World Citizens: Children Without Borders

In this era of rising nationalism and robust border building, the need to bring up children as world citizens is greater than ever. That’s a big part of why our family has spent the last 11 months caravanning across Europe, doing work-exchanges with ten different families, and visiting as many different countries. Without an understanding of global diversity, we are doomed to a future of ever growing conflict and intolerance.

As populations move about and environmental threats reach biblical proportions, it has never been more important to instill a sense global awareness in our children. The time for self-serving ethnocentricity is over and done. Although some insist on clinging tightly, never letting go of this outdated and morally bankrupt worldview—only when it’s pried from their cold, dead hands.

Not us. Our agenda is anything but narrow minded. We’ve spent the last three weeks with a British family in the heart of France. Each day our children pick up a few more words of French, and we hear our daughter’s English pronounced more and more like that of the Queen’s.

The scarcity of fresh seafood and ordinary oatmeal reminds us that we’ve left Spain behind. Our children can also be sure that we are no longer in Italy, because I now slow the van to a reasonable speed every time we approach a traffic circle, and hardly ever get the single-fingered salute for our fellow drivers.

In a couple days we will be leaving France to pay a brief visit to some friends and family up in Germany. The kids know that now is the time to fill up on delightfully delicate but but difficult to pronounce pastries. At the same time, they realize that we’ll soon be enjoying genuine German pretzels by the bushelful. They also know that we’ll be able find the bakeries open at any hour of the day, because the industrious northerners, unlike their latin neighbors, do not close up shop in the middle of every afternoon for a two or three hour nap.

Having learned to recognize these and countless other cultural nuances from country to country, our family is now acutely aware of what we have to celebrate and lament every time we cross a national border. And as we consider where to end our year-long tour, the decision becomes painfully difficult.

It’s a lesson we desperately want our children to learn: Life is a series of trade-offs, a succession of ups and downs, an ever-passing landscape of peaks and valleys. You just can’t have your crepe and eat it too. We’d like to think they’ve learned this much, but sometimes it seems like they’ve only learned to expect the world on a platter. Indeed, we have enjoyed something of a moveable feast this past year.

We constantly strive to teach our offspring to be open-minded, tolerant and nonjudgmental.
But without a doubt, we have continually be reminded that every scenario has its downsides. So as we’ve steadily expanded our comfort zones and grown increasingly adaptable, we’ve also learned to be more discerning, to recognize the inevitable pros and cons of every situation.

At the end of the day, there is no perfect paradise. Utopia is just another word for nowhere, and the promised land is nowhere to be found. The best we can hope to do is keep on improving ourselves, to cultivate more patience and understanding in order to make the most of what we have.

With that in mind, we’ve taken and long hard look at the pros and cons, and we’re putting our faith in the gut instincts. After Germany, we’ll be heading south to the sunny slopes and the cultural crossroads of the Spanish Pyrenees. So if you’re looking for a work-exchange opportunity here on the continent, look us up. We’ve got a long list of projects, and plenty of space for guests.

FURTHER READING: For more entertaining tales of cultural assimilation, check out some of the following articles.

• The Hilarity of Spanish Immersion
• Global Citizenship 
• First World Problems
• Paradise Found 
• The Absurdity of Spanish Immigration
• Life in a Spanish Village

Photo Credit: World citizen flag by Garry Davis