Towards citizenship education in the Netherlands

The internationally comparative research project Formazione alla cittadinanza per stranieri residenti in Italia deals with the theme of citizenship education. The ultimate goal of this FIERI (Forum Internazionale ed Europeo di Ricerche sull’Immigrazione) project is to compare how citizenship education is addressed in secondary education (i.e., pupils of 14-18 years old) in four different European countries: England, France, the Netherlands and Spain. The focus is on immigrant pupils and schools with a high proportion of pupils with an immigrant background. The main question of this study is whether there are any well-tried projects, lesson packages or textbooks for these specific categories of pupils and schools. This country report describes the situation with regard to citizenship education in the Netherlands. To facilitate putting the topic in a proper perspective, the report also presents a description of the context of citizenship education in the Netherlands and relevant developments in this context. In this analysis, two levels are discerned, the level of Dutch society at large, and the level of education and schools. Topics covered at the level of society include the history of immigration to the Netherlands, different categories of immigrants, the shift in thinking of immigration as an asset to immigration as a problem, the change in policy of integration with maintenance of the own culture to downright assimilation, and integration and active citizenship as an individual obligation and responsibility. Topics at the level of education include an explanation of the structure of the Dutch education system, an overview of successive policies on social and ethnic educational inequality, the effectiveness of these policies, the present educational position of immigrant pupils, and the introduction and implementation of citizenship education