Caroline King: Homeschool Refugees

“I think that the main trait of unschooled kids is that they ask questions and they want to find out more, whereas in school they are told what to do.  It’s a totally different way of growing up.”

Automatically Generated  Transcript

Timothy Allen 0:00
I’ll start by how I know you, which is through ‘Liberty in Our Lifetime’. And I met you at the conference. And in particular, I met you because you’re quite heavily involved in the unschooling world in Prague. Is that fair to say?

Caroline King 0:17
That’s correct.

Timothy Allen 0:17
Yes, right. And af Free Cities here, we like things like that. They’re parallel systems, and unschooling, and homeschooling and all these different versions, is there a difference between them? Or is is what’s the difference? For example, between unschooling and homeschooling?

Caroline King 0:35
The main difference is that you don’t use a curriculum, but there are different ways to unschool and homeschool and some unschoolers might say that you’re not unschooling because you do this and that and you should be completely letting the kid roam around and do things that they want all the time. But when we’re not really like that, where unschooling within the frames, I would say, like, we want our children to consent to things. And we think that certain things are needed in life, like to be able to read and do math and programme and things like that. So I yeah, I should introduce you, as far as I understand it, which is, you are, you’re really Swedish. Yes. You left Sweden. you’ve travelled a lot. Obviously, you’re you’re certainly someone who I would call would you call it a digital nomad? I think that’s the way to describe it. You have been in the past very nomadic. And you’ve settled in Prague for a reason we can go into, but I suppose let’s start with why did you? Did you leave Sweden consciously? Or did you just go travelling and realise that you’re not coming back? I was forced, we were forced to leave Sweden. But I just want to clear something out that I’m not entirely Swedish. I’m half polish, and half Swedish. So when I grew up, I have never been like 100%, Swedish and 100%. Like having my mind being Sweden, things like that. I’ve always been like a little bit of an outsider, because my mom’s from Poland, and my dad’s from Sweden. And I started travelling very early. I went on my own on the first trip, there was like a two month trip, when I was 17. I actually went with a group of British people to Belize. And it was an organisation called coral key conservation, where you got to learn to dive. It was open water and Advanced Open Water. And then you get to do some research for the university and count corals and learn everything about the fish and corals and all all about the coral reefs there. And that was like the first trip that I went on to two months. And then after I left school, I stayed in Central America for one year. And then I came back to, to Sweden and I travelled again, like a lot when I was in university. And I met my now husband in Kashmir, in India, in 2003. And it was like, we were in Srinagar. And there was like three buses of people like Korean tourists mainly and the US and like, some other people from South Africa and Sweden as well. And everybody started becoming friends when the bus stopped in the middle on the way between Srinagar and Ladakh. Then there there was some bumps shelling from the Pakistani side of Kashmir towards the Indian side. And all the people there there are friends with each other and they have families on both sides and they call each other and say to say like now there’s gonna be some bumps shelling, you have to go out of your village. So they went after a village and then had this big get campsite and our our buses had to stop there. And then everybody got to know each other on the bus because we stayed there for like 24 hours and then continue to lay in Ladakh. And me and my now husband, when we were there, we bought a donkey together and we went trekking with the donkey. And it didn’t have any teeth and we didn’t know that it didn’t have any teeth and it was completely useless and we ended up having to both push and pull the donkey in the same time.

Timothy Allen 4:57
You bought it secondhand donkey there…. funnily enough, sorry to butt in. But I would say you were in North Northwest India in 2003 Was it?

Caroline King 5:13
Yes,

Timothy Allen 5:13
I’m pretty sure I was there then. I travelled from Kashmir to the northeast frontier states over a year and a half period I went the whole way from the west right over to you know, like Nagaland and all those places.

Caroline King 5:27
Oh, well, we were on the way there but didn’t end up there.

Timothy Allen 5:30
Yeah, but I spent a lot I spent I bought a motorbike I didn’t I bought a secondhand motorbike in Ladakh. I didn’t buy a donkey, you probably made a better choice than me. But I bought a Royal Enfield and drove it around. And but but it was I’m pretty sure it was around the same time as interesting. What? So you So you met your husband there? And then yeah, go move forward to the bit where you left. Sweden. You had to leave Sweden. That was a bit of a journey.

Caroline King 5:59
Yeah. Anyway, we we ended up travelling around together for four months and took the train from Siberia, back through Mongolia to yeah, all the way to Sweden’s which are basically travelled mostly by love from India together. And then when I came to Sweden, he went to England. And I was like, Should we be together or not. And then I decided I will have to move to England. So I moved to move to England. And we were there for three years. And we were working together we had we had a company. Actually, we have a few different companies. We have a company selling Kashmiris and pashminas, called microfinance at CODIT. UK. And we have a hammock shop called the hammer Kevin. And we have a rug shop called the real rug company selling carpets and rugs. And after three years in England, I just felt like this is this is yet because you can’t go in the nature. And this is a crowd that has so many cars. And I felt like it was really unhealthy. Again, a lot of weight like nine kilos in England. So we moved to Sweden and tried Sweden and like, we can go skiing and swimming and go into forest. And I had my friends down and things like that. So so so that was nice. And we lived for nine years in Sweden, ran our businesses there as well. We had an office in Gothenburg and we had a first a small house in the countryside and then a bigger house. On another place in the countryside, which we had our office in later on. We had two kids that were born in Sweden at the time. And we were teaching the oldest one to read with baby reading. It’s like it’s called the Glen demand method. It’s when you show like what cards do a baby from when they like six months. So you show the cards in a specific pattern throughout the day. And then when Winston was that we just our oldest boy, when he was like 15 months, he could point out words like maybe 100 or 150 words. And when he was like 19, I think it was like 21 months, he was reading in Swedish and English from books. And we tried kindergarten with him as well. We had like a local small kindergarten that only had nine kids. And most of the kids there were sick all the time. And they were sleeping in the day and he was not sleeping in the day. So he had like three kindergarten teachers that he was reading books to when he was there. And I was at home with our small baby Dan, which was our second boy called Henry. And then we realised when we spoke to different types of school staff, like we were looking for, for schools, like what are we going to do with our our son that already can do like the basic math on the read in two languages when he’s like two. So we went around different schools and tried to figure out like, what what, what can he like, how is it going to be for him in this There must be another way and at that time, we found out that there is no other way. I want to say one thing about Sweden like seeing it from foreigners perspective. Sweden is extremely conformist. And you have to have an opinion that is within like this little, little tiny space. And if you think something differently then you’re just weird and you’re, you’re being excluded and things like that. So and they also have this thing called a partial number, which is like a personal number, where you have a number from the government that you have to use for everything, like, sometimes when you buy something and you’re going to a library, or you’re going to the doctor to the bank, and like everything, you have to use it. It’s not like a national insurance number that you have in the UK. It’s like, like, like a number that you have to use all the time. And you’re tracked through everything, like you’re being watched and tracked through absolutely everything. So in Sweden, you really are in a system. And the most holiest theme to the Swedes is like the democratic society on their school system. So if you say something that criticises the school system, that you are a little bit outside of the norm, and you want something else, or you want to take your own responsibility for your teenagers education, then then they judge you as being like, pure evil or something like that. Because you criticise the great system that they they have. And the only way we had the trouble from I don’t want to go into the details. But we had the trouble from the government, local government, and we decided that we quickly had to sell our house, which was stunning. It’s like a huge wooden house that had several balconies with decks and like, little stable and it was like a big garden near to the lakes with like crystal clear water and beautiful rolling hills and deep forests and things like that. It was super nice. So we had to sell our house that we just moved into and and leave. And maybe I forgot something.

