ABSTRACT
Following the Second World War, the Netherlands experienced rapid economic and industrial growth that expanded the demand for more professional and highly skilled labor. Political leaders expressed a concerted interest in modernizing the entire educational system as well as clarifying and redefining the role of academic study. At the time, the formal Dutch educational system consisted of compulsory basic education and higher education. There were otherwise few formal educational alternatives for those few who did not pass on to the academic preparatory schools (voorbereitend wetenschappelijk onderwijs-VWO), which consisted of the Gymnasium (classical language curriculum) and the Athenaeum (new language curriculum).1 As in Sweden and Germany, academic preparatory schools were the primary conduit to university study. Unlike Germany and Sweden, however, the VWO schools were not officially considered secondary education, since the Gymnasium and Athenaeum remained by law within the domain of “higher education” until 1960.2
Review of the Dutch educational system began with a 1946 reconstruction committee formed by the government to make recommendations for planning and change. The committee’s 1949 report criticized the entire system of education as being too “classical,” claiming that it was “too intellectually onesided” in its purpose to prepare young people for academic study.3 The report stated in addition that there was too little cooperation between the “relatively autonomous school types,” that the classical schools were “too one dimensional in character,” that it “did little to take the divergent talents of the pupils into account,” and that it was “too intellectual in character.”4 The educational system needed instead an increased practical orientation to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding economy.
