'Worldschoolers': Families fleeing the education system

BarcelonaAt five in the morning, the sun is already bathing the camper van where Silvia, Javi, and Astrid are sleeping. In front of them, misty forests and coffee plantations in El Salvador shake off the night, and seven-year-old Astrid has already opened her eyes. She knows that today she will visit a volcano. She gets up alone—as she does almost every day since she began an itinerant life—and, without rushing, gets dressed, makes her bed, and washes her face. She looks for binoculars, prepares her water bottle, and adjusts the straps on her backpack. Then she goes out to check if the other family they will be climbing the trail with is ready.

She hasn't been to school for two years, but every morning she goes out with her parents to explore as if the world were a vast playground of discovery. Today there's a master class in geology without timetables or desks. Tomorrow, who knows. "He always wakes up wanting to see what's there. If we're on a beach, he'll go out to see if there are any crabs. If we're in a town, he wants to know who lives there," explains his mother, Silvia Boladeres.

Time as lost treasure

But that semi-nomadic life was born from an absence. "When you have a child, time flies. There comes a day when you look at her and wonder: when she's grown, I haven't even noticed, why do we spend our lives working and never see our daughter?" says Boladeres. In 2023, they left behind their jobs, their routines, and their grandparents, who at first weren't entirely sure about it. They climbed into a 1993 Peugeot J5, without electronics and with thirty years under their belts. They christened it "La Velleta." "We traveled before, but eleven months of work and one salesman wasn't enough," says Javi Tuñón, Astrid's father. They say he's now found quality time, mountain roads, turquoise lakes, and open skies. A week ago, they were in Honduras. Next week, they'll head south, leaving traces of their movements in the social networks of its digital community, TravelRoute.

For Boladeres and Tuñón, living at home meant "pay, pay, pay." There was always a meeting, a rush, a pending dinner, and dozens of bills. "Society forces you to have a lot of expenses, and plans with people usually entail spending." Years ago, they had taken advantage of any excuse to pack backpacks and take low-cost trips. But once they became parents, the disconnect with that life turned an idea into an urgency: "We wanted to spend time with her, with us, to take a break." And they did. In 2023, when Astrid was five years old, they rented their house and left without knowing when they would return. There's a name for what they do: worldschooling"A way of parenting and education where the world is the classroom, new places are textbooks, and family ties are the center of learning. In the world, there are many ways to live more peacefully and happily," the teacher concludes. "But don't tell anyone to do it... there are already too many of us!" Tuñón says, half joking, half serious. Once it seemed like an exception, now the number of families who disconnect from the school calendar is increasing.

Lights and shadows of a nomadic life

Some families worldschoolers fit into the category of digital nomads: professionals with remote jobs who live on the move, working from any location with an internet connection. A lifestyle that has generated several controversies. Their presence in certain locations—often overwhelmed by tourism—has been pointed out as a factor in pushing up the prices of services and, above all, housing. According to anthropologist Fabiola Mancinelli, who has studied how remote work impacts global cities, the paradox is that digital nomads often reproduce imbalances: they often come from capitalist countries and earn higher incomes than the community where they settle, where life is cheaper, and they do not always pay taxes where they live, nor do they contribute fully.

The paths of the worldschooling and digital nomadism can intersect, but they often do not share the entire journey: most of the families interviewed in this report pay taxes in Catalonia or, in the case of Myriam Fabregat, creator of Nosotros4viajemos.es, in Alicante, and none of them live surrounded by luxury. However, the question is legitimate: isn't this an option reserved for a well-off middle class that disguises itself as freedom while ignoring deeper inequalities? Perhaps it's a partial truth, and there are nuances. "Some models of traveling families seem 'posh,' but most aren't," admits Fabregat. He claims that worldschooling It is not an easy or opulent romance: the most demanding thing is to take care of the children 24 hours a day and assume full responsibility for their growth and education, without delegating it. "The reality is that among the worldschoolers There are many simple people pursuing an alternative life that is viable for middle- and low-income families," the professor concludes.