Timothy Allen 11:52
Can I just ask one question though, it was the or reason to leave due to the fact that homeschooling is illegal is homeschooling actually illegal in

Caroline King 12:02
Sweden is only legal if you’re dying. So if you have a kid that is dying, and then hospital, they don’t have to go to school because they can’t physically go to school. That’s the only time when you’re not allowed to. But you still have to follow a curriculum then. So if if your child is dying and having like a terminal disease, then there will be somebody coming to the hospital to teach the child until the death. Really? Yeah, it’s I know it’s

Timothy Allen 12:28
I’ve because I’ve spoken to a few sweet refugees here. And here’s something that I find strange, right. That on the one hand, homeschooling is illegal in Sweden, which seems a bit strange. I mean, because most people’s impression of Sweden is it’s a very open minded, easygoing place. Right. And, but during the lockdowns, they were the one country in the world that didn’t seem to enforce these lock downs. It are those two things in conflict with each other. You

Caroline King 13:02
know, the biggest the children have to go to school. To work, yes. Was that they have to they have to go to school. So they come to the lockdowns. Right, yeah. So I really don’t like it when people come and say, Oh, Sweden is great look, they didn’t have any lockdown. But they do have did have restrictions anyway, like people had to wear a face mask in the metro and things like that. They had like, maximum amount of people that can be in the restaurant and, and things. They didn’t have the harsh lockdown that they had in Western Europe, for instance. But they still had restrictions. But they they didn’t have enough restrictions for while they didn’t have the harsher restrictions, because the kids have to go to school and people have to work basically. Because it’s their machinery and they have to have the tax kettled providing for it. So you have to be indoctrinated. Are

Timothy Allen 13:55
you saying that this whole idea that Sweden is a is a because it’s true that the most people think of Sweden of all places? If you look at Western Europe, especially you think, wow, they’re really laid back and Sweden, just easygoing, live and let live? Society you saying it’s not actually

Caroline King 14:15
I think if something looks too good, then it’s something maybe not good behind it.

Timothy Allen 14:22
Right? Yeah. Well, it was enough for you to leave so well.

Caroline King 14:26
The reason for leaving is because they take children, they take a lot of children 3000 Not 4500 Kids are taken against their will and against the parents. Well, I read about it, I think it was like last year or something. And I follow these statistics. So they take kids against the kids will and the families will if this is something is not following the norm. And

Timothy Allen 14:54
really not many of them are with regards to school. Are they other things? So sure,

Caroline King 14:59
yeah. added could be any any, any reason really some, some neighbour will tell a social service and then they will come around. And what happens with the homeschoolers, like if if somebody would homeschool illegally in Sweden, then some neighbour or somebody on the street or something would see that there are school aged kids, they’re not in school, that would tell their social services, and that they will come around, and they will ask them first. And if they don’t send them to school, they will send them fines. And if they don’t pay the fines, they will take the kids and sometimes if they think that their parents will homeschool them, despite fines, they’ll just take them, or they will also take them. If they think that the family will leave Sweden, which has happened, you can look up, Dominic Johansson, which was snatched on a plane the family was there was a Swedish dad and an Indian mother. And they had a seven year old at the time. And they were I think it was seven. And they were leaving for India to move there because they didn’t want their son in the school system. And there was a SWAT team that took the kid on the plane. And then the father tried to take the son back when they were had when they were meeting them in some meeting, I think. And then then social services cutoff, placed the son somewhere else, and they don’t get to see that they haven’t gotten to see their son, which is now an adult. Really? Yeah, for real. That’s how that’s for real. Yes, you can look it up. And that happens all the time. Like I know of two families that had their kids taken last year. And there was another family that had their kids taken in 2019, where the Swedish media started a witch hunt against me for some reason, I have nothing to do with these people. Like I tell people that they should not homeschool in Sweden, because in Sweden, they will come and take your kids and it’s not following because you’re not following the law. You should follow the law. If you live in Sweden, I have this unschooling group that I started just for, for fun to meet other people that were like minded in, like, maybe 10 years ago, I don’t know really. And I don’t do much with it, because I don’t use Facebook so much now. But anyway, we were in Slovenia, paddling on Lake blood, which is like really beautiful lake amongst the mountains that’s like with turquoise water. And like really beautiful wild nature around. So I was paddling on there with our kids. And my phone kept ringing. And I wouldn’t take it because it was a Swedish number. And then I looked in my emails that was on my, my Facebook Messenger. And there was like loads of messages from this journalist in svt, which says various television is like BBC, basically. And so she was wanting an interview with me, she wanted to talk to me like live. And I said, No, because I know that they’re going to frame me and they’re going to angle it. And I didn’t know what it was about Ilan. And then I had loads of people writing to me and calling me and saying that, look, this is all over the news. And I had no idea what it was. But then I managed to get connection. It was staying in a campsite. So we had like a really bad internet connection. But finally got to see the the news clips they were talking about. And basically they were having this being good thing like there was like one of the main news, like oh SBTs reveals this safe, secret Facebook group where they’re telling families to break the law and not have the children in school. How dare they. And these ones are actually on YouTube, if you want to see them. I can give you the links. Later. I have English Tech have a bit of a laugh at that one. Yeah, it’s so funny. So anyway, this was a love of the media and like for like six weeks or something during the whole summer, about this family that were illegally homeschooling their kids in their home in Sweden. And no, we weren’t even the group. I had no idea who they are. So there was basically saying that this family there are criminals. They had four of their five kids stolen because they were under 18. As far as I know, they haven’t had them back yet. That’s 2019 So they were connecting this family to us and Ava and even like, you know, I am travelling around I left Sweden in 2015. permanently, I’m not going to move back there. The making this big thing about this Facebook group that I barely use and this ad I was the sole admin. I didn’t really know.

Timothy Allen 20:20
Either way you were you were actually telling people to leave Sweden?

Caroline King 20:24
Yes. I want them to leave telling them to leave soon. Exactly. So I didn’t tell them to commit any crimes, but somehow they connected it to make it like oh, this these families, they they do this to the children. This is terrible, how they are they? The loads of newspapers wanted to have an interview with me. And then I said yes to one. Finally, it was like, a gotten to sign something that I have to agree on this article before you posted with was still angled when they put it out. But yeah, they had what the headline was, like, the anti school interview with the school movements leader or something like that.

Timothy Allen 21:18
You’re gonna say, madam, to school, madam. Running this evil organisation? Well, I have to interject there. Because there are quite a number of Swedish refugees. And we I’m gonna say refugees that your would you say? You’re a refugee? I mean, you have had to leave your own country.

Caroline King 21:38
Yes. Yes, we are. But we make the best in the new place that we are in. That’s That’s what all refugees have to do. Right.

Timothy Allen 21:46
But you have a you have a pretty, pretty nice network of people here are in your own homeschooling network. Yeah, most people Swedish.

Caroline King 21:55
Well, it’s like loads of different groups, I would say. We are the first Swedish family. There was no Swedish families in Prague when we came here that we’re homeschooling or unschooling. I have a blog. There on the blog, I’ve been writing a lot about Prague and the Czech Republic and the unschooling here, so that has drawn people, both the unschooling group and unschooling blog, has drawn people here. And thanks to the media circus, there’s, the group attracted much more people. So it’s grown from 400 to 1200 people, which is like really small compared with the UK and things like that, because unschooling is not so popular in Sweden. But anyway, it’s we had more more members, because of that more people has heard about it. And they have written to me personally and said, Oh, I didn’t know that this existed. I feel like the school system is off, and I didn’t know what it was. But now I know. Why do you

Timothy Allen 22:59
think people have such a wrong impression of homeschooling? It’s like, Why? Why do people default to? They must be irresponsible, which is as if you’ve ever homeschooled your children, you realise you’re being responsible, you’re is the complete opposite of what people think, How Why did people get that wrong doing?

