I caught up with Harry and asked him questions about Kuyper and On Education.
Melvin Flikkema, the general editor of the series claimed: “We are conducting this project because Kuyper is hugely important for the 21st Century." What is it that makes Kuyper so important for today?
Ever since the Chicago Declaration, Evangelical Christians in the USA have for several decades now looked for ways to make a genuinely Christian contribution to public life in their country. Kuyper gives them an inspiring example of a creative, robust, and intellectually responsible response, a century ago, to creeping secularism in some key institutions in his country (church and theology, politics, journalism, elementary and higher education). They like to read about his trailblazing efforts to create room for his fellow confessors at the policy table in his country, by means of what came to be called confessional multiformity and institutionalized worldview pluralism. The only aspect some America readers question is Kuyper’s support of monarchy and his advocacy of sweeping social legislation.
Education was obviously close to Kuyper's heart - why then do you think he didn't include a lecture on Calvinism and education in his Stone Lectures?
Much of Kuyper’s involvement with the education question required his concentrating on the financial inequality of the Dutch school system which favoured the “religionless” government schools and left alternative schools heavily underfunded, He may have felt that setting forth the intricacies of the Dutch school struggle might distract from the main purpose of the Stone Lectures, namely the portrayal of Calvinism as a full-blown match for modern humanism.
It is regrettable that as a result of this more narrow focus, Kuyper’s attention to the intrinsic challenges of Christian education---pedagogy, anthropology, psychology---was largely passed over. He wrote much about family life and child-rearing, and seems to have assumed that a school which required the involvement of the Christian parents would automatically be a Christian school, and that if the teacher was a Christian he would teach Christianly. For these reasons, it was important to include the short appendix in the Education volume that dealt with a critical aspect of pedagogy.
If he had, what might have been the key ideas he would have addressed?
As he briefly wrote in a variety of publications and later explained in Parliament as Prime Minister, he would probably have set forth:
That no education can be religiously neutral.
That no government should support one type of school and ignore all other types.
That Christian schooling demands the involvement of at least four partners: the church (is the faith correctly presented), the government (are pupils introduced to a proper curriculum needed for taking part in national life), parents (does the school help them in keeping their baptismal vows of training the child in the fear of the Lord), and teachers (are they properly trained in sound teaching methods).
A committee of five, headed by Wendy Naylor, made several conference calls to discuss which pieces to include, which to omit, and which to consider one more time. (Naylor wrote her doctoral dissertation on Kuyper and education.)
Were there any pieces that didn't make it in that you thought could have been included?
The speech entitled “Sphere-sovereignty” with which Kuyper opened the Free University in 1880.
What did Kuyper mean when he wrote: 'Education by its very nature is not a political but a social issue'?
The Dutch school system in the 1800s was very much tailored to the stratification in social classes. Primary schools served especially the children of the lower classes, those who would after six years (sometimes less than that) move on to a job to add to the family income. The public secondary school was established in the 1850s and called the Hoogere Burgerschool (school for the upper-middle class) and emphasized besides the humanities, the sciences and commercial subjects. Universities were for the elite who were presumed to have prepared their children for entering the professions by having them taught either in the few Latin schools and gymnasia or at home by tutors.
Now then, the lower classes could get free education at the government schools, but if they chose to send their offspring to non-government (separate, confessional, Christian, Protestant, parochial) schools they would have to pay tuition fees. Such fees could actually be quite low if, as often happened, that school was supported by a (usually non-conformist) church or by a philanthropist. But even low fees were a financial hardship for the lower classes because of their low wages in a competitive free-enterprise system. Kuyper fought his whole life for solving the ‘social question’ by means of labour laws, guaranteed living wages, unemployment and disability insurance, pension schemes, etc.
Why then did Kuyper use political means to achieve his aims regarding education?
Power in parliament would plead with government -- and ultimately force it -- to enact wide-ranging social legislation to alleviate the plight of the working classes, coupled with reform of the national education system that would give parity status to non-government schools and so alleviate the unfair financial burden of its supporters.
Can you briefly explain the background to the school struggle at the time in the Netherlands?
Briefly: The ruling elite was enamoured with the rationalist philosophy born in the Age of Enlightenment. They worked hard to remain master of national education in order to raise the next generation in “right thinking”. They regarded supporters of non-government schools as light-shy obscurantists who still held to an outdated theology.
How influential was Groen van Prinsterer on Kuyper's approach to Christian schools and education?
The two first met at an annual meeting of Christian school supporters. Kuyper had read Groen and agreed with his opposition to the “religionless” government school. As early as 1840, when the authorities regularly hindered the establishment of non-government schools by withholding permits, Groen as a member of a constitutional convention had raised his voice with these words: “Parents who are convinced that the instruction in the existing [government] schools is non-Christian, must not . . . be prevented from providing their children with the kind of education they believe they can justify before God. That coercion, to put it bluntly, is intolerable and ought to stop.” Kuyper would repeatedly harp on the theme that the schools' struggle was also one for freedom of conscience, which he styled “a Netherlandic value par excellence”.
What do you think are Kuyper's strengths?
Intellectual prowess, broad knowledge and universal interests, tenacity. He was a skilful journalist, an inspiring orator, a fighter of rare organizational talent.
... what were his weaknesses?
Vanity, pomposity. At times I suspect him of being a poseur. Queen Wilhelmina responded to him the way Queen Victoria seems to have reacted to Gladstone (don’t preach at me!). He also (like Martin Luther King, Jr.) had a growing sense---these leaders always do, don’t they---of being indispensable to the Cause, underestimating or overshadowing gifted people around them. A fair assessment is found in Michael R. Wagenman, Engaging the World with Abraham Kuyper (Lexham Press, 2019).
What do you make of the claims of some Reformed theologians that Kuyper advocated a two-kingdoms approach?
A woeful misconstrual. In the words of S.U. Zuidema: it ignores the import of his theology and the entire thrust of his life and career. People need to read his multi-volume Pro Rege. Admittedly, however, there are in Kuyper some formulations and ambiguous concepts that might lead one to read him that way. Zuidema has offered a most thorough-going analysis of this problem in an article in which he crossed swords with Van Ruler and J. Ridderbos, entitled “Common Grace and Christian Action in Abraham Kuyper,” in his collected essays Communication and Confrontation (Assen/Kampen: Van Gorcum/Kok, 1972), 52−105.
[Also available in Steve Bishop and John Kok (eds) On Kuyper. Dordt College Press, 2013.]
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