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Gender in Dutch General Education. The Case of 'Taking Care'

Pauline R. Schreuder

To cite this Article Schreuder, Pauline R.'Gender in Dutch General Education. The Case of 'Taking Care'', Gender and
Education, 11: 2, 195 — 206
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 Gender and Education, Vol. 11, N o. 2, pp. 195–206, 1999

Gender in D utch General Education. The Case of ‘Taking

Care’ [1]
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PAULINE R. SCHREUDER, U niversity of Gron ingen, T he Netherlands

ABSTRACT This article deals with theoretical problems con nected with notions on gender, ‘being an
educated person’, rationality and caring, and the D utch curriculum for general education. The introdu ction
of the subject ‘taking care’ as part of the curriculum for secon dary education in the Netherlands, can be
understood as a step towards a more gender-egalitarian curriculum. D iscussion s on the meaning of ‘an
educated person’ and on the meaning of rationality within philosophy of education are described and used
to analyse the aims of ‘taking care’. The way ‘gender’ is at stake within this subject, and the implicit
notion of an educated person are discussed, in order to Ž nd out if and how a gender-egalitarian curriculum,
based upon a gender-egalitarian notion of an ‘educated person ’, is possible.

Introduction
This article addresses the topic of gender and curriculum, by connecting two different
issues. The Ž rst issue is a discussion within the philosophy of education on the question
of whether or not the common concept of ‘an educated person’ is gender-biased, and if
so, in what way(s). The second issue consists of a description and analysis of contempor-
ary developments with regard to gender, in particular the introduction of the new
compulsory subject ‘taking care’ (Verzorgin g) in the Dutch curriculum for secondary
education. Every curriculum contains at least an implicit notion of what it means to be
an educated person; by examining the learning aims of ‘taking care’ this notion of an
educated person will be investigated. Finally, these two issues will be connected in
discussing to what extent the analytical distinction between male and female character-
istics is fruitful with regard to general education.
In the early 1980s, the American philosopher of education, Jane Roland Martin, wrote
on the idea of an educated person. According to her, this idea is not gender-neutral: the
educated person is a man, and this notion is therefore harmful to girls and women
(Martin, 1981, 1982, 1983) [2]. In her analysis Martin criticises the widely used concept

Correspondence: Dr Pauline R. Schreuder, Pedagogies, Education and Gender Studies, University of Groningen,
Grote Rozenstraat 38, 9712 TJ Groningen, The Netherlands; e-mail , p.r.schreuder@ppsw.rug.nl . .

0954-0253/ 99/020195-12 $7.00 Ó 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd 195

 196 P. R. Schreuder

of an ‘educated person’ as formulated by the English philosopher of education, Richard

Peters (Peters, 1972). Martin’s arguments will be reconstructed in order to point out what
the impact of her critique might be. If Martin’s arguments are valid, her critique touches
the very core of practices of general education. In turn, Martin’s analysis has been
criticised by the American philosopher Harvey Siegel (1983) and the Dutch philosopher
Ger Snik (1990). Although both critics expose serious  aws in Martin’s argumentation,
they have missed one of her main points: the question of the educational value or the
social appreciation of care and care-taking.
The discussion of Martin vs Siegel/Snik results Ž rstly in a reconceptualisation of what
an ‘educated person’ could be like, especially with regard to male and female character-
istics. Secondly, the discussion is used to consider possible consequences of this renewed
concep t for curricula for general education. The omission of care in curricula for general
education, as Martin shows, could perhaps be remedied by the addition of the subject
‘taking care’ in Dutch secondary education. Geert ten Dam and Monique Volman, two
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prominent Dutch authors in the Ž eld of gender and education, have indeed interpreted
the introduction of this subject as a move towards a more gender-egalitarian curriculum
(ten Dam & Volman, 1995). It will be discussed to what extent this interpretation is
justiŽ ed.

C ritique on the Idea of an ‘Educa ted P erson’— Jane Roland M artin

Curricula for general education, according to Martin, re ect an ideal of an educated
person, as formulated by Peters (1972):
Education suggests not only that what develops in someone is valuable but also
that it involves the development of knowledge and understanding. Whatever
else an educated person is, he [sic ] is one who has some understanding of
something…. There is also the suggestion that this understanding should not
be too narrowly specialized. This led me to suggest that the saying that
‘education is of the whole man’ [sic] is a conceptual truth in that being
educated is incom patible with being narrowly specialized. (Peters, 1972, p. 2;
cf. Hirst & Peters, 1977)
Fundamental in this deŽ nition are the aspects of ‘knowledge and understanding’ (cf.
Hirst, 1974). Having knowledge implies being rational, according to Peters, because true
knowledge can be justiŽ ed with reasons. This implies that teachers should always try to
justify their knowledge to the pupils in their class, because only when pupils have come
to know the reason why such-and-such is the case, can they be said to be educated. If
they can do no more than ‘parroting’, they have been in uenced, persuaded, or maybe
indoctrinated, but they have not been educated [3].
Peters speaks speciŽ cally of men (and not of women) when he discusses education. This
shows not only in the quotation above, but also when he, at some further point,
acknowledges that the development of knowledge and understanding in each person is
desirable in principle, but not always attainable in practice. He does not expect
everybody ‘to develop much depth or breadth of understanding to underpin and
transform their dealings as workers, husbands and fathers’ (Peters, 1972, p. 11). Whether
or not this kind of statement is no more than a general way of speaking of that time, it
is important to decide if Peters’s position would change fundamentally when ‘person’
would refer to women as well as men. This is where Martin enters the discussion.
Martin (1994a, 1994b) Ž rst points out that she does not doubt that ‘the ideal he
 Gender in Dutch General Education 197

[Peters] set forth was meant for males and females alike’ (1994b, p. 70). She then
continues that this ideal of the ‘educated person’ stresses objectivity, rationality and
critical thinking as desirable attitudes in any person. Unfortunately, in Western culture
these attitudes are usually interpreted as typically male attitudes. The ideal of an
educated person pays no attention to attitudes such as responsibility towards other
persons, emotionality and consideration, which are interpreted as typically female
attitudes. Martin develops four arguments to sustain the claim that this ideal of an
educated person is biased: the Ž rst two focus on women, the last two on both women and
men.
The Ž rst argument is that women can not sufŽ ciently identify with the ideal of an
educated person: it is too different from ‘who they are’. Women are therefore bound to
meet severe psychological problems if they want to get educated:
Can it be doubted that these beliefs [i.e. that women are inferior beings who
have, throughout history, done nothing valuable] do female students serious
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damage? The woman whose self-conŽ dence is bolstered by an education which

transmits the message that females are inferior human beings is rare. Rarer still
is the woman who, having been initiated into alien [ sic ] cognitive perspectives,
gains conŽ dence in her own powers without paying the price of self-alienation.
(1994b, p. 77)
The second argument is that if women do match the ideal of an educated person, they
will become social outcasts because they no longer have the attitudes that society usually
prescribes for women. Either way, the woman loses, she Ž nds herself in a double bind:
‘To be educated they must give up their own way of experiencing and looking at the
world, thus alienating themselves from themselves’ (Martin, 1994b, p. 77). Here Martin
interprets Western education as a domain in which there is a strict and inescapable
distinction between men and women, as well as between male and female perspectives
and characteristics. All women are repressed by the educational system because they
inescapably think and feel different as women ; they just are different. This essentialistic turn
in Martin’s argument weakens her analysis considerably and unnecessarily.
Martin’s third argument is that the ideal is one-sided, and therefore harmful to both
men and women, since every person has both female and male characteristics. If an
educational ideal only mentions one kind of those characteristics, i.e. the male ones, it
neglects important aspects of every person’s character and identity:
Peters’s masculine ideal of the educated person harms males as well as
females…. Because it presupposes a divorce of mind from body, thought from
action, and reason from feeling and emotion, it provides at best an ideal of an
educated mind , not an educated person . (1994b, p. 78; italics in original)
Here Martin points out, in contrast to the Ž rst two arguments, that the distinction
between male and female characteristics and between reason and feeling does not
coincide with the biological distinction between men and women. An educated person
ought to (be able to) combine both kinds of characteristics. If the content of education
were directed towards the mind and the intellect only, it would not deserve the epithet
of ‘general education’—this is where the fourth argument enters the discussion.
In order to illustrate this point, Martin makes a distinction between the productive and
the reproductive processes of society: a distinction that runs parallel to the well-known
distinction between the public sphere (politics, jobs, market-economy) and the private
sphere (domestic life, taking care of the family). General education only emphasises and
values the public sphere and neglects the private sphere that has traditionally been a
 198 P. R. Schreuder

