The Dutch government is in crisis, again
Drama over the education budget is the third national embarrassment in as many weeks
Last week, the Dutch cabinet proposed cuts that would slash the education budget by a staggering two billion euros. They targeted all sectors of education: vocational schools, primary schools, secondary education, universities, internationalization programs, and research grants.
The proposal was met with outrage, both on the streets and in parliament. Twenty thousand students and educational staff protested in The Hague on Monday. In the Tweede Kamer, the opposition formed a “monster coalition” against the proposal so swiftly that just days after the cuts were proposed, it already seems unlikely that they will pass.
On the surface it seems like a particularly stupid time to defund education, considering the severity of the ongoing problems in Dutch schools. We have teacher shortages and more special education students than ever. Language and math skills are abysmal. Dutch students are among the worst readers in Europe.
The cabinet vaguely and unconvincingly argued that education cuts are necessary because of a sort of... lack of efficiency. Only the most cold-hearted conservatives could insist that the quality of education is determined by its “efficiency,” but more to the point is that any inefficiencies in Dutch education are the result of twenty years of neoliberal policies specifically designed to make public education inefficient.
I wrote the forces behind this system in detail last year, in a post called Dutch kids can’t read because of capitalism.
In addition to their pathological aversion to public services, rooted in the belief that everything, including preschools, should be run like corporations, neoliberals want to make public education inefficient because public education is expensive for the state. When the state foots the bill, no one profits. And when schools are defunded to the point of inefficiency, it becomes easy for politicians to make the case that the private sector needs to step in. Ultimately, privatizing public education is a way to convert the public cost of education into private profits.
As Noam Chomsky explained in a 2011 lecture:
[T]here is a standard technique of privatization, namely defund what you want to privatize. Like when Thatcher wanted to defund the railroads, first thing to do is defund them, then they don’t work and people get angry and they want a change. You say okay, privatize them and then they get worse. In that case the government had to step in and rescue it.
That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.
Education has been slowly defunded in the Netherlands over the last twenty years; it is already privatized in many ways. I think, or I hope, that the strong public outcry over the proposed cuts signifies an understanding that privatization has already gone too far, and that what we actually need is more state intervention, not less.
As of this writing, the education cuts are still in negotiation. We’ll find out what happens after an official vote on the budget next week.
This mess comes at a particularly shaky time for our young government. All of the reporting out of The Hague suggests so much discord within the cabinet that there’s no way it will survive much longer.
Education cuts are not this cabinet’s first failure, far from it. They failed to establish a state of emergency around a nonexistent phenomenon they called “asylum crisis.” They failed to pass a VAT increase on theaters, museums, books, and sports. They embarrassed themselves on the world’s stage after a week of riots in Amsterdam. The cabinet almost collapsed last week after a minister resigned. Public confidence in the cabinet and prime minister is in sharp decline.
When this cabinet inevitably falls we are in for a lot more political chaos. I hope that out of this mess emerges a new leader, one with true convictions and a clear moral perspective. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess who this will or could be.
And one last note about how politics in the Netherlands works…
Actually, two different opposition coalitions formed against the education cuts. One on the left, and one on the right. Each proposed their own plans to come up with two billion euros. The left-wing opposition (SP, Denk, Volt, Partij voor de Dieren, and GL-PvdA) targeted corporate tax avoidance structures, taxes for tech companies, and fossil subsidies. The right-wing alliance (D66, CDA, JA21 and ChristenUnie), went after health care.
There are fifteen political parties represented in the Dutch parliament; the Netherlands has one of the highest rates of “effective number of parties” in the world. This means that collaboration is required to get anything done. Sometimes, when parties can’t compromise, it seems overly complicated. I think this dust up over education cuts demonstrates the positive side of a fragmented political system. Its flexibility allows for unconventional alliances and creative solutions. And, also on the plus side, it can prevent the governing coalition from getting away with its stupidest ideas.
🔥 Hot Linkjes
Society
The Guardian profiled the suburb of Oosterwold, “a living experiment in urban agriculture,” which requires residents to produce food on 50% of their property.
Office workers are opting for sneakers over more traditional footwear in a new trend called versneakering. And here I thought we’d never move on from the tyranny of those two-buckle leather shoes.
Dutch students are so uninterested French that it’s getting hard for schools to maintain French programs. Le Monde reports on this “quiet but worrying linguistic catastrophe.”
64% of Dutch people are expected to be overweight by 2050. Dutch Review.
Politics
The Netherlands has more manure than it can dispose of thanks to EU emissions regulations restricting its use as fertilizer. Now the EU is in a trade row with the NL over scheme designed to reduce our shit stock. Financial Times.
Business
Economy Minister Dirk Beljaarts is hustling to avoid new tariffs by establishing a “one-to-one” trade relationship between the Netherlands and Trump’s upcoming administration. Financial Times.
Arts & Books & Design
Royal Asscher, the Amsterdam diamond company responsible for cutting the English crown jewels, is celebrating its 170th anniversary. The New York Times.
Rotterdam returned 68 art objects unlawfully acquired from Indonesia. The Art Newspaper.
Sport
Max Verstappen won his fourth Formula 1 world championship in Las Vegas. NBC News.
Crime
An underage Dutch girl, who threatened on social media to shoot people at six secondary schools in Breda, was arrested in Belgium. Brussels Times.
🥳 Leuke Dingetjes
During a drug raid, Dutch police discovered a “visibly startled” 2kg garden gnome made entirely of MDMA. The location was “a strange place to keep a garden gnome. That’s why we decided to test [it] for narcotics.”
BBC.
✨ BNer’s Corner
Here’s a new section, where I will highlight the most ridiculous Dutch celebrity gossip of the week. (Famous Dutch people are known as BNer’s—bekende Nederlanders.)
Showbiz journalist Rob Goossens had a flirtatious text affair with… someone. This someone might have been a person, but—as his own girlfriend (allegedly?) pointed out to him when she read their texts—was probably was a bot? Who catfished him on purpose? He went on RTL Boulevard (a show he appears on regularly) and performed the most Dutch (straightforward and low-key shameless) confession imaginable.
📺 Kijk/Lees/Luister List
What I enjoyed watching, reading, and listening to this week.
TV / Movies
I finished The Staircase, the HBO series I mentioned last week. It’s SO GOOD I’ll have to mention it again. It’s based on a real life murder mystery, but don’t let that turn you off, it’s excellent.
Articles / Books
A handy aggregated list of all the “Best Books of 2024” lists via Largehearted Boy.
“Invisible Man” by Patrick Fealey in Esquire, an incredible firsthand account of homelessness in America by a former arts critic.
“Is Creativity Dead?” by Kirby Ferguson in New York Times Opinion.
*all typos in this post are on purpose
The MDMA garden gnome! I’m dying 😂😂😂
you're so good at giving context and overview!