At 00:19 6-8-01 -0400, John Giorgis wrote:
> >The Dutch system provides plenty of choice. Once you're past your eight
> >years of basic education, we have educational options to suit everybody's
> >interests and intellectual capabilities.
>
>But, before eight years, you have no choice?
You do have a choice for those first eight years, but it's limited. First,
it's basic education, and everybody is supposed to have mastered the same
skills (such as reading, writing and basic math, to name a few) by the end
of those eight years. Second, there's geography: there are plenty of
schools, so it doesn't make sense to let your child get it's basic
education 100 kilometers from home. (I don't know if it's actually
mandatory to let your child attend a school in the town or city it lives in.)
For the rest, the choices are limited because of a limited number of
philosophies that schools are based on. It's mostly secular, catholic or
protestant, and a few special cases like Montessori or the "Free School".
Let me explain that last one. The word "Free" here has nothing to do with
who pays the bill, but everything with the child. In regular basic
education, everyone is supposed to have roughly the same knowledge at the
end of a school year. The "Free School" however believes this isn't good
for the child, and believes the child should be allowed to learn things at
his/her own pace. The government has allowed this, but under the condition
that the children must have mastered the same skills by the end of the
eight years as the children who received regular basic education.
> >You can also select a school based on your religious beliefs, although the
> >options there are pretty much limited to secular, catholic and protestant.
> >(I don't know of any schools that base their philosophy on Islam, for
> >example -- although there might be a few.)
>
>Does the government pay for these?
Assuming those schools exist, yes, the government will pay for these, just
like they'll pay for schools with any other philosophy. If they didn't, it
would be considered discrimination.
Jeroen
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