Westward bound? Dutch education and cultural transfer in the mid-twentieth century

Discussing the foundations of prevailing theories on education it has been suggested by several authors that the twentieth century witnessed a shift from educational philosophy, religion and bourgeois morality to academic psychology and psychiatry as major sources of inspiration. This transition is supposed to be fruit of the development of welfare states in the Western world, as well as an expression of a larger process called modernisation, individualisation, psychologisation or scientisation of society and culture.1 From a more critical perspective authors have referred to this increased reliance on science as

*Email: p.c.m.bakker@rug.nl 1For example, Jeroen Jansz and Peter van Drunen, eds., A Social History of Psychology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004); Barbara Beatty, Emily D. Cahan and Julia Grant, eds., When Science Encounters the Child: Educating, Parenting, and Child Welfare in 20th-century America 2006).