Caroline King 23:26
They’re in their own world, and in their own system, they’re doing the daily rat race, and they’re just listening to what the media says. And the people around them are listening to the same, I guess,

Timothy Allen 23:38
I mean, even Logically, if you’re a parent, you must realise that taking responsibility of your children is the most important thing you do most people, even if you’re in the rat race, you realise that because you’re working to fund to create a good life for your children. What I understand is why that disconnect exists between the education side of it as well. There’s no that it’s a fun, it’s I think maybe a lot of people just haven’t even thought about it. They’ve never crossed their mind that

Caroline King 24:08
yes, that you can do it things differently. Yeah. And then they sort of assume that you’re doing what you’re told, and it’s the state’s responsibility to bring up your kids. It’s very, the state is very, very strong in Sweden. And the it’s totally different. Like if you if you would live in Sweden, you would see like, this is a totally different world. It’s not like in the UK or any other country as soon as you come out from Sweden, you just realise you can breathe, people can think in different ways. But in Sweden, this is so strong. You’re not allowed to think even think of other ways to solve them. The education and upbringing for your kids and you’re damaging your kids if you don’t have them in kindergarten from one because most people have them in kindergarten full time from one when they’re done. like 95% or something like that, from one from one? Yes. When they little babies can barely walk. So what’s the

Timothy Allen 25:07
what’s the theory behind that then? Because that as I mean, I’m not a mother, but I’ve lived with a mother for many years. And that seems very counterintuitive to give your child the right one. I mean, most people, presumably, that do it, do it because they have to. Why would you think kindergarten from one is a good idea?

Caroline King 25:26
Well, you totally don’t have to leave them then. But the parents I spoken with that are like sweets that within the system, they say usually that they can’t stimulate the child and they can’t wait to go back to the work. It’s so much easier to work. And that they had the child has to be socialised.

Timothy Allen 25:48
That’s a good one socialised. And that, funnily enough, I think, because I’ve we homeschooled our kids for a year recently. And I think the most compelling argument against homeschooling, which I now realise isn’t actually a compelling argument, but in the beginning seemed it was that but they’re not going to learn social skills, because they’re not interacting with other children on a day to day basis. And my actual experience was when I came out the other end of it all I realised that when your kids go to school every day, they socialise with people the same age as them. And they don’t socialise with a lot of other people. What when you homeschool? What you realise is your co your kids socialise with, with people from 90 down to one, which now I actually consider a much better strategy than than them. So getting socialised amongst people who are exactly the same age as them.

Caroline King 26:41
Yeah, that’s true. When I remember from when I was a kid, though, I felt it was just strange to speak to kids in other ranges, ages or strangers, and things like that. I think most kids thought like that around me at the time, that you should stick within, like your age.

Timothy Allen 26:59
What so? So you’re obviously a huge advocate of unschooling, and homeschooling? What are the run me through the major ideas in that community as to why you should? Or shouldn’t? And what you should? Or shouldn’t do, etc?

Caroline King 27:18
How you should do shouldn’t do, I think, very different for different families, how they, how they choose to do it, but I think the main the main principles behind the unschooling Is that you, you should have consent, your child should consent. And you should respect your child. And you use in order to be able to maintain the creativity, the the willingness to learn and try new things and things like that you shouldn’t push too much. Like you shouldn’t use force, basically. I think sometimes it could be like, tiny bit necessary just to sort of motivate them. But you should. Basically, you should learn to behave as an adult, which is quite hard. Like, you have to think of like, why do we have to do like this? Sometimes you end up in Long arguments with you’re not arguments, but you have have to have some argumentation for why you should do things and why you shouldn’t do things and how does this work? And in order to have? Well, I think that the main traits of unschooled kids are is that they’re asked questions, and they want to find out more. And then this is what we should keep in school, you were told what to do. And it’s a total different way of growing up,

Timothy Allen 28:48
you could say I suppose that the two the big differences in in a state school, like you say you’re told things, and in an unschooling scenario, you’re taught how to find things out, like, yes, do you not specifically dogs? And which, ironically, I was discussing this the other day, with, with a friend of mine, because, you know, what? Open AI that Chatbot? Yes. Have you ever had to go? All the time? Right, okay. Right. Well, I showed it to my kids the other day for the first time. And my eight year old, got ahold of that programme. And within 24 hours, they were writing songs and getting the AI to produce lyrics to the songs and I, and I thought Jesus in 24 hours, you know, I’ve realised that schooling is gonna get crucified by this, why would you have a teacher when, you know, and, and, and then and then at that point, I thought to myself, so, so what, what am I supposed to do here and then you realise again, okay, all you need to do is to teach your kids how to find things. Yeah, or even how to use the chat bot. Exactly. because they can work anything out for themselves. That’s that’s the tool, you know.

Caroline King 30:04
Yeah, they do. My husband does stories and a chatbot every night for, for Edward wishes our five year old. And he has a custom bedtime stories about things that he likes.

Timothy Allen 30:15
Really? Yes. Well, you must do the same thing again, right? My daughter, she’s only eight and her her son, they were doing architectural buildings at school. She came home and she said, Look, Dad, I’ve got to write this. I’ve got to write a diary. As a famous architect on the day I finished my biggest project. Can I do it on the Chatbot? And I said, Yeah, go for it. I said, I’m now behind that. I said, Look, you hack school as much as you want. Like, I have no problem with this at all. And she literally typed into this chat bot. Right me I am Georgie, Phil, you know, the Eiffel Tower, write me a diary post in the style of a eight year old. On the day, I finished the Eiffel Tower. And it literally just came out perfectly, you know, like, and fortunately for me, she instinctively she said, I’m not going to copy this. I’m going to rejigger it around. And I hope that was assigned to me that she’s kind of she’s been brought up well enough to know that that’s, that’s what you do you you use the tools at your disposal to work out the things you want to work out rather than just trying to memorise all this stuff, which is completely outdated now.

Caroline King 31:29
Like when we grew up, and the Internet was new? And like, if you wouldn’t use the internet to find out about things. I mean, pretty, really stupid will you will be totally behind? Well, yeah, no, you have to learn the Chatbot. Yeah. And there are actually, I think there are websites that can say if the text is from the Chatbot. Or if it’s written by someone, so maybe your daughter should be careful with that. It’s quite good to revise

Timothy Allen 31:59
where things but they haven’t got a clue. No, like I said, I’ve said to my kids, look, I’m totally behind you trying to hack the system here, because really, a lot of their homework is just a waste of time. This is what another thing we realised when we homeschooled. They go to school for eight hours a day, they then come home and they’ve got a little bit of homework, this is aged eight, you know, when we were away, they used to do half an hour to an hour’s work a day tops, we would just teach them the main that stuff like maths and a bit of English, you know, and the rest of the time was just do what you do. And they were mainly building and creating things or swimming in the pool or whatever, you know. And my wife was rather worried that when we got back, they were going to be behind. As soon as they got to school. Like we finished the correct we took the curriculum away with essentially for a year. And we finished the year curriculum within half a year. So and then we carried on a bit but at that point, I thought okay, I’m not going to bother carrying on because we you know, and sure enough, when they got back, they were sitting around twiddling their fingers for the first few months at school. But more to the point like it like it showed me that I think, number one, the current system we have is completely outdated. It’s not preparing children for a future that they’re actually going to live in. I mean, like, we were saying, Why teach your children a bunch of facts when they have all the facts? They need it at their disposal whenever they want, you know, but I mean, have you got a grand plan for your children? What what’s your what’s your theory? I mean, you know, like, back in the day is like, what do you want to be when you grow up? You always say that to your children, wouldn’t you? What do you think your kids are going to be when they grow up? If you’ve got any ideas at all? Or is it something you’re just going to wait and see what happened? Yeah, I

Caroline King 33:47
think I think we have to wait and see because they’re, they’re developing and they keep changing. And I don’t know. But actually, our oldest son Winston, he, he hasn’t been in school. And then he started school to try it in September, which is like a few months back. And

Timothy Allen 34:09
our oldest is 1212.

Caroline King 34:11
And yeah, so he’s never been to school before hasn’t done any curriculum or anything like that. top of his class of math, he’s being like, assisting the kids in his programming class.

Timothy Allen 34:26
Have you been teaching your kids to code them?

Caroline King 34:28
Oh, yeah, we have been doing scratch first since they were like, five or something like that. And then they had been doing programming. And now the 10 year old is not too interested in programming, but a five year old is doing scratch. And Winston is doing Python and he’s making his own games and things like that. And in my bitcoin ticker thing has been working on a node lightning node. Really? Yeah,

Timothy Allen 34:56
I love running a node That’s cool. I like it.