woman’s sphere. This one-sidedness is to be deplored and remedied in order to get a

truly general education.
The … moral is that everyone suffers when an ideal of the educated person fails
to give the reproductive processes of society their due. Ideals which govern
education solely in relation to the productive processes of society will necess-
arily be narrow. In their failure to acknowledge the valuable traits, dispositions,
skills, traditionally associated with reproductive processes, they will harm both
sexes, although not always in the same ways. (1994b, p. 83)
Both Martin’s rhetoric and her feminist analysis of the educated person add something
invigorating to her argument. She points out the risks of stressing only rationality and
logical thinking as guidelines for thinking about general education. This draws attention
away from other, equally important characteristics and virtues of an educated person,
such as caring, being committed and feeling responsible for other people. These are
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indeed interesting and important omissions in mainstream theories of general education

(cf. Bailey, 1983; Tenorth, 1986; Rothblatt, 1988). Nevertheless, some serious critique of
Martin’s analysis is in order.
Martin devalues her own argument by equating female/feminine with being a woman
and male/masculine with being a man. The fact that some attitudes are often categorised
as being ‘feminine’ does not mean that they are owned exclusively by women, nor that
these attitudes make up the essence of what it means to be a woman. Both men and
women can have masculine and feminine attitudes, and biology neither predetermines
the amount of, nor the balance between, each. Neither of the two philosophers whose
comments will be used in this article, Siegel (1983) nor Snik (1990), mentions this
problem in their critique. Siegel restricts his critique mainly to a vehement denial of the
alleged male bias in Peters’s ideal of an educated person. He does not deny that women
often meet problems when they live up to this ideal, but that does not make the ideal
itself an undesirable one. On the contrary, ‘[n]ot only is the ideal itself not harmful to
women, it offers a way of avoiding the harm that genderized evaluations can cause, for
persons who have achieved some degree of rational sophistication are in a better position
to reject such evaluations than persons who have not’ (Siegel, 1983, p. 246).
In his article ‘De opgevoede persoon—een seksistisch ideaal?’ (An educated person—a
sexist ideal?) Ger Snik (1990) shows that Martin’s critique on the one-sidedness of Peters’s
ideal is only partially justiŽ ed. Peters does stress the importance of reason, and in
practical proposals for general education this may lead to a neglect of other virtues such
as care and commitment. But this is an insufŽ cient reason to label the ideal of an
educated person as an undesirable ideal. In the Ž rst place, Peters’s arguments for an
educated person are much more subtle than Martin suggests: he has always stressed the
importance of arguments and taking responsibility in relation to knowledge. For instance,
he says that the concept of an educated person describes someone whose ‘general
conduct of his life’ is transformed ‘by some degree of all-round understanding and
sensitivity’ (Peters, 1972, p. 9). Apparently, Martin has misread or misunderstood Peters
(Snik, 1990, p. 65).
In the second place, there is not one ‘right’ programme of general education—as
Martin seems to suggest—that necessarily follows from Peters’s ideas. Several pro-
grammes could be formulated without a male bias and without a devaluation of ‘female’
characteristics. Schools could, for instance, put less emphasis on individual work only, or
schools could pay more attention to a friendly and supportive school climate, and to the
contributions women have made to literature, science and so forth. This would indeed
 Gender in Dutch General Education 199

be necessary to remedy the dominant position men have had in the curriculum for such
a long time (Snik, 1990, p. 59).
The fact that knowledge is of prime educational importance, however, does not
automatically imply that care, cooperation and shared responsibilities have disappeared
from the educational horizon. According to Snik, programmes for general education
(such as basisvorming—see later), could and should be changed towards a bias-free concept
of an educated person, without putting aside Peters’s conception (Snik, 1990, p. 67).

