Beyond the Textbooks

Education on the boat is not exclusively about textbooks, study, and reading. We do a few hours of that kind of home school each day, but that is not my main source of learning. I realized this about a week ago, when we where visiting some friends here in Falmouth. One of them asked me what I learned over the past few years. It was a broad question, but I did not think of my progress in math or what I covered in history; I thought of the world of knowledge outside of the textbooks, the world that I am glad to have discovered. 

Right now in history, we are covering the Napoleonic Wars and the Battle of Trafalgar. By coincidence, a few days ago we took a road trip to Portsmouth, where the Battle of Trafalgar comes alive. Lord Horatio Nelson, the British hero and commander at Trafalgar, was Vice Admiral on the flagship H.M.S. Victory. The Victory is in dry dock and open for the public to explore. After seeing her and the Trafalgar Museum, I reflected that I had a much richer experience there than during the history class. I learned so much more from being in and enjoying the place where we are. If anyone ever asks me in which year of my life did I learn the most, I would say a year on Sila, because of the outside world of knowledge not the home school.

On the other hand, I think that the H.M.S. Victory is more amazing now that I have some context from the history book. Three years ago it would have been cool to see, but now that I have visited Nelson's Dockyard in Antigua, read and heard about the history, and listened to Porter's countless recollections from books based in the age of sail, I have found it all more interesting. There is nothing like some context to to make an interesting thing more interesting. -JackRabbit

 Here I am on one of the gun decks on the H.M.S. Victory.

 This is a model of the H.M.S.Victory. It was pouring rain the day we visited, so we did not stop to 

take a photo of the real thing outside!

"England expects that every man will do his duty." This is a famous message that Nelson flew on the 

H.M.S Victory's mast to inspire the British sailors at the start of the Battle of Trafalgar.

Here it is portrayed in Code Flags.