Caroline King 35:02
So, yeah, he had no trouble getting into the school. The only thing he’s had trouble with is handwriting, which we haven’t been doing a lot, because I can’t see the point of it. And yeah, we don’t do it. And I can’t see why should I force my kids to do that? It’s probably good for something like, coordination or something. But then he can do drawing. I think.

Timothy Allen 35:25
Yeah, I’m, uh, I think I’m, I’m, I’m defer to you there. I like handwriting. I think handwriting and creativity go together. Yeah. And, and when I was at school, there was a lot of we used to do these things called topic books each year. So we this is when I was like eight or nine or whatever. And we used to create a book. By the end of by the end of the year, we would have created a book about a particular subject. And that included very neat handwriting. I mean, literally, when I was a kid, it was almost like calligraphy back then, you know, but also drawings, etc, etc, etc. And I think one thing I’m I don’t like about the digital age is that it’s, it’s, it’s easier to not care so much about the look of something because it’s often very formulaic typing is just typing. And as a result, I think often other things fall foul to that as well. You know, it’s it’s not for everyone, and I’m sure but but I do believe that and as a result our kids I mean, at school, they learn it anyway, it’s very boring.

Caroline King 36:30
actually really nice to receive a handwritten letter you never sure these days? Yeah, so it’s kind of special.

Timothy Allen 36:37
Not Yeah, I mean, true. Not that I write any handwritten letters anymore. But But as with unschooling

Caroline King 36:43
is like we haven’t managed to persuade our children to do the right thing and write stories because our arguments are not good enough, but I guess maybe I have some new ones. Now. I can try that.

Timothy Allen 36:55
Okay, then. So your, your, your theory is that you need kind of consent from your children to do whatever. Yeah, what so my, my version of that would be slightly different. I would say, as a father to my children, there’s a lot of things that I know more much more about than they do. For example, if I let my children, if I waited for them to consent to what they ate, they would just eat sweets the whole time. So

Caroline King 37:26
I can see your point, but you can find it on YouTube, you can watch some videos about why it’s bad to eat sugar, and then an argument.

Timothy Allen 37:35
Like, does it work? Like if I tried to, like I say there are I can think of probably a number of things that if it was about me convincing them?

Caroline King 37:43
Yeah. Yes. You have your right in that sugar is addictive. So that’s another aspect and video games is addictive as well. So that’s also another struggle. But yeah, yeah, you have to remind them there about the arguments that you have. Okay, maintain the consent.

Timothy Allen 38:05
Here’s a question. Now, you mentioned video games. We have a social media ban in our house on all our kids. And as far as I’m concerned, that will go up until they’re 18 or whatever, which is pretty brutal. And video games, they’re allowed one hour on a Saturday morning, right? Well, right. I know. But But do you think video games are bad for kids?

Caroline King 38:28
I think that things like Minecraft are quite is quite creative. And Henry, that’s 10 He plays a game called a storm works as well, where he built ships. And he really likes old boats. Like is he knows a lot about old old ships from the 80s and 90s. And not sorry, not eating some 90s 90s and 20th century you can ask him last week so that’s what that’s what he’s interested so he will build things in in Minecraft and he will build these ships in storm works. And he meets his friends also him to play Roblox. Because some of his friends is in school or lives in different places, it’s like meeting place so so he, we say like one and a half hour per day for the gaming. But often it goes over that. It’s like we’re not looking we’re basically something else and time, time goes on. And that’s a constant struggle, but I like to less than it but I think it’s still beneficial to have some of it because of the creativity

Timothy Allen 39:36
my theory because my lot like robotics as well which is like pretty much Minecraft isn’t isn’t the same thing. My theory about that is I agree there is a creative aspect to it. But what worries me is that creating in the digital world is way too easy compared to the physical world and where you need to cut it is in the physical world. So and I know for a fact If my kids are creating in Roblox, they’re not building something in the real world, that’s the alternative. And they do. And by restricting the digital stuff, they do build a tonne of things in the real world, they’re always doing that kind of stuff. Now, I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, it’s just that I think the future we’re heading towards, is obviously going to be split between our digital existence and our physical existence, which kind of already is, but obviously, it’s gonna get a lot worse. The distinction, you’re gonna have to try your hardest to stay out of the physical world, sorry, out of the digital world.

Caroline King 40:37
Yeah, because it’s easier. Yeah,

Timothy Allen 40:39
you don’t exactly there’s no, there’s no proof of work to creating the mind, if you create something in Minecraft, apart from your mental acuity, which is banging the blocks and all that kind of stuff. There’s no that you don’t need a huge amount of dexterity. You don’t need any physical strength, you don’t need to work hard to do it. And my theory is, and it may be wrong is that I want to ground them in a physical proof of work first, when they leave home at 18, or whatever 16. They can do whatever they want, they can they can do all these things. But I want them to appreciate the physical proof of work first, do you know what I mean is that I

Caroline King 41:19
totally understand. But I also think that they have to manage the digital world because this is a new world that we have. So they have to be with a foot in each of those worlds. And I think probably the way of making them staying more in the physical world is to make it look better and offer them things that are attractive to them in the physical world. So they want to do that instead of stay in the digital world. Of course, you shouldn’t like sort of think for bringing up the kids, you shouldn’t be like, giving them what they want all the time. I think that’s destructive. But you should have a balance and offer them good things also. So that’s your job as a parent, I think to keep offering them showing them the way and teaching them and stuff about real life and things like that. So we have we have a very small place where we live. And then we have another apartment that we rented out on Airbnb before. And we stopped renting it out in the corona times. And we made it into a makerspace instead. So we have basically a building workshop there. So we have a 3d printer. We have Arduino things and things for electric circuits and things for building stuff. So in the lockdown, for instance, Henry, which is not done, he he built a boat, like a sailing boat, with sails in the living room in the apartment. And we took it to a small lake here in Prague, and he was sailing around there with his friends. Remember

Timothy Allen 43:01
that the way I’m imagining this is probably wrong, but describe this boat. I mean, are we talking like a really well made? Boat?

Caroline King 43:09
Looks really nice. Yes, I have a I have a picture there on the wall. Can you see it? Can you see the picture in the middle? The little red?

Timothy Allen 43:18
Right? Yes, yes. Oh, someone’s in it? Yes. Oh, I thought you meant like a model boat. No. Wow. He really did make a boat and sailed. Yes.

Caroline King 43:27
But we had to rescue him. So we had a inflatable canoe. My husband had to go after after him with some kids and take him out when it had too much water in but it actually actually the it stays afloat. If he’s just emptied from the water. It stays afloat.

Timothy Allen 43:43
What is so Henry’s at school now right? Now they’re on the climbing lesson like no, I mean, in general, he’s gone. You said he was he’s gone to school for the first time. Is that right?

Caroline King 43:53
Winston? is the oldest one. He’s the 12 year old. He’s in he’s in school.

Timothy Allen 43:57
But what does he say about school? What does he say to you about school?

Caroline King 44:02
Yeah, they asked him every day. And he he says that most times that he doesn’t do so much. But he has a lot of fun. And this is the point really like we sending him to the school for him to be with loads of similarly, it just it’s kids because they’re not that many 12 year there are 12 year olds here that are homeschooled. But it’s really hard to get the play dates with them. Like their kind of age range is a bit more tricky. There’s loads of 10 year olds, so we don’t have any problems for Henry. But, but for Winston is not that many 12 year olds around now, at the moment. So for him, it’s fun because there’s loads of kids and his age and he talks to teachers like these geography teacher when he was having things on the climate change. He was the only one that was having a speech on why fossil fuels are Good.

Timothy Allen 45:03
How did that go down very well?

Caroline King 45:05
No, it went well. Good. Yeah, he got me in geography.