R eco nceptualising ‘the Educated Person’

Anyone who does not want to be utterly dependent on the judgement and insight of
other people should be able to evaluate arguments for her/himself. This is what the
concep t of autonomy—central to most Western notions on education—is all about (cf.
GrifŽ ths, 1995). Contrary to the traditional philosophical notion of autonomy, which
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implies detachment and independence of other persons, GrifŽ ths’s deŽ nition of auton-
omy as being able to decide for yourself is still compatible with being dependent on,
feeling connected to, and being responsible for other persons, depending on the situation.
Therefore, learning to give good reasons and making choices in relation to knowledge
are important for all persons, regardless of gender (cf. Siegel, 1983, 1997; Kohli, 1995).
Martin agrees on that. But her point here seems to be, and neither Siegel nor Snik pays
attention to this, that what counts as good reasons and proper choices are not
independent of personal relationships or being committed to a cause (cf. Bailin, 1995;
Burbules, 1995; Norris, 1995). Knowledge and judgement are always context-related and
because humans are social beings, their judgements are seldom detached from interests
and commitment.
In other words, reason needs to be understood as something inseparable from
emotions and sociocultural surroundings. According to Alison Jaggar, emotions are
‘made possible and limited by the conceptual and linguistic resources of society’ [4]. If
emotion and reason together make up what we know and how we know it, this means
that ‘reason’ can no longer be equated with ‘pure logic’. We can then recognise someone
as ‘reasonable’, not only when s/he is thinking along causal, logical lines of argumenta-
tion, but also when what s/he does is understandable as one of the possible ways in
which a person could act or think (Fay, 1996). The importance of justifying knowledge
with reasons does not diminish by this, but it does mean that what may count as ‘good
reasons’ is expanded towards human motives that may or may not be logical, but
nevertheless understandable [5].
The educated person reconceptualised would then be someone who has—as Peters
stated—some knowledge and understanding, and who is able to justify this knowledge
with reasons, but furthermore, this person should also be able to point out that what
counts as good reasons is dependent on the situation at hand and of the people involved.
This means that the educated person is able to take different perspectives and to take
emotions, feelings and obligations into account, in order to make her or his own
judgement—either solitary or together with others.
A curriculum for general education that is based upon this revised notion of the
reasonableness of the educated person should pay attention to the cultural, linguistic and
temporal imbeddedness of knowledge, and to the arguments that sustain that knowledge.
Knowledge ought not to be understood as pure, plain and universal facts, but as
meanings, situated and constructed according to previously made choices [6].
This leads to the second issue of this article: the present Dutch curriculum for
 200 P. R. Schreuder

secondary education (basisvorming ) and more speciŽ cally the subject ‘taking care’. Atten-
tion will be paid to implicitly suggested ways of learning and teaching and to the kind(s)
of knowledge involved, in order to get an impression of the presupposed concept of ‘an
educated person’. Is it indeed justiŽ ed to interpret the inclusion of ‘taking care’ in the
curriculum as a move towards a more gender-egalitarian curriculum (ten Dam &
Volman, 1995)?

Basisvorming as G eneral Educa tion

Basisvorming can be interpreted as the operationalisation of the idea of general education.
General education, on the one hand, can be seen as an ideal (cf. educated person,
allgemeine Bildung), and on the other hand, as a practice in which this ideal is upheld (cf.
liberal education, Allgemeinbildung ). As has been pointed out by the American historian
Sheldon Rothblatt (1988), general education is non-vocational, and prepares students of
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all backgrounds, by its breadth and coherence, for all kinds of further learning. In other
words, general education is the education that any society considers necessary for its
young generation.
The Dutch curriculum basisvorming is a compulsory curriculum for all pupils in the Ž rst
years of secondary education (age 12–15). This curriculum, formulated in 1986, consists
of 15 subjects, all of which have to be examined (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het
Regeringsbeleid, 1986). Unlike the English National Curriculum of 1988, basisvorming
applies only to secondary education and consists not of 10, but of 15 subjects: Dutch,
English, French or German, mathematics, science, biology, geography, history, technol-
ogy, taking care, computer technology, arts, econom ics, physical education, drama or
music [7]. Between those very different subjects coherence can be created by linking
them together whenever possible. Pupils may, for instance, be asked to write an essay in
English on a historical topic (cf. Schreuder, 1995). For all subjects of the curriculum
so-called ‘core aims’ have been formulated, that have to be met by all pupils, after 2 or
3 years (depending on their ability). After basisvorming pupils will continue their education,
either along a vocational track, or along a general track [8].

The Subject ‘Taking Care’

The introduction of ‘taking care’ as a subject in the curriculum basisvorming , is justiŽ ed
by the government policy that everyone in the Netherlands from 18 years of age
onwards, has to be able to be self-supporting. That is: everyone should either have a job,
try to Ž nd a job or go to school of some kind. One of the main consequences of this
policy is that neither parents, nor girls nor women can say that they (girls and women)
do not really need an education because they will get married and have children anyway.
A national campaign started in the late 1980s, stressing the importance for girls to be
‘prepared for the future’, i.e. to get an education and to learn a job. Another important
consequence of this policy is that boys too need to be prepared for a future in which
gender roles are no longer what they used to be (cf. Mars, 1995; Pierik, 1995;
Poldervaart, 1995). Therefore everyone, girl and boy, should learn about both the public
domain of politics and work and the private domain of family life and mutual care.
‘Taking care’ (Verzorging) teaches pupils—among other things—the knowledge and
skills that have been traditionally ascribed to women, and that were not included in
general education in the Netherlands [9]. Recently, however, the notion of ‘care’ within
this subject has been redeŽ ned in a broad sense: care not only has to do with looking
 Gender in Dutch General Education 201

after yourself and your (domestic) surroundings, but also with caring for others and
caring for the natural environment [10]. ‘Taking care’ no longer addresses the private
sphere of caring only, but in addressing the social and physical environment it also enters
the public sphere. This is a major shift in emphasis with far-reaching consequences for
the contents of this subject, and possible for the implicit notion of ‘an educated person’
as well.
All secondary schools are required to teach ‘taking care’ at least one hour each week,
during one year (ten Dam & Volman, 1995), which makes ‘taking care’ a small-sized
subject. So whether ‘taking care’ will make general education more egalitarian with
regard to gender, will depend on what actually happens in classrooms, but it also
depends on what pupils are supposed to learn. This can be found in the so-called
kerndoelen , the ‘core aims’ that have been formulated for all 15 subjects of basisvorming . The
core aims for ‘taking care’ were formulated for the Ž rst time in 1993, shortly before the
new curriculum basisvorming started in all secondary schools [11]. These will be referred
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to as ‘the original aims’, in contrast to the revised aims of 1996. As has been pointed out,
the original and the revised aims each show a very different way of addressing questions
of care.
The original 1993 aims for ‘taking care’, 23 in number, have been thematically
subdivided into three groups: health and well-being, acting as a consumer and necessities
of life (Instituut voor Leerplanontwikkeling, 1993). Some of these aims are explicitly
formulated in terms of behaviour (e.g. ‘Pupils can act appropriately in order to prevent
accidents from happening, both inside and outside of the house, and [pupils] know
relevant safety precautions’). Other aims are formulated in terms of knowledge : ‘Pupils can
point out factors that in uence the use of stimulants [such as nicotine, alcohol, drugs]
and have knowledge of the legal limitations of the use of those stimulants’. Practical skills
and a caring attitude in the domestic sphere (as illustrated by learning how to do the
laundry, how to cook for your family and friends) are important parts of the subject
‘taking care’. The traditional female domain is clearly—though not solely—represented
here.
The inclusion of the traditionally female domain into the core of general education has
led to a lot of verbal abuse in Dutch schools and the media. A very common opinion
is that ‘taking care’ is not a ‘real’ school subject because pupils learn how to clean the
bathroom and how to cook eggs. In other words, valuable time in schools is wasted upon
the trivial and unnecessary. The differentiation between the public sphere and the
private sphere is apparent here: both adherents and opponents make the distinction, but
their evaluation differs (ten Dam & Volman, 1995). The adherents applaud the attention
that is paid to the traditionally female, domestic domain of care-taking, whereas the
opponents are outraged that these kinds of ‘simple menial skills’ are made part of a
curriculum for general education: ‘domestic things are best learned at home, not in
school’. And without taking sides at this point, it is indeed important to remember that
school is not always the most appropriate place to learn something: questions of which
topics, themes and subjects are to be included in the curriculum need to be reconsidered
regularly.
The revised aims of 1996, 24 in number, show a different concept of care and
care-taking, as well as different educational ideas (Instituut voor Leerplanontwikkeling,
1996). As mentioned before, care is now no longer restricted to domestic life, but is
expanded towards the public life in which everyone participates (Volman & ten Dam,
1995). The new approach is apparent in the way the revised aims have been subdivided
and in the way they have been formulated. The subdivision is no longer a thematic one,
 202 P. R. Schreuder

