The Dutch minister of Education, Maria van der Hoeven, attended this week the "reopening" ceremony of Cosmicus College and talked about making history. She gave the school a subsidy of 300,000 euro because she found the teaching program impressive, the participation of the parents innovative and because the education at Cosmicus is directed at integration.
However, critics say that school is not the ideal example of integration, since almost all students in the school come from Turkish background. Turkish-Dutch were were also by far the majority at the opening ceremony.
Other schools in Rotterdam oppose the new school. Willem Vonk, rector of Citycollege Fransiscus thinks it's completely ridiculous the school is receiving a subsidy as it encourages segregation and not integration. "This school is completely oriented towards Turkish culture," says Jan Kweekel, rector of Melanchthon college.
Vonk adds that another problem with Cosmicus is that it draws away the successful Turkish students from other schools in the inner city. Students need to get a high score on exams in order to be accepted.
The school was founded by the Cosmicus Foundation, an association for students, alumni and academicians of Turkish origin. The organization has founded homework help courses across the country. Gürkan Celik, the president of the association has dreamed of founding a school for two years, but according to Mehmet Cerit, the principal of Cosmicus, they couldn't get the minimum amount of students in order to start.
The two networked with the Rotterdam municipality, the Multicultural Institute Forum and the Education Minister as well as with schools in Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.
Finally Rald Visser, head of LMC, a Rotterdam school umbrella organization, took them under his wing. With 10,000 students of his own, he freed them from having to attain a minimum amount of students.
The school opened in August and now there are four classes with 88 students. They're currently learning in rented office space but hope to move to their own premises.
Rald Visser sees Cosmicus as a gift from heaven. LMC has lost 3,000 students last year, who have moved to schools on the outskirts of the city. Cosmicus is an initiative that can help stop the exodus from the inner city.
Vonk and Kweekal accuse the school of starting off a segregated school "under the radar", but Visser says they're just afraid of the competition. The principal is Muslim, but it's a regular Dutch school, with a mixed physical education classes and a Christmas tree. They have Turkish as well as Dutch teachers. He points out is organization can only run general and Christian schools, not Muslim ones.
Rait Bal, former president of ISBO (Organization of Muslim School Managements) says several members of the Cosmicus organization are members of Nurcu, a Turkish Islamic faction which founds schools and boarding schools for Turkish children worldwide. But Cosmicus College doesn't mention Nurcu in their advertising. The school advertises itself as a school for the "world citizen" that wants to promote meeting and dialog between ethnicity and culture. A school with personal attention to the student.
Mehmet Cerit says Nurcu is not mentioned since religion is a private matter and does not belong to the school. The management of Cosmicus Foundation and the school is strictly separate.
According to van der Hoeven, the school will be followed in the upcoming years to see if students of other backgrounds join the school. According to Cerit, most students are Turkish since they're more known in Turkish society and since they recruited their first students from there.
Source: NRC (Dutch)
I found some information here about the Nurcu movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment