In the Netherlands, state and religious schools are equally financed by the government. Parents are free to choose a school that optimally fits their moral values as well as their idea of a good education. As a result, there is a huge variety of schools, which include those orthodox Reformed schools that form part of the so-called Bible Belt culture. We elaborate on the complex relation between this religious culture and liberal, secular society by focusing on education. Occasionally, there is severe criticism of schools based on a strong religious identity (so-called strong religious schools), especially when it comes to their allegedly inadequate contribution to citizenship education. In order to add a historical perspective and a reflection on the arguments to the debate, our central research question is: 'How can the founding and existence of orthodox Reformed schools in the Dutch liberal and secular society be explained and justified?' Starting with a historical explanation of why the orthodox Reformed founded their own schools in the 1920s, we elaborate on philosophical arguments that can justify the existence of orthodox Reformed schools in a liberal, secular society.
Around 1900, interest in adolescence as a separate and crucial phase in human development increased among psychologists, educators and youth workers in the western world. This paper reviews the relation between adolescence and sexuality in the early twentieth century from a Dutch perspective. In the 1920s pedagogues started to study adolescence. The Amsterdam professor Philipp Abraham Kohnstamm was a pioneer in developing a pedagogical approach (instead of a clinical approximation) to understand adolescence and sexuality. For Kohnstamm, sexual health education had to be part of moral teaching. He stressed the importance of sex education at an early stage, for body and mind are connected to such an extent that a separation will result in the depersonalisation of man. Kohnstamm's work reflected the ideas of the European intellectual elites of his time regarding the sexual morals and manners of the working class.
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