but a systematic one: learning about care and learning to care. The Ž rst domain, learning
about care, has four parts: central concepts, individual aims, social environm ent aims and
societal aims. The second domain, learning to care, is also subdivided despite its smaller
size: talking about care, being responsible, choice and decision, caring for and dealing
with care. These aims from the second domain are to be linked to aims from the Ž rst
domain. An example of an aim from the second domain: ‘Pupils can, in cooperation with
each other, plan caring activities and put these into practice. They can allocate tasks,
keep their appointments and share the responsibility for the Ž nal result’, can be related
to an aim from the Ž rst domain, such as: ‘Pupils can indicate the importance of money,
work and time as means to meet certain needs’. Schools are free to put these aims into
practice in any way they like: several methods and schoolbook s give examples of how this
can be done, for instance in relation to food [12]. Not only are pupils taught what to do,
they are now also encouraged—according to these aims—to make reasonable and
responsible decisions related to questions of care.
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Discussio n
In comparison to the original aims, the revised aims show a clear shift from practical
skills and correct behaviour towards a notion of ‘care’ in which knowledge, judgement
and action are treated in coherence. Pupils have to learn to think about different aspects
and different faces of care, in order to make them more conscious of the importance of
care (in a broad sense) for their own lives now and in the future (‘Pupils can discuss
questions such as the allocation of caring tasks, professional care and care on the scale
of the whole society’—aim 19) [13]. The apolitical casualness of care in the domestic
sphere is now made into a subject for conversation, discussion and critical re ection.
Care and care-taking are no longer part of the private domain only, but are made an
integral part of the cognitive, rational, public and political domain. Even though the aims
leave room for interpretation, they do give hope with regard to surpassing the strict
separation of the domestic sphere from the public sphere.
In order to become an educated person, Peters, Snik, Siegel and Martin each have
stressed—in their own speciŽ c way—the importance of learning to give, and listen to
good reasons, and of striving to become an independent, self-thinking person. Pupils
therefore have to learn to think for themselves and to mould their own life and their
future. Schools should stress the importance of critical re ection and asking questions,
more than teaching what the ‘right answers’ are (cf. Benner, 1987). This is an important
pedagogical point: because we can not know what the future is going to be like, and
because we want pupils to grow up as people who can think and decide for themselves,
all we can teach our children is what we at this time think best, plus the awareness that
what we know is a temporary, culture-related truth [14].
The revised aims of ‘taking care’ are more in accordance with this pedagogical
principle than the original aims, in which ‘right behaviour’ was stressed in some cases.
For if we take the rational capacities of humans seriously and if we think it is important
to teach people how to think for themselves, it makes little sense to teach them ‘the right
behaviour’, since our idea of what this behaviour should be like changes often. For
example, instead of telling pupils they should use cotton diapers for their babies because
paper nappies place a heavy burden on the environm ent, it is better to teach them about
risks to the environm ent (as far as we know at this time and age), such as the waste of
non-biodegradable materials, but also such as the kind and the amount of soap and
electricity we use in order to wash those cotton diapers.
 Gender in Dutch General Education 203

A Gender-egalita rian Curricu lum ?

The revised aims of ‘taking care’ (the traditionally feminine subject) are more appropriate
for both the old and the reconceptualised ideal of an educated person than the original
ones, because they are explicitly oriented towards knowledge, reasons and arguments (the
traditionally male attitudes), and on Ž nding relations between them. So it appears that
the subject ‘taking care’ needed more emphasis on so-called male aspects of knowledge
and understanding in order to enhance its educational value. And at the same time the
subject has turned out to be more gender-egalitarian itself, because of the shift of focus
from the private domain only to both the private and the public domain, and the shift
of focus from attitudes and knowledge as educational aims to knowledge, understanding
and critical judgement as educational aims.
The Dutch curriculum for general education can be said to become more gender-
egalitarian, because it has acknowledged the domain of care and care-taking seriously as
a learning area of importance for all pupils. The idea of general education has been
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broadened in the direction Martin suggested in her fourth point of critique. Her third
point of critique was directed towards the notion of an educated person, which should
not only be concerned with rationality but also with care, commitment and responsi-
bility. As has been discussed, these aspects could be joined in a concept of an educated
person when one is willing to subscribe to the idea that being reasonable does not imply
detachedness, and that learning to be reasonable is still one of the most important
educational aims at the end of the twentieth century.
Learning to weigh arguments critically is not contrary to or incom patible with a caring
attitude or with taking responsibility. Knowing something does indeed not immediately
imply the practical use of this knowledge, let alone in a responsible way. But knowing,
judging, making choices and putting these into action is what general education should
be all about, according to pedagogues since the seventeenth century and probably even
before that (e.g. Comenius, Herbart, Pestalozi, von Humboldt). Not only can and should
knowledge be related to judgement and choices, knowledge itself is inseparable from
judgements and choices that have been made [15]. So our present concern is in fact not
only a very old educational problem the possible answers to this problem have already
been discussed long ago, though not in terms of gender. This seems to point to the
direction of a missed opportunity for Martin, since she has not only done research on
historical ideas about the education of girls in relation to the education of boys, but has
also written a book on this topic (Reclaiming a Conversation , 1985).
The implementation of the subject ‘taking care’ within general education is neverthe-
less more than old wine in new bottles. First of all, ‘taking care’ relates ‘factual
knowledge’ to ethical, practical and political issues related to care, and this is something
new in Dutch general education. Secondly, by making a learning area out of ‘caring’
pupils can be made conscious and re exive with regard to the caring tasks that are a part
of everyone’s life. Whether, as a consequence of this, domestic work will be more highly
valued in our society, remains to be seen, but ‘care’ has now been made into an area that
deserves public attention and re ection. On the other hand, we still have to be alert with
regard to gender-biases in the other subjects that make up general education, because it
would be naive to suppose that only one out of 15 subjects (and a relatively small one
as well), would turn a gender-biased curriculum into a gender-egalitarian curriculum.
Still, in agreement with ten Dam & Volman (1995), one could say that it is one step
forward. Further research into changes in Dutch educational practice, as a consequence
of the revised aims for all subjects of the curriculum, is necessary to discuss the presumed
gender bias and the gender-egalitarianism of the curriculum as a whole.
 204 P. R. Schreuder

