Religious schools in the Netherlands: An analysis of arguments and assumptions in a tense public debate

Abstract

In the public and political debate about religious schools in the Netherlands, various arguments recur. Those arguments are not isolated or neutral, but are shaped and defined by various normative assumptions. Arguments against religious schools are, for instance, affected by the dominant secular discourse in Western Europe. Unconscious normative assumptions are potentially problematic if they remain unnoticed and if there is a lack of reflection on them. A religious worldview has become a minority perspective in the Netherlands, which makes it important to reflect on the normative assumptions underlying the arguments in the debate about religious schools in order to avoid blindly and uncritically imposing a majority norm on a minority. In this article, the arguments dominating the public and political debate on religious schools in the Netherlands are discerned. Implicit assumptions are brought to the surface and analysed from an interreligious perspective. In order to do so, the social, religious and historical context of the Dutch debate is reflected upon, and the recurring arguments are defined by conducting a qualitative content analysis.