Abstract
This contribution compares developments in school enrolment and public investments in primary education in the Netherlands and its most important colony in the 19th century: the Netherlands East Indies, more specifically the island of Java. Despite being part of the same Empire, conditions in both regions were very different, with the metropole having already quite high enrolment rates from the beginning of the period studied (the early 19th century) compared to very low school attendance in the colony. For long, the colonial government left indigenous education in Java to religious and private initiatives, whereas primary schooling in the Netherlands was increasingly financed and regulated. Rising interest for public schooling in the colony, including some government investment in the first decades of the 20th century did lead to some changes, but these were insufficient to prevent Dutch and Javanese children from experiencing a fundamentally different educational upbringing.
Highlights
The results of this study show that the conditions in metropole and colony were very different from the outset, and that despite some colonial investments in education in the first decades of the 20th century, opportunities for Dutch and Indonesian children played out markedly differently
Compulsory education was only introduced in 1901, and state schools charged fees, the percentage of Dutch children enrolled in primary education rose steadily over the 19th century
Letters from the 1930s written by young female graduates to Mrs van Deventer-Maas, who, with her late husband, had founded the Van Deventer schools, reveal that some of the educated middle- and upper-class girls had internalized the desire to 'enter into the world to try to teach [their] knowledge to the Javanese people'. Some of these girls had very ambitious wishes, such as Willy Hamzah Amoendai, from Borneo, who hoped to establish a school in her home village. This brief comparison of the development of, and state investment in, primary schooling in the Netherlands and the Netherlands Indies leads to some interesting observations
Summary
It brings back memories of old loves, which were perhaps once lost, but never completely forgotten. In 1996, he finished his, impressively lengthy, dissertation on the development of Dutch secondary education, 'gymnasia' (grammar schools) and their students. Kees' academic path soon took different turns, he has probably never forgotten about education, especially since he became a teacher himself, to young researchers at the IISH, students at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and at numerous international summer schools. His retirement is an excellent opportunity to revert to this topic. I will do so comparing developments in primary education in the Netherlands and its most important colony in the 19th century: the Netherlands East Indies (present-day Indonesia), the island of Java. The results of this study show that the conditions in metropole and colony were very different from the outset, and that despite some colonial investments in education in the first decades of the 20th century, opportunities for Dutch and Indonesian children played out markedly differently
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