Timothy Allen 45:09
When why? Because he argued his point that yes, very

Caroline King 45:12
well. Yes, I can send you the the speech if you want it. Fair enough. Yeah. And, well, this is a private school, and it’s not cheap. And they take their kids to different things. And there’s lots of special arrangements and there was like a Christmas market where Winston was selling Christmas cookies and there was possibility to pay with Bitcoin, of course, but we found out unfortunately that no Bitcoiners

Timothy Allen 45:38
bought a cookie in Bitcoin. No, I wouldn’t.

Caroline King 45:42
Normally normally we have Bitcoin. Do we accept? Yes, of course. Yeah. Good. Yeah. And well, yeah, so this is not like a school. That’s like a normal state school. This is a international private school. That’s like, I think that they quite, quite high level of like, quality. Actually, for what what you pay for it? Like, it’s, I think that if you put the money in just homeschooling you would be having like a really nice homeschooling like, Yeah, but anyway, this for him to have some, some different life now that he likes it. So we just extended it for this semester, as well. But when he gets bored, we’ll be able to take him out because there’s no force behind it. It’s like consent, and which is the main thing we never had anything against the school system is such that as long as it’s voluntary, and as long as it doesn’t have. Well, the school has got some state propaganda behind it, but it’s not so much not the not in comparison with the other schools here. And certainly not compared with the Swedish schools, which is the Swedish schools are totally evoke, and the promoting, like this gender thing where you’re not allowed to say he and she, you have to say him, that you can be what is a boy, if you’re a girl, it’s him is nothing. It’s like, neither he or she, or both.

Timothy Allen 47:14
So you call everyone hen? Yeah,

Caroline King 47:16
they have to say that this day. That’s a new, something new since the last couple of years, like my business 20

Timothy Allen 47:22
I’m gonna Does That Really? Really? Is that really, really true? Is it really,

Caroline King 47:26
you can look it up. There’s the Swedish curriculum is actually available English, so you can read it, and you can see all evoke stuff they have there. So if

Timothy Allen 47:35
you get up in class in Sweden as a nine year old, and you’re talking about, Georgie fell, you don’t say him, you say hen

Caroline King 47:45
him? Yeah, you have to say him? No, because you have to be gender neutral. That’s the main thing that they’re pushing.

Timothy Allen 47:50
Why? Have you got a theory on why gender neutral things are so important to people?

Caroline King 47:56
Well, they’re destroying the families, they don’t want people to have the kids they want. They want them to eat.

Timothy Allen 48:06
All right. Because of climate change, we’ve gone from nought to, to conspiracy in one fell swoop. I know. But but like, I understand that, see, here’s my theory, right? People, people don’t like to people like the idea of non gender specific things, because they think it’s good to be equal. So, so and, and we all know that. There’s no such thing as equal anyway, in any in anything, you know, like anything natural. There’s always nothing, especially between men and women, anyway. But the idea that people could be equal is a nice thought for people, rather than then it’s a conspiracy to break up the family, the result of it may be that family suffer. But do you honestly think that there’s a, there’s a, there’s an underlying reason why that might be important, other than say something nice and simple, you know, like, nice, and that’s something natural, like, like I say, like somebody?

Caroline King 49:10
Yeah, I think that the now I’m just thinking like, really, really wide and going far away from this, that do you know about the Second World War that Sweden was neutral, okay, but they weren’t really neutral. They were giving iron to the, to the Germans, and they were helping the other side as well. So they were totally not neutral. And they made a lot of money in the war. And Sweden was really wealthy in like the 50s and 60s, and I think that there’s some guilt there. And I think the guilt makes the Swedes like a feeling like they should help other people and they should be, be nice to strangers. There’s a lot of aid going to poor countries. And there’s like this welfare state is very big. Because of that, I think that we should help the people that are in need. And they’re, they’re poor, and they have to be equal. And the equality is really pushed, but it’s pushed so far. So it’s destructive. And there’s even Well, there are two, two people behind this movement. I forgot the name. Anyway, they’re called the middles, which is like, this is Alba middle, she was promoting this idea that all of the children should be put in communal kindergarten from when they were born, basically. And you should have a communal, communal everything and to be equal, so that everybody could go to work straightaway after birth. And she sort of put a seed to the idea of the welfare state, this is where kind of where it started. In the, the 60s, they sort of bled to the school system changed in 1962, they went from being like, it went from being like the same as then the other Western countries. Where you sort of focus too, on the education. Having like a education where you can go go to work, and you have the skills. I don’t remember exactly 100%. But I think it was something like this, it went on till went from there to be like equal, that you should promote equality, and you should have. Yeah, everybody should be the same kind of thing. So the school system changed then in 1962. And then it’s gone worse, worse, worse. It was like really a lot of socialist idea in the 70s. And the, and then the 80s, there was all of Parliament, which was the prime minister that was shot, if you remember, I don’t know. He sort of his behind the Swedish model. I might I might miss remember, of course. But I think it was like that. And the Swedish model is this idea of the welfare state, which is what they want to reach with everybody should be equal, everybody should be at work. And the school should be the same for everybody and kindergartens. Everybody should go to the kindergarten from early on, and this is how Sweden looks today. And they even have this idea of the Swedish model on the government’s website, so you can read about it in English.

Timothy Allen 52:39
Is it being implemented anywhere else by any any other countries? I don’t think so. Maybe North Korea North Korea, what’s really astonishing is that the public impression of Sweden could be so different to the way you’re describing it. That’s, that’s what’s fascinating to me. And, I mean, I only discovered that homeschooling was illegal. Last year, when we met in, in liberty in our lifetime. And that was the first time I realised even that and that seems like a huge red flag to me is like, why would why would you make homeschooling illegal? It seems, in a country where where you value? Well, I thought they valued the rights of individuals. Because that’s the kind of impression we get always it’s, it’s really, it’s really interesting to me that, um, you know, you you, there are a number of you here that are all saying roughly the same thing. So I’m imagining it’s true.

Caroline King 53:46
So there’s no options like in Germany, for instance, homeschooling is also banned. But but people can homeschool, their anyway, we know of some German families that homeschool inside of Germany, because the government’s don’t care. And they can live at home and have their kids at home and they don’t get in trouble. Like they might get some some visitors some time or something, but nothing happens kind of thing. And you also have democratic schools in Germany, and you have different options of schools. In Sweden, the school has to be equal for everybody. So you have schools that call themselves Montessori or Valder for different kinds like that. But they all have to follow the school plan from which it’s like the curriculum. And the school plan is very specific. Like you have to learn this within these times. They have all these different plans for all the different subjects, and it has to be the same in all schools. So in Sweden before moving, we actually checked properly, that we went to like 20 different schools like Have both the physical visits and and conversing with them and found out that they can’t move an inch, they have to follow this because otherwise they can get closed down. So we saw a lot of frustrated principals that they were frustrated how they’re gonna do with these kids that don’t fit these norms. There might be some kids that are gifted and have really easily reserved time to learn or they just don’t fit in within the systems and they can’t do anything about it because they have to follow these laws. Did you get

Timothy Allen 55:33
the sense that the headmasters and headmistresses were didn’t like that idea, or?

Caroline King 55:40
Yeah, totally. Yeah. They because they restricted the country, maybe they come there with a fresh mind, they’re starting something, and they want to, you know, do good, and they can’t do it, because they have to stay within this rigid system. And this rigid system is like, I would say, it’s the most reason why removing not so much the school system itself that it’s banned, but it’s like nothing within the system that can be moved. You have to stay within this and you have vocalism in every single subject. Baten, that sort of having these sex, sexual education, like people that go around the schools, and they’re promoting like basically paedophilia and stuff that you shouldn’t do that’s destructive for humans. And I don’t want this near my kids. So if you want to save your kids, you can only do one thing you have to leave Sweden, you can’t be like him in Germany, where you can just stay, you know, have your loved your kids taken if you stay. So we actually have to leave. And even if you’re thinking about if you’re just talking about ideas about homeschooling, then you get the social services after you. So you can’t even you know, you can’t even think about it.

Timothy Allen 56:57
So you ended up in Prague went white. What was that this decision based upon?

