See status holders as regular employees and not as an emergency solution

The article about status holders at the NS exudes infectious optimism. Understandable, because it touches you when people for whom work was practically impossible for a long time are suddenly welcomed with open arms. This makes not only the NS and the status holders, but also travelers happy.

Yet it is painful that the labor market has to burst at the seams before a status holder is seen as a potential employee. Only now that ‘ordinary’ employees are no longer found, do they come into the picture.

That fate affects not only status holders, but almost everyone who does not immediately fit without a hitch. Because in the eyes of the employer they are too old, because they need some extra facilities due to a disability or because they do not speak the language fluently.

And how do you feel like a second-rate employee when your teammate says well-meaningly apologetically to a customer: ‘We can’t find any Dutch colleagues’. Because that customer is surprised by your ‘fresh’ Dutch. So you’re sitting there, for lack of anything better. And that touches you deep in your soul.

If you also want to bind special people to you, see them as ‘normal’ employees. And not as an emergency solution.
Marianne JanssenAmsterdam

Tests

Aleid Truijens, persistent and highly valued advocate of better education, endorses in her column the importance of a math and language test for prospective teachers. She ends with: ‘Those who cannot read, write and calculate will fail in all important areas.’

If that is true, I would argue in favor of expanding the target group to include our politicians. And in order not to set the bar too high, we will start with the ‘Final test for primary education’.

I am already looking forward to the candidate lists for the upcoming elections, where the candidates’ scores on this test are listed behind the names of the candidates.
Tiemen van der WorpBilthoven

keys (2)

As a secondary academic, I am currently following a PABO course on a part-time basis. It surprises me that in Aleid Truijens’ column, and elsewhere in the reporting about a final test for language and maths to be introduced, it is not mentioned that national knowledge base tests for those subjects are already taken at teacher training courses. Without these tests, at a minimum level of the HAVO final exam, you will not pass.

There is certainly work to be done, but that does not yet legitimize the scornful tone with which Truijens dismisses current education.
Nils van BeekDeventer

Colonial oppression

It is not without reason that Sander van der Horst draws attention to Surinamese and Indonesian activists before, during and after the war. He argues that their story shows that colonial oppression was not accepted, but immediately asks the question: ‘What does it mean that these activists were so violently silenced in their own time and then forgotten for so long?’

I think the answer must be that colonial oppression was accepted by most Dutch people, or at least they didn’t care.

As for the (only) Indonesian Member of Parliament Roestam Effendi: between 1933 and 1940, as a member of the marginal CPN faction, he was a voice crying in the desert, was suspended by his party immediately after the war, went back to Indonesia and was lucky enough say that he survived the anti-communist purges of 1965.
Evert van GinkelLead

Look for the differences

Every VVD member considers it normal that every country of the EU takes a fair share in the reception of asylum seekers. Not every VVD member thinks it is normal that asylum seekers in the Netherlands are fairly distributed among the municipalities. Look for the differences.
Ludo GregoireLead

Emptiness

What a wonderful piece in the Magazine (5/11) about that rich man Michel Perridon. A beautiful exposé of the emptiness of the modern millionaire’s existence in the empty city of Dubai. In an absurd world, absurdity and commentary on it are often difficult to separate. It is not often that we are saddled, or even rewarded, with a piece that so dormantly and brilliantly shows the hot air of capitalism. Dear Volkskrant, thank you.
Joep SchoenmakersRotterdam

Robin Hood

Where is Robin Hood now that we need him so much?
Marieke DoomenOosterbeek

Winners

Last Saturday: a front page and a wonderful (and moving) article in de Volkskrant about the climate disaster unfolding before our eyes.

Meanwhile, the Economy section of the same newspaper once again proclaims an opportunist ‘Winner of the week’, who cleverly plays the rules to earn some extra money in the short term. ‘Loser of the week’ is someone who, out of moral sense, tries to do the right thing (and may have missed something in the process).

In recent weeks I have read the examples with increasing astonishment: gas-grabbing (Wadden Sea), looking away at abuses by Elon Musk (China). Those are your winners? It gives the impression that the Volkskrant editors are still alive in the economic field in the 20th century: maximum growth and the pursuit of the most profit in money is best.

Exactly the route that has led to the current climate crisis.

What we need is perspective on ‘real winners’ who manage to realize broad value. Call it meaning economy (Kees Klomp) or something else, but look at the combination of social, ecological and financial-economic value.

Most of the current winners then move on to ‘losers’. Nature, the oppressed worldwide and future generations will undoubtedly agree.

If you’re looking for a new breed of winners, there are plenty of current examples.
Casper ten Kateco-founder Wearh (sustainability strategy), Utrecht