Dutch School Discipline


Figure 1.--A reader writes, "What do you make of this detail of a photograph of three high school children from the Netherlands taken in 1920? Do you think high school boys were allowed to smoke, or is the boy just showing off and being rebellious? He looks quite old to be wearing a knee pants suit with long stockings at this age (about 16 or 17). .... I'd be interested in your comments on this photo. I wonder if the same tradition of social liberalism and permissiveness for which the Netherlands is famous today was also true in 1920." 

We do not yet know much about discipline in Dutch schools. We suspect that discipline in the 19th century was very strict and the classroom conducted rather formally. Another element is dress standards. This probably continued to be the case until afer World War I. Discipline standards and formality became much less strict afyer World War II. This was a general trend in Europe. but we believe was particularly pronounced in the Netherlands. We do not yet have much informtion here. The Dutch tradition of tolerance may be a factor here. Certainly after World War II the trend toward social liberalism was a major factor. One question of particular interest is how has this trend affected education. Do children learn better in a strict or permissive classroom situation. A reader writes, "What do you make of this detail of a photograph of three high school children from the Netherlands taken in 1920? Do you think high school boys were allowed to smoke, or is the boy just showing off and being rebellious? He looks quite old to be wearing a knee pants suit with long stockings at this age (about 16 or 17), but we have other pictures from the Netherlands of teenage boys wearing long stockings and short pants at about the same age. We note an image from the 1930s and another undated photograph. I'd be interested in your comments on this photo. I wonder if the same tradition of social liberalism and permissiveness for which the Netherlands is famous today was also true in 1920." This image is a little difficult to assess because it is not the full photograph. We have noted images of tennage boys smoking, less commonly girls, as a kind of tennage rebellion. This is, however, not the case with formal photographs when adults were present. A reader writes, "Weren't the 20s supposed to be a bit wild anyway--the age of the flapper? Did the Dutch have flappers? I wonder if these youths are trying to be part of the new style. The cigarette fits the new devil-may-care image of the 1920s, but the short trousers with long stockings seem to reflect the old-fashioned style of the previous decade. Maybe this photo (taken in 1920) shows both the conservatism of the past and the liberalism of the future in a kind of interesting tension or competition." Another reader writes, "I don't know about Dutch flappers. But we had the equivalent in Berlin, I think, during the 1920s. That was what "Cabaret" touched on. Of course that was after school.
A Dutch reader writes, "Looking at the boy "smoking" a cigarette, it's possible that he is only pretending. Perhaps to impress the girls (and the photographer?). Young children did not smoke at that time, but my own mother started smoking when she was 16 years old (1919). I myself had a "strict" education in Holland during the 1930s. No nonsense. You had to obey the teachers. I believe that the schools were better than now. I am reading the Dutch newspapers often and I know that there is less discipline in Dutch schools compared to 50 years ago. This social liberalism is for the birds. Kids might be smarter in some ways and they know how to use a computer, but they are not able to do simple mathematics without an adding machine and they don't know who Galileo or Bach was."






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Created: 7:29 PM 5/16/2007
Last updated: 2:14 PM 5/19/2007