Whittle, Chairman and CEO of Whittle School & Studios, embarked on the journey of a lifetime. He had just been admitted into the hallowed halls of Columbia Law School, New York after graduating from the University of Tennessee. Yet just a week into his law degree, Whittle knew he was meant to tread a path less travelled. In his case, this meant dropping out and taking a solo journey around the world.
At first, he stayed close to home, driving 5000 miles around America and parts of Mexico. Then he joined a friend who was a former Air Force pilot and owned a small airplane to fly across a series of World War II airbases in the sub-arctic on what was informally known as the Bomber Ferry route.
For the third leg of his journey, he took on the rest of the world. His only preparation before travel was shipping books to specified locations which he expected to visit. Over the course of the next few months, he made his way across the Southern Atlantic islands through North Africa and Morocco, before joining the “hippy trail” which began in Istanbul, and went across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India and ended in Nepal.
“I remember my first night in India vividly,” says the dashing septuagenarian. “I flew across the Khyber and landed in Amritsar just as night was falling. There were no cabs available for some reason, so I talked a military jeep into giving me a ride into town. I had to find a place to sleep on that hot summer night and I remember seeing this fascinating sight – people had pulled their beds out on the street to sleep!” From Amritsar, he made his way to Kashmir where he spent a month on a houseboat in Srinagar and trekked along the Himalayas.
This grand adventure of his youth has become the basis of his latest adventure in life, which he calls Baret Scholars, a global gap year program. It brings together 180 deserving students from around the world to spend a year travelling and learning about life in a well-curated, well-thought, and highly secure program before they join university. This ambitious project launched this month to much fanfare. Whittle with his vast experience in the education and media sectors, having opened some of the most forward-thinking and successful educational institutions around the world including five branches of Avenues the World School, is perhaps best suited to curate it.
“These students work for years to apply for highly competitive university admissions and a lot of them get burned out during the process. This is a year for them to reflect and be inspired by what they see. It’ll be a magical year because they will enter college ahead of their peers,” explains Whittle.
The Baret Scholars program offers a mix of structure and freedom as selected students live across eight countries over the course of the year, attend organised talks similar to those of TEDx while being given the freedom to chart their own course. Travelling along with them are ‘Fellows’, or mid-career experts from varying fields who guide them in chosen professional strands, preparing them for their future. Accommodation, food, medical and security concerns are all included in the fee, so parents need not worry about their precious charges. It’s an educational gap year at its luxurious best.
As Whittle explains, “As a result of my travel experiences, I feel I can be anywhere in the world on my own yet feel very comfortable. These students will benefit from being given similar opportunities. After this incredible experience, they will have learnt so much about the world that they will never read a newspaper the same way.”
Though education has been Whittle’s passion for decades, he is also a man with numerous creative interests. Apart from being an avid reader and an astute and humorous writer, Whittle is also a proficient musician. In his younger days, he travelled with a large baritone recorder as part of high school and college bands. Now, his instrument of choice is the piano. “I miss playing the piano when I travel. Sometimes I play them in empty ballrooms of hotels,” he admits.
Another long-standing love of his is architecture. “As a child I liked to build things, and through my career I’ve been exposed to some phenomenal architects. If in my youth I had known what I know about architecture now, this is certainly the path I would have pursued.”
Had he done that, however, the world would have missed a visionary educationist. With this gap year program, Whittle is sharing his greatest hurrah yet. He ends on a poignant note, “A number of nationalistic movements have risen all over the globe which run counter to the promotion of an international perspective. This program is one way of keeping the world connected.”
Noor Anand Chawla pens lifestyle articles for various publications and her blog www.nooranandchawla.com.