NOTES
[1] I am grateful to Willeke Los and the two referees of an earlier version of this article for their critical and
helpful comments. This article is a revised and elaborated version of a paper presented at the Dutch
‘Pedagogendag’ (Schreuder, 1998).
[2] In the following I shall refer to these articles as Martin, 1994a, 1994b and 1994c. See references.
[3] A great deal of the analytical literature addresses conceptual questions on the difference between, for
example, education and development, indoctrination and rationality. See, for instance, Barrow & Woods
(1988).
[4] Jaggar, quoted in Kohli, 1995, p. 106; cf. Fay, 1996.
[5] I think this is what in fact happens most of the time. There are very few characters like Dr Spock in the
old Star T rek series around. Since he (being a non-human) can only understand what is logical, the rest
of the crew indulgently smiles upon this inability when decisions are made that are based upon insight
into the human character and possible motives— though it must be added that his protests may also lead
to a rethinking of the problem in question.
[6] Though it goes beyond the theme of this article, this point is also important with regard to multicultur-
alism and education.
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[7] The English National Curriculum, 5–16, consists of English, mathematics, science, a modern foreign
language (except in primary education), technology, history, geography, art, music and physical
education. Since religious education is compulsory by law, but not included in the National Curriculum,
this can be said to be the eleventh compulsory subject.
[8] It may be necessary to point out here that there are very few truly comprehensive schools for secondary
education in the Netherlands. After primary school pupils and their parents choose a speciŽ c kind of
school that is either vocationally oriented or has a more general curriculum. In all cases, however, pupils
have to do the basisvorming for the Ž rst 2 or 3 years of their secondary education. Basisvorming does not
lead to a diploma itself, but is a conditio sine qua non for a diploma of secondary education.
[9] Subjects such as cooking and home economics have never been part of general education in the
Netherlands, with the exception of the lower vocational schools for girls, the so-called nijverheidsscholen
(commonly called ‘schools for house-wives’). These schools had, perhaps not surprisingly, the lowest social
status and were rather looked-dow n upon. This may explain the outrage of large groups in Dutch society
against the inclusion of ‘taking care’ in the curriculum for basisvorming . This would mean for teachers that
their school (or even worse, they themselves), and for parents that their children, would have to ‘lower
themselves’. ‘Taking care’ was and is still demeaningly put aside by some (though not all) teachers and
parents as ‘learning to cook eggs’, i.e. too ridiculous to consider seriously as a school subject.
[10] It is, however, not clear whether this shift has anything to do with the protests of parents and teachers
(especially in secondary schools that prepare for a university education), or with the growing number of
women on the job-market, or even with a shift in the general ways of thinking of, for example,
policy-makers. Postmodernism, post-structuralism, feminism and perspectivism are gradually leaving their
traces in the Ž eld of education and educational management. Looking for different, meaningful
perspectives with regard to certain topics, and for connections between subjects are high on the
present-day educational agenda. This change in outlook is also re ected in the idea of the ‘house of
study’: a new approach to schooling for pupils aged 15–18. Instead of having lessons all day, pupils spend
about half of their time studying for themselves, while having to search for the information they need in
books, CD-ROMS, the Internet etc.
[11] Notice the time-gap between the proposal for basisvorming in 1986 and the implementation in 1993.
The political situation in the Netherlands is (and was) rather different from the situation in England.
Whereas in England there has been only very limited opportunity to comment on the proposal for the
Education Reform Act, in the Netherlands there have been extensive discussions amongst teachers,
politicians and educational scientists. These discussions focused on themes such as mixed-ability teaching,
levels of achievement, and subject choice. An overview of these discussions can be found in Schreuder
(1995).
[12] Both the original and the revised aims are good examples of the fact that Dutch law forbids the state to
decide what exactly has to be taught in schools. All schools have to use the core aims as guidelines on
what and how to teach, but they are free to choose methods, or to make up their own textbooks, or to
choose only some of the themes that can be found in schoolbooks. All schools must be able to show the
Inspection that their pupils have learned those things that are mentioned in the core aims. Since these
are necessarily vague, schools can in fact differ greatly with regard to the content of each subject. This
fact of course seriously undermines the notion that basisvorming can be seen as general education.
[13] See also Meijer, 1996.
 Gender in Dutch General Education 205

[14] This point has been very well formulated by the German philosopher of education Theodor Litt, in his
famous Führen oder W achsenlassen of 1927 (reprint 1965), translated: ‘to lead or to let grow’, referring to
the two common pedagogical metaphors of education as ‘leading out’ or as ‘letting grow what’s already
inside’. For a more contemporary discussion see Meijer et al. (1992).
[15] In general education at least the Ž rst point should be made clear to pupils, but I am not sure whether
it would be an attainable goal to make them and their teachers fully understand the second point.

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