Salssabil Zamantouti, the teacher of group four, hits her hand in front of her mouth and looks at Jos van den Broek, who is eating his lunch butter ham at the table. She just called him grandpa – “the grandfather of the school” – and now she thinks she insulted him. But no, Jos van den Broek (74) is not offended. He is the grandfather of the school. He feels very much that he can be here. “Then it’s good,” says Miss Salssabil. “And you know that you can come as often as you want. We are always happy. “
It is Monday at the end of the morning and this is the Islamic primary school ER-Risèlèh (the message) in Leiden. The children play outside, survivors keep watch and so immediately Jos van den Broek- children’s and grandchildren- will teach at Miss Salssabil, about whales. ‘Nature: Master Jos’ is on the program that hangs in the classroom. After ‘Stillese’ and ‘Calculation’ and ‘spelling’ and ‘eating fruit + weekend talk’ and for the day closing, he comes with a verse from the Koran. But now it is still ‘big break’ and he walks up the stairs to the library. We can talk quietly there. There is a poster on the wall Dulle Griet from the Flemish writer Geert De Kockere. On the library mother’s office: The medicine man from the Dutch journalist Wim Köhler. What you want to know about your body.
Jos van den Broek is a biochemicist. Previously he was a professor in Leiden and he just has one Doeboek Published for teachers: Experiments for a better world. It also had Encyclopedia of everything you can surprise children can be called. How you can create a power circuit with a piece of floral foam, a few galvanized iron nails and copper wire. How to unmask a peacock. The colors are fake! Take a good look at this dragon. Those legs, those wings, that fire -breathing mouth. Realistic? Anatomically possible? Throw a drop of vinegar in a pan of red cabbage. A scoop of soda. What happens? That blushing Santa with his bullet round belly: conceived by Coca-Cola. What would be behind that? Who benefits from that? King Solomon from the Bible and the prophet Suleiman from the Quran: the same person and their wisdom appears … Heart, head and hands Is called Jos van den Broeks self -designed learning system and it is uncompromising idealistic. Bildung, he strives for that. Children are self -employed and critical people with a sense of history and culture. “And respect for other cultures.” And yes, he also knows that it is no longer self -evident. He doesn’t care. He does what he has to do. He can’t do anything else.
I don’t remember for a moment that I was challenged. It was rows of stamping and brain boxes
How he ended up on Er-Risèlèh: “Two years ago I was a wise committee during Leiden European City of Science And with my Wijscokar I traveled past street parties and schools to distribute knowledge. And then one of the teachers asked if I wanted to come here more often. ” First he only did the plus classes, for children who are offered ‘extra teaching material’. But are not all children entitled to extra curriculum? Now he teaches groups one to eight, also to the toddlers. And he comes here every week. Or more often.
A Catholic family from Brabant, the oldest of eight. In primary school he was “the best in the class”, so that became the gymnasium, in Helmond. Then they moved to Rotterdam – his father became the chef at Dow Chemical – and went to the HBS. HBS-B. “I don’t remember for a moment that I was challenged,” he says. “It was rows of stamping and breach filling.” In his final exam year he had four five and four on his report. Had his – disappointed – parents only put him on a montessori school, he thinks now. He had been “cut” for that, with his way of learning. Sort things out yourself, do it yourself. But that was not an issue at his home. And yes, you could say that he has become the teacher he would have liked to have, if he didn’t sound so vain in his ears.
After his final exam he went to study chemical technology in Delft, with which he would certainly find a well -paid job. “I don’t have any positive memory of it.” It was short -lived because he got sick. He was in bed for six months with a hernia. It turned out to be one blessing in disguise. He read everything from Louis Couperus and improved his English with The Lord of the Rings. And later German with Hermann Hesse. He came to the insight that you could also make people better with chemistry. For example, it became biochemistry for him, at the age of nineteen, in Leiden. “My first completely own choice,” he says. “Against the will of my parents.” He still doesn’t know why. “Maybe because I could go to Delft on the moped and not to Leiden.” So he had to go to rooms and lived in a house with people who studied Japanese, or medicine. He was reborn, he says.
Promotion in pharmacology, editor -in -chief of Bubin newsthen editor -in -chief of the popular science magazine Nature & Technology. With a trade fair for science journalists, he went to the US. His chair, from 2007 to 2017, was called Biomedical Science Communication. But that is all over now. Now he lives for his wife- previously working at the science and medical library of the VU University- and for the children at school. What does he give them the happiness of good education. And happiness to contribute to that.
Jos van den Broek teaches group four.
Photos Roger Cremers
Then the bell rings and twelve toddlers come two to two to march the library. Jos van den Broek goes to the room of teacher Salssabil and stals the things he has taken. Skulls, vertebrae, a huge part of a jaw, ribs – all of whales and almost all found on the beach. The children of group four, seven or eight years old are in a circle for him and can touch, feel, caress, weigh on their hands. On the smartboard he projects the tusks of a male narwal, a whale, and he reminds the children that they have seen it in real life. Where again? In the museum, yes. Which museum? “Farmer … farmer … farmer …”, the children say. One child knows it again: “Boerhaave.”
“Boerhaave, yes,” says Jos van den Broek. “We were in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave.”
‘Narwal, porpoise, vinvis’ is on the smartboard. Are those all three fish? “Yes, yes, yes,” say the children and Jos van den Broek says, “No, no, no.” They are – yes, what?
Deep silence.
Jos van den Broek: “Mammals. Just like a cow and a giraffe and a goat. ” And then this question: “Are people also mammals?”
The history of Woutertje PieterseMultatuli. Miss Pieterse, Woutertjes Mother, holds a tea party, with sage and Janhagel, and then Stoffel, Woutertjes brother, tells Miss Laps that she is a mammal. A so -called animal? Miss Laps? No, that is not going well.
That boy who was swallowed up by a whale. Have you seen that?
The children from group four don’t want to believe it at first, until Jos van den Broek shows a photo of a young whale who drinks with his mother. “A calf,” he says. “We call the young of a whale a calf.” One of the girls: “A cow also has a calf. A woman has a child. And a child drinks from the chest. My brother drank from my mother’s chest. “
Miss Salssabil now wants to say something. “That boy who was swallowed up by a whale. Have you seen that? ”
“Oh, yes,” the children say. It was on the Jeugdjournaal. A boy was kayaking with his father, in the sea near Chile. He was swallowed up by boat and immediately spit out again. “A miracle,” says Miss Salssabil.
“No wonder,” says Jos van den Broek. He grabs the ribs, the thick, hairy cables in the mouth of a Baleinwalvis. “A sieve,” he says. “With that he filters his food from the water and only very small animals and plants fit through.” So the boy in his kayak? It was just too big.