“Geert Wilders is my father!” joked a student with a migration background at Mundus College in Amsterdam. Another student was concerned about having to return to his country of origin after the PVV became the largest in the House of Representatives elections of November 22.
In recent weeks, schools with many students with a migration background have been looking for how to deal with the victory of Wilders in the classroom, who has been convicted of group insults against Moroccan Dutch people and, according to the PVV party program, wants to ban Islamic schools and the Koran.
“There were many questions from students,” says Vincent Steensma, director of Mundus College, a practical and pre-vocational secondary education school in Amsterdam-West. “They wanted to know what will happen next. Teachers and mentors took this opportunity to explain the Dutch political system. To explain that a cabinet must first be formed, that it will take some time before a bill has passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate, that what Wilders wants will have to be tested against the Constitution.”
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Shocked
Eva Voogel works at Amsterdam schools in multicultural neighborhoods, through Moll Academy, which offers educational services such as tutoring. “Not all students will sound the alarm themselves; they find that exciting. But for example, I sat a girl in the hallway the day after the election and she said, “You’re doing that because I’m black?” Then I asked her if she had talked about the election results at home. She said she was indeed shocked by that.” She also says that it is difficult to directly link the behavior of students to the results, but right after the elections she sometimes felt a tense atmosphere in the classroom.
At the practical schools of HPC Rotterdam, students asked questions based on what they saw on TikTok and Instagram, says director Jamie Visser. “They wanted to know what was real news and what was fake news.” Just like at Mundus College, the students were taught about the Dutch democratic system. “We explained how a cabinet is formed, how the government works and we used a coalition builder.” Students with personal concerns could contact the school’s care team. Emotions are allowed, says Visser. “But the care team also tries to reassure students using facts.”
“We have the impression that students sometimes laugh it off,” says director Harald van Vugt, of Portus Meridiem in South Rotterdam. This is a secondary school for MAVO, HAVO and VWO where “90 to 95 percent” of the students have a migration background. And some students appear to be enthusiastic about Wilders, says Van Vugt: “I just happened to speak to a senior general secondary education teacher and she had students who pointed out the traditional norms and values he stands for, and his attention to the socially disadvantaged.” According to the school director, such comments pose a dilemma for teachers. “Should you also point out to those children that Wilders stood for the Russian Duma a few years ago?”
Mart van der Heijden, director of De Troubadour primary school in Eindhoven, felt the need to send a reassuring letter to students, parents and teachers immediately after election day. At De Troubadour, the number of students with a migration background – now a quarter – has grown considerably in recent years thanks to the expats who work for ASML, the chip machine manufacturer in nearby Veldhoven. After the results evening, Van der Heijden received the first delivered email at half past three in the morning. A mother emailed that her son had asked: “Mom, what will the Netherlands become? A concentrationcamp?” “And the next morning at the school gate was the mother of a Turkish girl who had asked at the breakfast table whether she could still stay in the Netherlands.
The director’s letter states, among other things: “Whether you are a boy or a girl, live in a Catholic family, a veiled Muslim woman, a black straight boy or a Jewish gay, as long as I am in charge of the Troubadour , you will find me at the side of everyone who wants to live, work and go to school here peacefully and tolerantly.”
Van der Heijden: “There were parents who felt that I should not have expressed myself politically, but my letter states that we are there for all people. “I think I have sufficiently indicated that we are also there for people who voted PVV.”
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