Page 15 - Getting of the fence

Stemming from the 18th century tradition of Enlightenment, education in the 1 19th century was primarily concerned with a moral and social purpose. According
to Wilhelm (2005), “young people were expected to make their acquaintance with
accepted and respected authors, as it was believed that reading their literature
would educate youngsters to become valued citizens and morally good people” (p.
72). Importantly, “the written language of the great writers was seen as the actual
language and the everyday spoken language as degenerate” (Kwakernaak 1997b, p.
137). The importance of the integration of language acquisition through literary
texts was emphasized during a meeting held in 1879: “The school - whichever it is -
must educate civilized but also useful people for life, that is to say for our purpose:
the student must learn to understand and enjoy the works of excellent writers
and poets, but must also be able to express intelligibly his thoughts to strangers
(whose language he has learnt) as well as understand them” (de Melker, 1970, p.
19). Although it was believed that studying literary texts had a formative effect,
explicit instruction consisted of the study of literary history where students were
offered overviews, names and titles of works of important authors, and extracts of
texts that they were required to translate.
In this period, the study of literary texts was connected to an oral examination. The focus of these oral examinations was the major literary periods which were exemplified by several important literary texts. Because the exam programme stated that the candidate “was able to properly account for the application of the language rules”, besides literary knowledge, fluency was examined as well (Kwakernaak, 2014). That these requirements were too demanding is evidenced by criticism at the time. The leading education inspector Dr. Parvé, for example, had his reservations about examining literary history in the oral exams, because this often degenerated into a superficial recitation of dates and other facts (Kwakernaak 1997a, p. 111). Multiple complaints about the dominant position of literary history led to a reduction in the requirements: in 1901, students were examined on only one or two major literary periods and more emphasis was put on the texts themselves.
Another criticism concerned the dual focus of these exams, i.e. literary knowledge and fluency. The Messages and Announcements report of 1899 - 1902 states that “Discussion of works read by students can only be properly conducted in Dutch: Only in the mother tongue do feelings and thoughts immediately evoke similar words” (de Melker, 1970, p. 21). Issues with combining the oral exam and literary knowledge remained throughout this period. In 1963 for example, Verhoeff
General introduction
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