Caroline King 57:02
This? There’s no total No, no decision at all. What happened in Sweden is that we sold our house very quickly. I sold all of our things like 90% of our stuff I had, like auctions on Facebook. Now I would sell like all the cleaning liquid and screws and nails and building tools. And people would come and bid on it. And they will be really happy that they want to take away my old ship that was so fun. Yeah, so I, I got rid of most different things. And then, unfortunately, my grandmother just died just before we were leaving. And I ended up with a lot of her stuff. And then we had some things left that I didn’t manage, or that I wanted to keep they were like, you know, emotionally valuable things. So when we had those things sent to England to our warehouse, and had them stored there, and we left Sweden with one suitcase and a couple of backpacks. And then two kids, they were at the time, they were five and three years old. And we had heard about worldschooling, like we went to a conference in 2013. In New Hampshire, in the US, it’s called The Life Rocks radical unschooling conference, and we met a lot of unschoolers. They’re like radical unschoolers. And we kind of figured that it’s not really our thing to be radical.

Timothy Allen 58:31
I was gonna say it was a radical unschooling, basically, there were kids,

Caroline King 58:35
there were parents there, they let their kids be up all night and eat sweets all the time. And like having no restrictions or No, like information on like you should do. You shouldn’t do this. And that. And I felt like that was too much for us. But not everybody was like that. But there was a lot of people like that. And that’s not how we want to raise our kids, like, other people can do that records, but we don’t do that. And that was one of the speaker’s was Lady Liberty, which is she’s running the world schoolers group on Facebook, which is really quite big. And she’s arranging, like, retreats for kids and teenagers and stuff like that, promoting worldschooling. So the whole time that we had been living in Sweden, we have been travelling a lot before having kids. And we were thinking like, how could we? How could we have a travelling lifestyle, we should try that. But we don’t really know what to do with our business. So we got a bit of inspiration from Linus talk at the that unschooling conference in the US in 2013. And then we read some different books about how to sort of make your business more efficient than the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and stuff like that. And we found some people that could work online For our business, so we can have a dispatching company in Sweden that was sending out their things. We have another one in England that was sending their stuff. And we had some customer service people online. And the first thing we did when leaving Sweden in 2015, was we went to Romania to meet our new staff that was doing the customer service. And we travel a bit in Romania and then we went to India of the DAT. And we have a hammock business and we have a hammocks made in, in southern India. So when we went there, and to the factory with the kids, and travelled around India for a while, and then we went to Southeast Asia traveller on there, travelled around in them, went to Bali in Indonesia. And we rented a house in Bali for three months and tried homeschooling there. There’s like a online community. And there’s a couple of things that you can sign up your kids to, like, different classes and dancing and math lessons and stuff like that. So not a huge lot, but a little bit, and we stayed there until we were bored. And then we travelled in like 40 countries, I think. For like, 18 months, we went to 14 Different countries

Timothy Allen 1:01:28
was it was it were you was that 18 months about you trying to discover where to be or what to do?

Caroline King 1:01:36
Yeah, but we actually did that before we travelled the first time on long haul trip in 2013. When we had a one year old, and soon three year old, then we first went to the US with them. And then we went to Malaysia and Singapore, and we met with homeschooling families there. So we started with the travelling with the kids, actually, before we moved from Sweden, just to investigate a little bit, and then we went back to some of those places and met the same people again. And then we made connections online with homeschoolers in different places and wanted to meet, meet people, like, reached out all the time to try to find find these people that were homeschooling in this in this place, and constantly asking about it.

Timothy Allen 1:02:18
So what I want to ask you then, is the nomadic lifestyle. My my kind of interpretation of it having done it is that it works when you’re young. But then as soon as you get a family, it becomes very difficult to be a nomad, or at least you have to really cut back on the number of places you go to. Is that your experience?

Caroline King 1:02:43
No, really, I thought it was a big obstacle. But I realised that there is a lot of people doing this. Like, there’s a lot of digital nomad families. I think the old guy in common that they have some business, they can do online or some work they can do online. And then you stay in cheap places. Maybe you can find some help, like a nanny or some things to sign up your kids to. And for instance, they can have a lesson like dancing lesson or something like that or arts lesson, and you could sit in the cafe next to it and do some work on your computer kind of thing. And that’s what we did in Bali. For three months, we had a part time nanny, and we had some cleaners coming we rented a house, they had a pool as well. Then we could go, we had the kids sign up for some things. And we were working in cafes all the time. And sometimes the kids were with us. Sometimes they weren’t sometimes we took in turns.

Timothy Allen 1:03:41
Is that is it. So but but you’ve settled here, would you say you’re still a digital nomad.

Caroline King 1:03:48
I don’t really think we are indigenous anymore, but we don’t really know where to be either for that sake. So it’s totally random that we came to the Prague we had no intention in the beginning to go here at all. In in Bali, we met our very good friends early camp this in 2015. And we kept in touch and they told us about this place in Prague called Perlin police, which is the Bitcoin cafe. And at the time, it was a 2016 I think we were travelling around in Italy. And we tried to reach out to homeschoolers there, but we didn’t meet anyone. And we got bored of not meeting people that were living like us. So we thought, oh, what’s the next step we’re going to do now? So we found the cheap flight from Rome to Prague and we thought okay, maybe we should have a look on this cafe place. So I booked the flight to Prague. And then we went on some Facebook groups and made some connect John Smith people here they were both like international homeschoolers. And they were. They were like Freedomain Radio Group. I don’t know if you know about Freedomain Radio, Stefan Molyneux was like a local, there was like a local group for that. So we wanted to meet some people that were like that. So when we met them in Berlin police, and one of the mysteries now very good friend premise that you will see soon. Yes, yes. So we met him and we met some other people. And we noticed that the unschooling organisation in Czech Republic is based in Berlin police, it was based at the time, so they had Peter grey that was going to come there and have a speech, but unfortunately, we had to fly out from Prague at the time. So we stayed stayed a week in Prague, met some foreign homeschoolers that showed us around. Notice that we had no idea about this, that there was such a thing as unschooling in Prague at all, met this organisation that was the Czech, Czech unschoolers. And they really bake actually, I don’t know how many members they have, but they they have a lot. We went back to England. After that we have, well, my husband’s from England, and we had our business there. So we went, we went there to do some things with the business. And then we decided that we’re going to try to rent somewhere like six months in Prague. And try that, because we have been frustrated when we have been travelling around as digital nomads that we don’t have reliable, reliable internet, that sometimes things don’t work. It’s a bit unsafe, sometimes for the children. When we were living in Bali, we rented motorcycles like everybody do there. And we went for a trip on the motorcycles with two motorcycles and a kid on each and there was fishing wire in the above the road. They do that sometimes, because they don’t like to not everybody likes tourists. They do that to damage them. So my husband saw it in the last moment that it was a fishing wire going across the road. And he went, he took it up with his arm. And it went on my son’s finger. And you’ve nearly cut the neck of us of them. And so Winston has gotten like a scar on his hand from that fishing way that was like really dangerous. And these kinds of things. I never heard of that. No, I heard about that, that they can happen in like Bali.

Timothy Allen 1:07:44
One that turns you off Bali? And

Caroline King 1:07:46
yeah, yes, it’s like, you have to be vigilant. And I want to be able to relax sometimes. And we had so much trouble with internet not working not even in Italy, it was a real trouble to have the working there. And then having these like small, small dangers. We had a coconut falling on the head on the head of Henry, which was three at the time. It was like four kilos, maybe four and a half kilos, big coconut. It could have killed him, but it felt on the on the cheek of him. And when it happened, he threw up. And we couldn’t find we weren’t allowed in, in the local hospitals, we went to the biggest town nearby with him. And they wouldn’t let him in because we didn’t have the Colombian insurance. And we had the international insurance and we call the phone number which is like a, you know, some British person that was trying to say to them that they you should let them in. They have the insurance. But we went to two hospitals. And then we were like hoping that he was going to be fine. And he’s He’s fine now, but it’s like this has been like really worried that we could have died. They’re so close of dying.