Javi Tuñón laments that many people believe they are rich, a perception that, he says, doesn't reflect reality. "We're not at a resort with a bracelet; we're raising our daughter," he claims. He explains that, far from the luxury often assumed, traveling spends much less than living in a permanent home, especially if they consume gas more sparingly because they move around slowly.

This isn't the case with the Family Van Expedition, who are contractually obligated to travel constantly to create content: "It can be exhausting," says the community's creator, Núria Gomà. In return, they pay for the trips and spend 24 hours with their children. They teach them every day through the Smartick platform and assert that traveling as a woman with their little ones is "a great asset." However, she doesn't lose sight of the fact that they pay all their taxes in Catalonia and works hard: "We don't live on air, nor do we publish all that content for the love of art."

Max López, who makes his living exclusively from the blog Familias en Ruta, has experienced this over the years: "We have a margin of freedom that we often deny ourselves, and experiencing cultural diversity is a wealth that isn't material." According to him, the Green School model in Bali—an elite international school where the children of Meta and Google employees study—is the most visible exception, but not the norm. "There are many other ways," he says, "there are also small, self-managed schools and parenting groups at reduced prices."

Two of the families interviewed move around with some savings, reinventing themselves professionally with portable jobs or doing seasonal work abroad. In countries lacking clear policies, legal loopholes fuel criticism about a mobility that still bears the hallmark of certain privileges, despite a desire to break away from precariousness and spend a good part of their time eating, cooking, resting, working, meeting people, and, above all, being with their children.

When the world is the classroom

Be that as it may, the boom of the worldschoolers It's indisputable. Sociologist Jennie Germann Molz, a professor at the College of the Holy Cross, began studying the phenomenon in 2010, when it was a thing of countercultural rebels. Almost fifteen years later, her books The World is Our Classroom and Extreme Parenting and the Rise of Worldschooling They signal a fundamental shift: traditional school is no longer the only place where learning can be achieved. "Many families are fleeing not only the education system, but also a lifestyle that prevents them from seeing their children grow up," he explains. While it is difficult to know the exact number of itinerant families, one of the main private Facebook groups dedicated to the worldschooling already exceeds 72,000 members.

Carla Martínez, mother worldschooler Since 2018, and founder of Planeta Worldschool—the first and only Spanish-language platform dedicated to families who educate while traveling—, she asserts that there is a notable presence of Catalan families within the community: "It's true that there's a lot of movement in Catalonia; there's a fairly high percentage of Catalan families." She herself travels the world in a motorhome with her partner and two children, and has long observed how the movement is expanding. From her window to the world—with resources, advice, and a community of almost 900 members on Facebook, an active Telegram group, and more than 2,000 subscribers on her mailing list—she detects a growing impulse: the desire to go off-script and, at the same time, connect families who, while traveling, need to resolve doubts and network.

Educating in the open air when the journey is internal

In 2018, Carla Martínez embarked on a trip with her partner and two children that was originally intended to last only a few months: they wanted to visit free schools on the Peninsula and choose a place to settle down. But that trip completely threw them off. While writing her doctoral thesis in physics, Martínez realized it wasn't fulfilling. They currently support themselves primarily through online Spanish classes and seasonal summer jobs in Norway. "Society pushes us to rush, but I wanted the same thing I was offering my son: time to discover who I am." They sold almost everything, converted a van, and began exploring embarking on a journey that wasn't just physical: a way of inhabiting time, of making room for curiosity and the unexpected.

A year later, Planeta Worldschool began to take shape after attending, almost by chance, an international congress of families worldschoolers in Thailand, organized by Lainie Liberti—one of the driving forces behind the movement on a global scale. There, they discovered a whole parallel universe: families from all over the world who, above all, shared the desire to educate in freedom while taking advantage of every lesson the world offers. "It was like an explosion in our heads; that's what we were looking for, but we didn't know it." Liberti proposed coordinating the next congress in the state, and thus was born the Hispanic branch of that community that has continued to grow.

