As the mad Monday morning scramble draws near, most parents will spend today badgering their kids to do their homework or find their PE ki...
As the mad Monday morning scramble draws near, most parents will spend today badgering their kids to do their homework or find their PE kit.
But while other children grapple with spelling lists and reading books, the King boys, Winston and Henry, will be planning to hunt fossils in Canada or scale volcanos in Iceland.
For their parents , Paul and Caroline have opted for a controversial type of education called “global unschooling”.
Which amounts to NO school, NO shouting and an awful lot of playing on beautiful beaches as the family hops from one country to the next.
Caroline, 35, said: “We came to the conclusion that it wasn’t ethical for our children to be forced to go to school when they didn’t want to.”
So they sold their £280,000 house along with most of their possessions and set off to show their boys the world.
Nineteen months and 15 countries later, the Kings are still convinced they are doing the right thing. And they have no plans to stop.
Paul, 39, said: “We’ll never force the boys to go to school or take an exam. We don’t believe in government interference in education.
“It’s too aggressive and not respectful to the child. We don’t raise our voices to the boys, so why should a teacher be allowed to?
So rather than reading about the Pyramids, the brothers have been to the ancient wonders in Egypt. And rather than colouring in pictures of tropical fish they’ve seen the real thing in the Maldives and Bali.
“We had a big house but I hated it in the end,” Caroline said. “Spending lots of time making the house look nice is exhausting. People kept giving us stuff we never used.
“It was nice to sell it all. There’s not a single item I regret getting rid of.”
Since then, they have visited five continents, spending about £3,000 per month. Their first stop was Romania where they spent a week before moving on to Dubai.
Then they visited India, the Maldives, Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo,Thailand, Laos, the US, Colombia, Spain, Egypt, Italy and the Czech Republic.
