In the Netherlands it is more everyone for himself, sees Roxane van Iperen
The corona crisis makes it clearly visible, writes Roxane van Iperen. Public services have become so impoverished that those who can afford it increase their chances via expensive, private services.
They spend weeks for the tests that will count towards the final exam. Every morning when I came downstairs, she was already sitting at the kitchen table – every night when I disappeared back upstairs, she was still sitting. “I don’t get it, Mom,” she said now and then, with despair in her tribe, “I seem to miss a year of knowledge, too.”
I hear it all around me: almost two years all the way through the first lockdown in March 2020 ushered in a new life for them, full of randomness and unpredictability. Via online ‘lesson’ and general lethargy back to school, where positive corona tests are exchanged to get out of quizzes. Not only do they lack knowledge, but also concentration and motivation. A test can be rescheduled at any time and the school will be closed. ‘Almost everyone has tutoring or homework help,’ my daughter noted dryly, ‘and if you don’t have money, you’re left with a level.’
bad luck
The corona crisis clearly shows what has been going on for some time: public services have become so scarce and eroded that those who lean too much are increasing their chances via expensive, private services. At one time, the premise of the welfare state was to set up a system where no one could sink below zero. from a social-liberal idea, every person had the right to a reasonable basis such as health care and education to be able to develop themselves in freedom from execution – independent of appearance, possession of appearance. After decades focused on ‘participation’, a fancy word for a do-it-yourself society that supplies incomprehensible building kits, a development that does not rely entirely on the state should be mistrusted.
The Rutte era has put burgers on a subsistence diet that has made too little progress to appear fit at the start.
The result: instead of jointly striving for better facilities, it is more every man for himself. Between 2013 and 2020, the number of patients at private clinics grew by 56 percent. The number of private schools doubled between 2015 and 2018. Children are not sent there because they learn the classes and education is not under explosive movements of parents who can afford to send their child to a private school. Also of the 8.5 billion euros that the cabinet has made available to eliminate corona backlogs due to staff shortages for the tutoring industry. Stop flaps for a leaky system, in which the less fortunate are left behind.
The Rutte era has put burgers on a subsistence diet that has made too little progress to appear fit at the start. The result is a morbid belief of mistrust and self-preservation, in which fewer people are willing to probe into the system. Those who have the means arrange their affairs themselves, and the rest, in Rutte’s language, is very unlucky.