Policy Plan 2024

The focus of the Denkroutes Foundation in the coming years

The next two to three years will be needed to gather people around the following projects, initiate them, develop them further together and implement them:

Peace visualized – inspiration, idealism and identity. A social and educational project in which the understanding of the concept of “peace” is deepened. By stripping it of noncommittal sweetness, we strive to translate this concept into action – or at least to impress upon our target group the relevance of this and to offer a perspective for action.

Part of this project is Peace People at Work. Young people are brought into contact with professional peacebuilders and interviewed about their work, how they define peace, how they build it daily, what they see as their radius of action and how they came to such a career. These interviews should lead to a large number of inspiring, written and drawn portraits.

A second part of this project is the pursuit of the creation of the graphic novel Jazzy and the Footsteps of Bertha von Suttner. We take this 19th-century pacifist and feminist as a source of inspiration. In the time and Europe in which she lived, militarism was at its peak. Her thinking is extremely relevant and illuminating for today. Also important in her legacy: her presence at the Hague peace conferences in 1899 and 1907 brought the realization of the Peace Palace closer and she had a major input in the creation of the Nobel Peace Prize. She expressed her analyses and idealism in an accessible way in the world-famous novel De Wapens Neer! In turn, we portray these ideals and how they can shape our identity in this day and age in a graphic novel. This story takes place in The Hague today.

A third part of the Vrede Verbeeld project is an exchange between secondary schools in The Hague and Germany and Austria: schools named after Bertha von Suttner. Young people and their teachers explore what it means to live in “The city of peace and justice” or to be formed at a school that has Bertha von Suttner as its patron saint.

The above project could possibly be expanded into a series of stories with the (provisional) titles Lot and the footsteps of Mozart (about fast fashion and child labor), Carl and the footsteps of Anton de Kom (about resistance and its social context) and Orlando and the footsteps of Tjalie Robinson (about assimilation and integration). Another conceivable sequel to the larger project Vrede Verbeeld is the publication of an illustrated atlas about the many travels of Bertha von Suttner.

Other plans and projects in progress:

Hooray, the Wilhelmus is sounding!

A multi-perspective, richly illustrated scrapbook about how the anthem of the House of Orange became the anthem of us all.

The Wilhelmus activity book

A three-day project for secondary schools in the Netherlands about solidarity – and especially the skill of working on it independently and inclusively.

Masamuda Mood

A youth novel about the value and significance of knowledge about archaeology and historical ways of life for young people in the 21st century, based on the educational archaeological heritage in Broekpolder in Vlaardingen.

Dwellers of Dutch Coasts

A growing series of historical portraits of coastal and delta residents who talk about how proximity to water shapes their lives.

Who is your hero?

Developing educational materials to give substance to the celebration of International Women's Day in secondary education.

That's what I'm going to sing about:

A toolkit and trajectory coaching for teachers in group 8 in primary education to use local history and heritage for a final musical written by the students themselves.

What these projects have in common is that they assume that increasing knowledge and curiosity go hand in hand, but also that this knowledge cannot be unambiguous.

Polyphony gives participants in thought routes the space to determine their own direction and interpretation. It nourishes the teacher. This results in more insight, overview, control, understanding and empathy – not automatically, but when people are well coached by others who are flexible and innovative in mapping out those thought routes, but at the same time know how to keep a larger goal in mind. Here: a greater appreciation for each other and the free, safe and inclusive society in which we live and the will and freedom to dare to take responsibility and help build society.

An analysis of the environment

In the domains mentioned, there are many opportunities for developing refreshing and unifying initiatives, either using more traditional media (where actually meeting each other physically is also appropriate), or using digital means and preferably a combination of both, so that a broad audience can be reached intensively.

Which developments are relevant for the organization?

The substantive renewal of the curriculum in primary and secondary education, the revised Canon of the Netherlands and the need for cultural institutions such as museums to move along offer an abundance of opportunities for the Foundation. In fact, it believes that there is a need to respond to these developments.

She also expects to be able to play a positive role in:

Making education more future-proof by responding to 'decompartmentalisation' or cross-disciplinary approaches;

At the same time, not trivializing the differences in professional attitudes, skills, methods, insights and knowledge that are needed to give depth to different disciplines – the different perspectives that this produces – is precisely the added value of inter-, intra-, multi- and meta-disciplinary approaches;

An increase in international exchanges due to greater demand for integration at European level;

Increased accessibility of archives (for example through digitization);

And the expected demand for preserving the value of 'difficult' knowledge and insight in an environment where the focus will increasingly be on skills in the coming years.

