Humanists and Equal Educational Opportunities in the Netherlands: Three Historical Case Studies (1850–1975)

• In Event: 66.057 - Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 66.057-3 - Interdisciplinary Approaches to Historical Inquiry

Abstract

Recent historical research into organized secular humanism has underlined the importance of studying humanist organizations for understanding the educational past. This paper furthers this research by studying humanists’ contributions to past debates on equal educational opportunities. Three case-studies located in Dutch modern history are presented, based on systematic analyses of educational journals and archival sources of different groups of humanists. The first case-study (1855-1870) shows freethinkers interested in education, but barely participating in debates on absenteeism and compulsory education. The second case-study (1912-1922) demonstrates how anarchists saw social inequality in education as inherent to capitalist society and called for a revolution. The third case-study (1960-1975) shows the pleas of critical teachers for external democratization in secondary education.

Author

• Vincent Stolk, University of Humanistics Studies