Daily Express Subscriber
Sign in to your account.

AMAZINGLY, one-time criminal Jim Latrache from Denmark, who never properly learnt to read or write in his childhood days, is now a much-sought after keynote speaker, the latest platform being the World Sustainability Congress 2015 in Mauritius.Come April, he will appear as a keynote speaker at the Digital Education Show Asia 2016 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Now in his forties, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Equal Learning was invited to speak at the Digital Education Show in Dubai in September 2015. The same month, a radio programme on the story of his life won the prestigious “Feature of the Year 2015” Award at the National Radio Prix.

And in October, Latrache and Equal Learning received another award for “Outstanding Contribution to Education” at the Asian Leadership Awards held in Dubai. Subsequently, he was invited to deliver a lecture at the Westminster School in Dubai for 300 students, followed by lectures in two other schools there.

Equal Learning is an organisation, a platform with a focus on providing the underprivileged with access to education, using the possibilities of digital technology and educational videos.

Currently, Latrache, who “infamously” finished High School in prison in 2013, is pursuing the Psychology programme at the University of Copenhagen, and hopes to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in one to one and a half years from now.

“I have been accepted to study psychology. I am no longer a criminal,” he said to applause from the congress delegates.

“I am now attending normal classroom education.”

For this remarkable transformation, he gave credit to his wife Nicoline Qvortrup (now Head of Communications at Equal Learning).

“She was my motivation. What got me to what I am today was my wife.”

By his own admission at the World Sustainability Congress 2015, he started a career as a criminal after returning to Denmark from France where he had joined the French Foreign Legion (known as a very hard core military unit operating internationally under France) as a paratrooper (at the age of 19).

By then, Latrache had given up the idea of ever getting an education, feeling defeated and let down by the school system which didn’t suit him.

“I am fully aware that in this financial world, everybody wants to be a winner and you have got to be something.

So I was like, OK, if I couldn’t prove to the world that I have educational skills, then at least, I could prove to the world that I was a tough guy,” he said, adding that it was the start of a chaotic life.

Sharing the story of his childhood and adolescent years, marked by challenging personal circumstances, Latrache said: “I will use my own success story and experiences to make you understand the importance of digital education.

When I was a kid, school didn’t apply to me. Every day I went to school but I felt more stupid than the day before.

I couldn’t concentrate.

“Classroom education didn’t apply to me. I couldn’t understand it. One thing led to another. When I was 12, my ground school teacher convinced my Mum that I should be in the school for troubled kids.

“So they sent me off to boarding school for troubled kids. These were really kids coming from hard-time homes.

After six months, they sent me back to ground school. Actually, I left ground school without ever getting to read and write throughout the time.”

According to Latrache, he tried to lead his own life after leaving the French Foreign Legion “but the lack of educational skills led me to a chaotic adult life.”

“So, I am not going to be proud to say this – but for a number of years, I was a criminal. For the first time in my life, I was doing something… I did this for many years, I am afraid to say so,” he said without elaborating.

In 2007, he met his “beautiful and intelligent” wife (Nicoline), also a Danish, who was studying at the University of Aarhus (Aarhus is the second largest city in Denmark). A year earlier, she, then a model, represented Denmark at the 2006 Miss Earth Contest held in the Philippines.

Nicoline encouraged him to start taking his High School Diploma but Latrache refused, citing his bad experiences with the school system.

In his reminiscences, he related: “She loved me for who I was. Of course, she did not know what was going on.

I told her that I was a key account manager in a company.

“But when I ended up in prison in 2009, while she was pregnant with our son, enough was enough for her.

She said, ‘You have to promise me two things – stop being a criminal and get an education’.”

Shortly after, Nicoline gave him an ultimatum – “Get an education or I will leave you”.

His response was: “I love you and you are the love of my life.

I would do anything for you. I can stop being a criminal but don’t ask me to get an education.

I cannot do that. I am not afraid of anything but I am terrified of getting into a classroom.”

According to Latrache, his unpleasant time at school earlier had blown his self-esteem away so he did not want to go back to studying. “But she (Nicoline) is a stubborn lady, so I couldn’t argue my way out of that one.”

Consequently, he began to develop his basic literacy skills – How? Simply by exchanging letters with his wife.

“I started writing her letters from my prison cell. Every day she would write back and also send back his letters with corrections of misspellings and grammatical errors.

“We did that for a year and at the same time, I started reading books, something which I had never done before in my life.

I read about world history and religions, and wrote her about all the new things I had learned.

“At that time, I was already 37 so I had to keep up. I started with ‘Narnia’ (the children literature written by C. S. Lewis).

I guess many of you know it. I heard it so many times when I was a kid. I knew that book from one end to the other,” he told the congress.

One day, while studying in prison, Latrache stumbled upon a video by education scientist Sugata Mitra that showed how fast underprivileged children were able to learn without a teacher “just by using the Internet on a computer that Mitra set up in slum areas.”

“I was inspired to start using online educational videos in my studies. I started to use these on a daily basis while in prison,” he said while recalling how he paid off the prison guard and got an iPhone.

“I needed to watch educational videos in prison for my education but Internet is not allowed in prison, so I hid my iPhone (with Internet) in a can of tomatoes in the daytime, so the prison guards wouldn’t find it. And then in the night, I watched these videos in my prison cell.”

Latrache proudly declared: “That was actually how I got through High School self-studying from my prison cell.

I studied all the High School subjects, and was allowed to go and sit for my examinations every six months.”

In 2013, he received his High School Diploma after completing his studies with an average grade point.

The result was high enough for him to enrol in the University of Copenhagen, where he is currently studying for a degree in psychology.

It is reportedly one of the most highly-profiled university programmes in Denmark.