A school outside the margins: legality and uncertainty

Some of the children featured in this report, who are over six years old—the age at which school attendance is required by law—are enrolled in an educational center, but have coordinated with them to remotely pursue this lifestyle. That said, as the worldschooling As the program gains visibility, legal uncertainties are also emerging, looming over families who choose it. This is confirmed: the number of primary and secondary school students enrolled in CIDEAD has not only not grown, but has actually slightly decreased in recent years. The "academic model" that prevails. Traveling, the critique takes shape, and for many families, it is also epistemological.

However, they also seek out moments of respite and a certain amount of structure. Every Tuesday, Astrid logs into the Dinoclub, a virtual space self-managed by families: "Each week they research a topic—an animal, a plant, a dinosaur—and then present it. It can be a story, a drawing, a video. It's very open-ended, but also collaborative. The children themselves lead the session. The result is a form of curiosity and self-initiative."

The creator of the platform. Planeta WorldschoolCarla Martínez agrees: "Even though you teach online, you inevitably become immersed in the place you are in." They classify themselves as 'unschooling radical': "We live, and when there's an interest, we go along with it." There's no set reading time, but they read every day. Some nights, the little ones ask to do addition and multiplication. Now, how do we deal with titles if the children want to complete high school or go to university? They don't worry about tomorrow: they're convinced that it's always possible to access the system.

Close the door, open the world

For Sílvia Boladeres, this life is a way—idealized but tired—of buying time. Time with her daughter and time to learn about the world without rushing. worldschooling, he says, is not only a pedagogical alternative, but a sincere attempt to disobey stress and make bonding a priority. But not everything is picture-perfect: without a critical eye, the dream of raising children without a clock can become a bubble reserved for a select few. Perhaps that's why the most honest lesson this way of living offers is that you don't need a van or an exotic route to get started. Sometimes it all starts with a small revolt: doing nothing on a Wednesday and letting the afternoon fill itself.

Four itinerant Catalan families

A teacher by profession, Silvia Boladeres embarked on a pedagogical innovation project before becoming a mother. She coordinated a school's management team and took on a role that demanded hours, energy, and commitment. "I stayed for four more years, while Javi left home in the morning and returned at dusk. He only saw Astrid at dinnertime," she recalls. Now they lead the digital community. TravelRoute.

Myriam Fabregat and her partner are high school teachers and creators of Nosotros4viajemos.esThey remember how in 2013, when they left with their two daughters, ages 2 and 4, on a six-month trip, they knew virtually no one who lived like that. "It was a lot like going against the grain," they say. Now, however, the tide has turned. The map is filled with families who, like them, travel the world for a good part of the year, taking advantage of leaves of absence, summers, and work breaks, or leaving almost everything behind.

The case of the community Families on the Road, managed by Max López, is paradigmatic. He has been living and promoting this lifestyle for fifteen years, and his blog is now a platform for thousands of families from all over the world who share their journeys. Based in La Garrotxa, with his two children, now aged 14 and 18, and Susagna Galindo, his ex-partner, they have spent three winters in India, sending their children to school in Goa while working remotely. Now, traveling is no longer the preserve of a select few: "The world has become smaller, closer, and information has become more accessible; families, who were once a rarity, now form a community that is growing and connecting," explains López, who currently plans to settle in Ireland with his son, keeping the online community, which now numbers more than 21,000, alive.

FamilyVanExpedition They are representatives of a new generation of nomadic families who have made the road their home. She, a former banker turned professional kitesurfer, and he, a firefighter and drone pilot, began living a life traveling in a 4x4 van—a converted Iveco Daily—during the pandemic. The project took shape throughout Iceland, Morocco, and several European countries with their two children, then aged one and three. Since 2021, they have documented their daily lives on Instagram (with 179,000 followers) and YouTube (33,000), platforms that generate income through sponsorships and collaborations. However, their main source of income comes from Iveco, which commissions audiovisual content from them.