A Dutch School in Holland: Het Aloysius College
All you Dutch practicers may want to have a peek at the website for a Dutch secondary school. The school we picked is the one that one of our friends went to: the “Aloysius College” in Den Haag (The Hague). Have a look at the fairly comprehensive website.
For some hard core Dutch practice have a go at reading the school rules. Our friend says that there is a fair chance that the pupils do actually follow these especially as these rules apparently don’t exclude nipping out to the chip shop opposite the school for lunch!
Note golden rule #5 in the list of rules:
“Op school spreken we alleen Nederlands. We vinden het belangrijk dat iedereen elkaar begrijpt, maar dan moeten we elkaar wel kunnen verstaan! Als je het leuk vindt, mag je wel de talen spreken die in de lessen worden geleerd.”
The second sentence is a relatively rare example of a Dutch pun based on the fact that in Dutch the verb for to understand (as in to comprehend facts, ideas and concepts) is begrijpen while the verb verstaan means means to understand in the sense of being able to hear and interpret what the speaker was saying.
Tags: Aloysius College, School
June 20th, 2008 at 8:26 am
So there is actually a school rule requiring pupils (and staff ?) to use only the Dutch language - unless speaking in or about another language taught in class, in the school ?
Does this mean that a group of friends or siblings would be breaking the rules if speaking some other language among themselves, say in the playground, for example ? I’m thinking of the case of pupils who speak another language at home, perhaps because their family comes from another part of the world. Don’t they resent having their language banned in school ? Does anyone complain ?
June 20th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I expect that rule #5 and most of the other rules leave the staff room for judgement. Frankly I’d be surprised if siblings got ‘booked’ for having a quick conversation in their native language - even if only because nobody would notice or object.
The Aloysius College is actually rather a nice and pleasant school (have a look at the rest of the website too) and I expect the thought behind the various rules is that the pupils actually get a decent education and everybody is as happy as possible.