So when I was a child I was diagnosed with a learning disability.

I remember I was in grade three and the teacher pulled me out of class and sat me down in the little room and the principal, vice-principle, and the resource teacher, a whole bunch of faculty was there, and they sat me down and they said:

Mikkel, something doesn't work quite right in your brain and what we want to do is we want to send you to a special school, a special school for special boys. 

So, that's what they did. 

Every day for three years I got on a little white bus and I took the little white bus across town and I went to this special school. 

The only problem was it was not a special school, it was a regular school with a special class. So you can probably imagine what happened…

I got in a lot of fights, got picked on and bullied and everything…

…don’t get me wrong this is no, “I'm a victim, woe is me.”

Certainly not, I gave as good as I got. There is no question about that. I got hit, I hit back, and if I could, twice as hard. I'm not going to claim otherwise.

But I went to this special school for three years and I absolutely hated it. It was the worst experience of my life. Government-run education, public education, is an absolute nightmare, but never mind, I went, even though I hated my life, I went. 

I got through grades 4, 5 and 6 and then going into grade 7 I finally got to go back to my neighbourhood school…

And all summer I thought about how my friends are going to have missed me so much, they will have been wondering where I went for 3 years, how they will be so excited to see me, and you know, how everything is going to be amazing. 

But then once again you can kind of imagine what happened. I started getting picked on and made fun of again…

“Oh, I remember Mikkel, he went to some retard school”, 

The 1980s, kids are so politically correct, such sensitive individuals. You know how kids are...

Well, I decided I really didn't like school. So I stopped going, I would cut class and I stopped going, and then I'd fail and then they'd send me to summer school and then I'd fail that and somehow they'd push me through and then I'd fail the next year too.

And well, long story short, at 12 years old I stopped going to school and at 15, I officially dropped out and I started travelling internationally not long after that.

When I started travelling and meeting all these incredible people, all these amazing, amazing people, I realized that there's not only one way to learn. 

Actually, there are many ways to learn things and experience and travel can be an education in of itself.

Consequently, I believe this is also when I became a libertarian, when I was about 12 years old, even though I did not know what the word libertarian was at that time, I knew that there were massive problems with the system and I had gone through them myself. 

Now, today, at almost 39 years old, I am very proud of myself that I dropped out when I did. I think that took a lot of courage to stand up and say that this is wrong. 

When I was 12 years old, did I know what my future would entail and that I would be championing for freedom? 

Hell no, I had no idea. I was just some scared kid, but what I did know was the school system was wrong, and I stood up and did something about it.

Fast forward to today. I've been travelling for 21 years straight. I have circumnavigated the globe over 400 times. I've lived in nine different countries, I've visited 106 countries… it will actually be 107 countries in a couple of weeks, we're going to go to Aruba for our wedding anniversary. 

The point is that I could see public education was wrong almost 30 years ago.

It was wrong then, and it is wrong now.

If anything, it has gotten worse.

There is a better way to look at educating our children and that’s why we started Expat International School.

It’s a viable solution for families looking for an alternative to the mainstream educational system.

And the response from the kids has been so incredible to watch.

This Thursday night we are doing a big webinar about the school and how we focus on entrepreneurship with the kids.

You should join us, I promise it will be time well spent, if you are interested you can register here: https://expatschool.io/webinar-registration

It’s free to attend.

Speak soon,

Mikkel