Introduction

The inclusion of cultural education as a separate policy area in this book on cultural policy in the Netherlands is not self-evident. Cultural education is a hybrid field. It includes learning and teaching arts and cultural subjects at primary and secondary school (formal education) but also acquiring and transmitting arts and aesthetic/cultural competencies in other, non-formal and informal settings: e.g., art and music classes as a leisure activity, the educational activities of museums and other cultural organisations, and ‘learning by doing’ as an amateur. A chapter regarding cultural education at school might therefore just as well have been part of a book on Dutch education policy, while out-of-school cultural education might be part of a book on leisure policy.

The fact that cultural education policy is often considered a branch of cultural policy reflects a key problem in Dutch cultural education policy itself: its justification from the perspective of arts and culture and its virtual absence in mainstream education policy. Schools, especially primary schools, are often criticised by arts and cultural professionals (and by parents who value the arts and culture highly) for doing too little and not doing it properly. While this is not a crucial issue in official education policy—to put it mildly—several initiatives to promote cultural education at school have been taken from the perspective of arts advocacy and cultural policy. One can imagine that this may well reproduce the often-cited gap between ‘school and culture’ instead of narrowing it. There is an obvious paradox or vicious circle here: the deplored marginal position of the arts in school (Raad voor Cultuur & Onderwijsraad 2012) is supposed to be improved by measures that are marginal to schools.

This chapter explores cultural education's hybrid character as a policy domain as well as continuities and discontinuities in Dutch cultural education policy since the 1990s. Section 2 addresses the justification of public policy based on values attributed to cultural education. The desired and expected benefits of cultural education for individual learners and for society vary from arts-centred learning effects to various non-arts outcomes, and from broad values to more or less specific goals.