classes in the students' residence. But with departing alumni accepted at universities around the world, and Alexander, now 19, in his first year at Harvard, the adventure is paying dividends. "Someone asked me how I measure success," says McPike. "We want them to leave thinking no idea is too big."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
