Our own small school

One could think that school aboard the Thor Heyerdahl is like normal school, only that you have less lessons and you are on a ship. However, if you make the mistake of comparing the Thor to a normal school and your home, you will soon realise that this does not make any sense. Of course, the setting is quite different from the one at school, but the concept of how you learn the best also differentiates from the one at home. Not only that the things you learn match your surroundings, but that school is also much more practical. In my opinion the school lessons are more fun than at home, due to the fact that you have fresh air to breathe and an ocean to look at all the time. This doesn’t disturb your concentration, but rather lifts your temper and therefore also your motivation to participate and learn. We have school lessons on the main deck, so if you are lucky, you can also hear some music from the galley. First, I thought that it would be distracting, but then I realised that it calms me down and helps me concentrate too.

The students are divided into two groups:  while one group runs the ship, the other one has school. The groups rotate every day, so you have school only every second day. On these days we have lessons from 08.10 a.m.-17.40 p.m. Seven school lessons of nine different subjects fill the day: There are Maths, Physics, German, History, Biology, Chemistry, Spanish, English and Geography. On top of that, there is also an extra subject you can choose and normally there would be different courses now, but our shared interest in sailing led to only one subject of choice, Astronomical Navigation.

As I’ve already mentioned, the practical aspect in lessons helps you learn things quicker. For example, in Physics we learned how to analyse diagrams, with, e.g. time and distance. But instead of only talking about them, we had to walk with the directions from the diagrams. This really helped me to visualise the information and get more practise in analysing diagrams. In Astronomical Navigation, we are allowed – even instructed – to use a 600-800€ sextant (an instrument which measures the angle between an object in the sky and the horizon) and identify the position of the Thor only with the sun. I could name hundreds of other examples, but now, let’s talk about another unique aspect of the school on the Thor Heyerdahl, the time for individual studies. On watch-days from Monday to Thursday you have some time (about one and a half hours) to work on the things that you are most interested in or where you have the feeling of some need to catch up. If you have to give a presentation in the next days, you also have the opportunity to prepare this. We have individual work in the messroom (the place where you eat and learn when the weather outside is bad), but we are also allowed to go anywhere else (for example the library or the deckhouse), as long as we work and don’t distract other people.

Now, I have talked about the positive aspects of school on our ship, but there is one big problem. Due to the fact that the crew of the Thor comes from all parts of Germany, our education so far varies from one to another. For example, in Chemistry we have people who already had five years of Chemistry and people who only had one. Our teachers have to find a way to make the lessons interesting, but also feasible for everyone. Since this is nearly impossible, you are sometimes quite relaxed and then suddenly also kind of overwhelmed, especially in the scientific subjects. This resembles a problem, because you need a lot of background knowledge here. The only subject that is separated into two classes is Spanish. This makes a lot of sense if you think about the fact that some of us have already learned Spanish for up to five years (we even have a native speaker) and others only know about two words. The advanced Spanish lessons focus more on speaking fluently and improve grammar skills whereas in the beginner lessons, we learn the basics and most important things, so we can communicate with the people in Cuba and Panama, for instance.

All in all, school on our ship is something unique. It can be hard – especially when the content of the lessons doesn’t match your level – but due to our great teachers, the system of how to learn the best and the fact that you are on a ship in the middle of nowhere, lessons are very informative and fun at the same time and you learn much more than at home.