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historytechdoc posted: 2008-08-13 11:11:34

Three cheers for these parents in Bussum! Dutch schools are no longer able to provide the type of basic education that improves the chances for our children to succeed in life after their school years.

Not only have the standards for Dutch teachers drastically deteriorated, but the teachers themselves have virtually no tools with which to discipline pupils who constantly disrupt schoolrooms. The Dutch Ministry of Education has been experimenting with schools' policies and procedures since at least the 1970s and now we have a basically dysfunctional school system from kindergarten through graduate university programs and all levels in between.

Down here in Zuyd Limburg hundreds of feed-up parents have enrolled in better-run schools just across the border in Belgium. Ironically, the Limburg newspapers keep on running columns asking why!

What is needed are smaller classroom sizes, better educated teachers, easier ways for schools to expel unruly pupils and students, no vacant classrooms without substitute teachers, no more first-name basis for teachers after kindergarten, and more respect for those with hard-earned academic titles.

So-called unions of high school students have also helped to degrade our educational system by constantly demanding fewer school days and exams. The Ministry of Education has too easily given into their demands. Now we are growing an ever increasing inventory of under-educated children, who will not have the education and skills necessary to succeed and maybe not even survive in an ever increasing globalized economy.

Is it no wonder that The Netherlands suffers a 'low-brow' reputation when it promotes such wide disrespect for teachers and university trained personnel? Other countries ask when one travels in the NL and no one seems to have a doctor's title there, except for physicians who are mostly only doctorandi (masters degrees without dissertation). Furthermore, parents and children have no idea what the last name of most of their children's teachers are.

Time the Dutch system stops being so uncritical of itself and more self-examining. Comparing our schools only with Dutch schools within a faulthy system provides no measure for future educational needs. All arrogance after all is just another form of social blindness.