A farewell party
Yes today is the day. You might be wondering whose farewell party I am talking about. It is Nora's. She is leaving her school to move to a special school for children with neurological problems. This is the last act of a war that we fought for the last two years and that we definitely lost. The system demanded her to be removed from regular education and be put in special care for the so called "own good", more likely for the good of a mediocre teacher who in no way can handle the 28 mandatory children that the state requires her to teach to.
You might sense some underlying bitterness in my statements, of course reason number one is that I hate to loose, expecially after fighting for two years. Reason number two (and maybe more important) is that I am not at all sure whether in this whole process any of the multiple instances who have been involved actually ever cared about the one thing we care the most, Nora receiving a proper education. By proper I mean an education that allows you to be a good person, a engaged citizen and that does not allow you to just get a job as a receptionist.
You know you can learn how to speak Dutch and eat raw harings but on some points you will always remain a foreigner and the points that I just mentioned about are my alienness give away (next to black hair and 1.60m minus length). I truly do not believe that God made 20% of us worth a master degree, 20% of us worth a bachelor degree and 60% of us worth a practical education (read no education at all). I believe in hard work, spirit of sacrifice, professionality and excellence, but on this belief I am a small minority in this country, as small as not even being worth representation.
I can of course go on for pages and pages ranting about a schooling system that only selects the better children (based on flawed and sterile so called objective testing) instead of inspiring and teaching all children to be better than they think they can be.
But back to us, I am not correct when I say that this is the last act of our war because the struggle will continue on almost unchanged with the new school. There is no reason to believe that they will approach education in a different way than the regular school does, with the addition of being aware that they provide schooling to the "reject" models, so why expecting from them more than regular school would (which is not so much anyway).
We will keep on fighting, but this battle we are not going to loose, that is a promise!
You might sense some underlying bitterness in my statements, of course reason number one is that I hate to loose, expecially after fighting for two years. Reason number two (and maybe more important) is that I am not at all sure whether in this whole process any of the multiple instances who have been involved actually ever cared about the one thing we care the most, Nora receiving a proper education. By proper I mean an education that allows you to be a good person, a engaged citizen and that does not allow you to just get a job as a receptionist.
You know you can learn how to speak Dutch and eat raw harings but on some points you will always remain a foreigner and the points that I just mentioned about are my alienness give away (next to black hair and 1.60m minus length). I truly do not believe that God made 20% of us worth a master degree, 20% of us worth a bachelor degree and 60% of us worth a practical education (read no education at all). I believe in hard work, spirit of sacrifice, professionality and excellence, but on this belief I am a small minority in this country, as small as not even being worth representation.
I can of course go on for pages and pages ranting about a schooling system that only selects the better children (based on flawed and sterile so called objective testing) instead of inspiring and teaching all children to be better than they think they can be.
But back to us, I am not correct when I say that this is the last act of our war because the struggle will continue on almost unchanged with the new school. There is no reason to believe that they will approach education in a different way than the regular school does, with the addition of being aware that they provide schooling to the "reject" models, so why expecting from them more than regular school would (which is not so much anyway).
We will keep on fighting, but this battle we are not going to loose, that is a promise!
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