Timothy Allen 1:08:59
I know that and falling coconuts kill a surprising number of people each year. It’s a It’s not as uncommon as you think.

Caroline King 1:09:06
Yeah, he wasn’t even under the coconut tree. He was in between like a group of trees. So it was really unlucky and lucky in the same time. And I just had enough of this dramas. My husband as well. We just wanted to have a bit of rest from, you know, travelling and you have things happening all the time. And I have to be on your guard all the time. So it was quite relaxing in Prague. So conveniently, yes. So then we came back and to Prague and we rented a few places for a shorter terms and then we bought an apartment but we did it with an idea that we were going to stay here for about three months of the year just then use it as a base And then travelled and rented out on Airbnb otherwise, that of course became pregnant. Yeah.

Timothy Allen 1:10:07
Can I ask you about? Did you ever utilise any of the incentive packages that countries offer to digital nomads? Was that something you ever came across? I know that a lot of countries to try and attract business, they try and attract digital nomads and give you preferable visas and this and the other or whatever. But is that something you ever dealt with?

Caroline King 1:10:33
I have looked into it, but it seems like it’s not. So the deal is not so good anyway. And I know there’s something in Estonia where you can get the residency but it’s still 20%. Tax. And here in Czech Republic, we pay five and a half percent income tax. Yes, that’s pretty good. Yes, that’s pretty good. People don’t know about it to go to these shithole countries and try to lower their costs and whatnot. But then you have Eastern Europe is still like fairly low costs, and they have these things you can do like if you’re self employed, then you can deduct half of their costs, anyway, or accountants figured out how to do that. And it turns out to be five and a half percent plus health insurance. So it is pretty good.

Timothy Allen 1:11:21
That one of the reasons that you settled here, or did you not find that out until you started living?

Caroline King 1:11:26
We didn’t know about this. We basically, what happened is that we, we came back here, I became pregnant. And then in order to be able to have give birth in the hospital, we had to have health insurance. And I had to register a company to do that. And then through that process, we figured out that the tax is really low, which we didn’t know about before. And then we figured out oh, there’s a lot of loads of foreigners here. And they’re here because they can save on the taxes and live cheaply. So there’s a huge expat community here, but mainly, like people that don’t have families. Yeah, I’m like, what I see.

Timothy Allen 1:12:08
That’s, but that’s the thing you see. Because I was before I had a family, I was at travel mode for many years. Definitely an analogue Nomad i, we you know, and since I’ve had a family, a lot of those old ideas that I had about being living in different jurisdictions and moving around, have all been blown to smithereens not necessarily even by me, but by my wife who doesn’t want to move around. And who, who wants to secure a secure place to, to spend at least 10 years to be able to plan into the future? Is that something that get does that play on your mind that the notion that you may not? I mean, do you plan into the future? No. That seems I mean, like you’re a Bitcoin er, right? Yeah. And so you understand the benefit of long term thinking?

Caroline King 1:12:58
I totally normally, everything else, I think about this is like that. It’s like, long term like, what what I do I try to think of it as like Bitcoin terms, like, yes, yeah, definitely.

Timothy Allen 1:13:12
So how does that work then? With with the with the dwelling side?

Caroline King 1:13:15
No. Yeah, we don’t know. Because things can change around this. Us and this, these are things that we can’t control. Like, I don’t know if the government does something or if there’s like, something from the Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine conflict that could affect us somehow or vaccine mandates or something like that. I think we learned a lot from the COVID times that you definitely can’t trust the states and that you should be really vigilant and planned for your escape.

Timothy Allen 1:13:48
Do you have plans like I know I have some

Caroline King 1:13:52
ideas but they’re not really plans. I wouldn’t say that because

Timothy Allen 1:13:56
what is your top idea currently to insulate yourself from a rogue state then let’s say or something or something dramatic like a like a lot. I mean, if say, for example, if an if a new round of lockdowns happened here with that body, we

Caroline King 1:14:15
would just go to Poland, which we did before. Because it’s like this, that there seems like it was a lot of like, hysteria and lockdowns here. But in reality, it’s just Prague like the progress were like following the mandates in general, not everyone. There was loads of like secret things going on like secret pubs and the shop next doors, for instance, they were selling secondhand clothes, but they suddenly became a coffee shop so that they can be open anyway and selling secondhand clothes on the side, that kind of thing. Well, yeah, so people go around things and the in the countryside, they didn’t care so much about the lockdown. Like, they didn’t wear masks and stuff like that and things were going on his as usual but like in secret kind of thing. But I like to be able to do things like we couldn’t. We couldn’t go skiing in Czech Republic. So we went to Poland to go skiing. Like in the both of the lockdowns, we went skiing there. And in Poland, people are much more critical of the states than they are in Czech. I think that both countries they had the communist smear before. And in Poland, they have been wounded by the war also, like they were really badly affected by the Second World War, like everything was bombed to shit, while Czech Republic didn’t have that experience. So Polish people are much more like against the lock downs that they were here. And they were daring to have restaurants open and ski resorts open and stuff like that. So we went skiing in Poland. And when they closed the ski resort, finally leaving from the for the lockdown, we went to the north and stayed at the seaside for like, a few weeks because I have my relatives at the seaside so even swimming in the sea in like February and March this because we could

Timothy Allen 1:16:27
It’s interesting what you’re saying because in we did our lockdown experience was at home in rural Wales where we live. And it’s it was similar that it it didn’t exactly make it out into the countryside, because it’s an it was kind of unenforceable. However, there were plenty of people in the community that wanted to enforce it. Because we don’t have the history of distrust, let’s say of the government, like you’re talking about in Poland. Is that is that? I mean, that seems that seems quite an important factor in all this, that the closer you’ve had a brush with the state, the more likely you are to try and push back against it. Because there was almost no, I don’t think there was any push back in the UK. Really? No.

Caroline King 1:17:15
That’s why my impression is also from my British friends that seemed really horrible there. It was still manageable in Czech Republic.

Timothy Allen 1:17:23
I mean, it wasn’t it wasn’t like I say, you know, you had to make an effort to to avoid it, if you see what I mean. And there was not much solidarity amongst people, especially in the beginning, who were looking at this thing. This is rather democratic or I’m not that’s the wrong word. But, you know, no one was was was pushing back against it. And in the end, like I say, we left we did we voted with our feet, which a lot of other people disagree with that there. They will say don’t leave when when you’re needed to to be a voice in a in that place of you. What’s your Are you are you a vote with your feet kind of person or? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Do you think there’s any merit in staying to fight?

Caroline King 1:18:07
No, because you’re so few that having this these kinds of opinions. So you can’t stand against these big masses, you just have to go somewhere else find people like you and make something new, that is stronger? I think there is

Timothy Allen 1:18:25
that? How is that manifesting for you? yourself in this in 2023? For example, do you see a movement solidifying in that sense? egged on by say, what’s happened during the COVID times because it opened a lot of people’s eyes and

Caroline King 1:18:44
yes, it did. It definitely polarise the world as well, especially amongst the expat community here, like those people that like the vaccine, and the people that didn’t like the vaccine. They, I mean, sometimes you can’t even see those other people because they just, you know, there’s so much tension in between. So, yeah, that split to the homeschooling community here. And it started off other things to grow. For instance, just before the lockdowns before Crona we got engaged in like a community forum place is basically like a it was a abandoned field between the like railway and another road and there was like, some trees there and quite big open space and some chickens and people growing stuff. And we built like community house for homeschoolers in that place. Like by with a hands with like pallets and stuff like that and rubbish to be found. And during colonial times, that’s where we went. And we met other people that were also are fleeing there, there was like they wanted to breathe and they wanted to meet other people that didn’t want to sit in their homes. So there was like foreigners, and there were local like checks. And people started growing things and building things together. And there was like, nobody knew about it, because this was like really secluded place, but still bang in the middle of Prague. And we would sit in this playground that that we built, we built ourselves like, with pellets, we built some picnic table and seats to sit that and there was be like slides and the little house for the kids and the toys and slides and hammocks and stuff like that. And people came that chill, like locals that were living around, that were all against the restrictions, they just wanted to breathe and meet other people. And people will bring things that they baked at home or like, take some picnic and share it. Like even if they didn’t speak like English, you can still I learned a lot of Czech, they’re actually speaking with the locals. It was really nice. And you could buy eggs with Bitcoin, of course, in that place. And we had workshops with like, I learned to milk a goat, and we had the goat milk and we made cheese from it. And we had the Swedish midsummer there with both the chicks and Swedes. And it was like, everything was like, in a parallel for

