Insights From Practice

Abstract

This essay, in discussing religious education in the Netherlands, takes its starting point in the dual Dutch educational system of denominational private schools and public state schools. For several reasons, the stringent dividing line between religiously neutral state schools and religious or denominational schools is no longer defensible. On the basis of an empirical as well as a normative line of thought, the author argues for multireligious schools. Such schools would meet the demand for coherence-and, thus, particularismby stressing the need for a stable primary-and secondary-school culture, and at the same time would address the plurality of social, cultural, and religious traditions among students.