Do these developments pose a threat or an opportunity for the organization?

Of course, one can ask what the unique contribution of the Denkroutes foundation is and will be. There are many providers of educational services. One answer to this is that it is precisely the synthesis of domains and expertise that brings the added value.

In order to build up expertise and keep it up to date, the board members and officials all work in culture and/or education. As is known, these are fields of work in which over-demanding employees is the order of the day. A threat to the effectiveness of this foundation is therefore mainly the lack of time. This is also related to the fact that setting up well-timed information campaigns and fundraising is a challenge.

The positive side of this coin is that initiatives are being developed from the field, which better guarantee demand-orientation and realistic expectations.

Our core values and definitions

Education

Important tasks of education are qualification, socialization and initiation into an adult society. This is done in an authentic and efficient way by working together in groups of people with corresponding learning needs.

Education

Education has a slightly different connotation than teaching. In this, the 'knowledgeable partner' and the one who wants to learn may both be fully grown but perhaps not yet mature in the sense of daring to take responsibility. It can also be understood as learning (on) partial aspects. In education, even more than in teaching, the 'acceleration idea' is assumed, namely that not everything has to be learned through investigative learning, through trial and error, with coaching or Socratic questions, but that questions from the learner may receive a short and clear answer from the educator. This gives the learner the opportunity to acquire knowledge, insights, skills and attitudes more quickly.

Culture

A combination of values. Expressions of those values are a set of rules and responsibilities that are jointly recognized. Expressions are also the visualization and making tangible of what is considered beautiful and valuable. Expressions are also reflective, critical and practical thinking. This can take the form of traditions, human intervention in nature (cultural landscape) and disciplines such as visual arts, architecture, film, music, theater, dance, literature, photography, etc.

Heritage

Places and objects that are recognized but also discussed as carriers of what binds us. Often heritage also offers a link between us and a past and thus previous generations. Heritage is preserved and cherished because it is considered valuable for future residents and users of those places and objects.

Nature

Nature seems to be practically absent in the Netherlands and at the same time it is everywhere around us. Landscape, biodiversity, climate, water, air, food and freedom of movement, all of this determines our culture. The miracle of the human body is also nature (human intervention such as medication or tattoos can then be considered culture). The realization that humanity is dependent on nature provides refreshing self-relativization and appreciation of our environment, both leading to a necessary open, inclusive attitude. Recently, research has again proven that the appreciation of nature is increased by spending a lot of time there.

Teacher

We are not talking about 'a teacher' in the sense of a teacher or lecturer, but as a force that lies within all of us. Call it inventiveness, curiosity, the felt desire and necessity to learn or thirst for knowledge and insights. Directly in line is the experience of satisfaction and success and the observation that nature, culture, society and ways to develop one's own initiatives in this, to share and to find allies are 'learnable'.

Pedagogical assignment

Following Gert Biesta, we argue here that an important pedagogical task is to initiate newcomers into a mature culture - mature in the sense of taking responsibility, seeing responsibilities, daring to be involved with fellow human beings and society, taking action and standing up for the consequences of those actions.

Newcomers

Anyone who needs and wants to be introduced into a society in which inclusiveness and democratic culture are guiding principles. These include children, young adults and often (still) adults, and not just immigrants, international students and expats who strive for integration.

Society

In this text, society and community are used interchangeably. The term 'citizenship' also requires further elaboration. And because this term is currently a much-discussed term, we reserve the opportunity to define this term further later.

Organizations we feel connected to or are inspired by:

• Euroclio (for an open, international exchange where an apolitical but professional attitude is paramount, the ability to reflect our national preoccupations on other perspectives)
• Nivoz (for making the pedagogical task visible, discussable, researchable and evolvable)
• IBO (for the complete implementation of educational perspectives in the classroom, inclusive education elaborated down to the finest fibers)
• Education is a joint effort (for the example of citizenship education and interdisciplinary, inclusive, activating didactics)
• VGN (for substantive discussions, concerns about the direction of history education)
• Council of Europe (for a broad and more sustainable view of democratic culture)