Timothy Allen 1:21:33
Can I ask you that? Because I think this is kind of like in your ideal world. How do you live? Like, like, take away all the proof of work to get that thing? Yeah. Because I you know, I have my own ideas on this, which is I love self sufficiency and I love this but also you know, I know it’s unrealistic to even do that because you have to work constantly that you want to include a bit of technology and then you want community and anyone so what’s your How does it work for you in your ideal world you know,

Caroline King 1:22:09
it would have been nice if it could be like citadel with like, Bitcoin homeschooling families and entrepreneurs like living together and just having their own society

where you use Bitcoin as a local currency and you just live in peace that would be really nice.

Timothy Allen 1:22:32
Do you think that happens?

Caroline King 1:22:33
That could happen

Timothy Allen 1:22:36
I mean, I theoretically you have a decentralised version of that already. You you you kind of live in a Bitcoin Circular Economy often don’t you?

Caroline King 1:22:45
Yeah, between our friends definitely. We have some services here we can buy with Bitcoin. So it’s nice.

Timothy Allen 1:22:51
You’re just not in geographically. in inverted commas, citadel?

Caroline King 1:22:56
No, but it would be nice to live somewhere where you have a streets where people live in different houses, and the kids could run between the houses and it would be safe. That would be so nice. But I don’t know if that’s gonna happen.

Timothy Allen 1:23:08
Unless you know about the kind of Free Cities idea and what what’s actually going on out in the real world,

Caroline King 1:23:13
ya know, about prosperity, because our good friends, they gonna have a home there as well. And heard about it both in Hackers Congress and Liberty in Our Lifetime conference.

Timothy Allen 1:23:25
Does it introduce interest you at all? That kind of stuff?

Caroline King 1:23:30
I like the idea. But I don’t know if it’s going to work, because I don’t think you can trust the states.

Timothy Allen 1:23:36
Right? The state of the country?

Caroline King 1:23:38
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So when I’m sceptical if I wasn’t sceptical, I would be totally on this nice place. But I have to I don’t know enough about it. And another factor is that I think that Honduras is too hot for my husband doesn’t like hot climates. So we need to live somewhere cold.

Timothy Allen 1:23:59
Right? Yeah. I mean, presumably, there’ll be more places to choose in the future. But I agree with your thesis that, you know, at the end of the day, all it takes is for a row the state to just, you know, decide to go against the law, because at the moment is the law that protects these jurisdictions.

Caroline King 1:24:20
Yeah, they have a contract that heard for 50 years. And I heard it’s a solid contract, but I don’t know what’s says I haven’t read it. And I don’t know. I don’t have enough interest to read that at the moment. But I know that the change the government in Honduras, they are very socialist. Yes. So I don’t think you can trust a socialist, though. I don’t know.

Timothy Allen 1:24:43
No, not at all. But currently, you know, I’ve talked to a number of people about this. And most of them say, it’s not something we think about, you know, who knows if the same as you living here in Prague? Yeah, a socialist government could Come in here and ban homeschooling, you never know it, nobody knows anything. But you’re you’re you’re making a bet on the thing you think is the best way yourself or in, in many people’s cases with say prosper, it’s often a hedge against their own country gives them a jurisdiction in which they can go and plant themselves just in case. But you’re right, you know, nobody knows.

Caroline King 1:25:26
Yeah, it could work and it could not. And it’s like, This is what life is about. It’s about taking risks, and you have to, you know, follow your intuition. And my intuition tells me that it’s best thing is to be somewhere where as much freedom as possible, and where people are left alone, like to live how they want. And I don’t think there is such a place, actually. But there are different degrees of where it’s allowed, was. In Czech Republic, you have really good gun laws. I don’t know if you know, but it’s there you can have, you can get a gun licence, and you can have a concealed carry licence, you can get a machine gun, if you want, you can, if you can answer 500 questions in check, that is

Timothy Allen 1:26:17
great. I can get a machine. I’ve always wanted a machine. I we’ve been talking for an hour and a half. And I think this might be a good time to sort of wind it down. But I’ve got one last question for you. Which is a question we ask everyone on this podcast. And I think you’ve kind of kind of answered it in my last question. But if you if you I want you to imagine you’ve now have a sabbatical, a sabbatical, a one year sabbatical, in which you’re everything’s paid for you have money to do whatever you want to do. In that time, what would you do? What would you how would you make use of that year?

Caroline King 1:26:58
I don’t know. I’m kind of busy with kids. Think outside of it, like,

Timothy Allen 1:27:04
but you could, for example, employ a full time amazing tutor to help you, which would free up some of your time, you may not want it, you may want to divert all your attention into your kids.

Caroline King 1:27:15
Yeah, yeah. I’m breastfeeding 24/7 right now and having broken sleep since I can’t remember how long. That’s hard for me to stick with myself outside of this, because I’m just busy with kids. That’s my, that’s my life. And I can’t I can’t put myself outside.

Timothy Allen 1:27:37
That’s fair enough. That’s still an answer.

Caroline King 1:27:41
But yeah, that’s probably what I would do anyway. Because I have to look after them. That’s my, that’s my priority. But if I could have like, some free time, which would be totally, totally lovely. I would probably, I don’t know, write a book about homeschooling, and travelling and barter situation in Sweden, because I think it’s quite interesting for other people that don’t know it is

Timothy Allen 1:28:08
so in. If you wrote this book, would it be to help other people make some of the decisions that you made? Or just to recount your experiences?

Caroline King 1:28:18
Yeah, definitely. Because I have a blog at the moment, and I haven’t been writing for ages in it, but people still find it. And they come here and visit and they, they take the move, they take the steps to move out Swedish. Yeah. Swedish people. Yeah. Yeah. So they say makes a difference to them. So it’s really nice to hear.

Timothy Allen 1:28:41
And the there’s the impression of homeschoolers in Sweden still the same as you’re saying, still vilified? Is that right?

Caroline King 1:28:51
Yeah. The Swedish state and the Swedish people in general, think of homeschoolers as like, somebody that’s abusing their kids. And they are like, really religious. And they don’t let the children do anything. They don’t let them see anybody religious. Yes. Really? Yes. Because kind of the stereotype homeschool in Sweden, that is some, like really Orthodox Christian.

Timothy Allen 1:29:13
It’s interesting, because the stereotypical homeschooler in the UK would be an atheist, probably, oh, well, it would be a hippie, sort of, you know, like, I want to bring my kids up the way I want. Yeah. Which is interesting. I wonder why is there a big religious homeschooling community or

Caroline King 1:29:31
not at all? I don’t know of any. I think I think maybe one or two religious homeschoolers from Sweden, but I think that most of them are no,

Timothy Allen 1:29:39
maybe it was historical. Was it was there a time when..

Caroline King 1:29:42
No, but they don’t know what the homeschool is. They just, you know, say it’s these people are evil. They like this and that’s just give them a stereotype.

Timothy Allen 1:29:53
Fair enough. Well, well, listen, thanks for talking. I I’m the more time I spend ion Prague, the more I see a really interesting network of people here. There’s some of the most interesting people I’ve met in ages are living here in amongst the buildings. So good luck with it. And good luck with your four children, which many of them are still very young. I’m sure one of them’s about to wake up. If we’re lucky. Is that about about time? I think we’ve done quite well. We’re at one and a half hours in. But thanks for coming on. And thanks for talking.