Kees Boeke
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Cornelis "Kees" Boeke (25 September 1884 – 3 July 1966)
Boeke tried to reform education by allowing the children to contribute their ideas. He called this process
Biography
Boeke was born on 25 September 1884 to a
After the First World War, Boeke erected a large conference centre in Bilthoven, which he called "Brotherhood House." The first international peace conference took place there between 4 and 11 October 1919. Present at the conference were
Kees and Betty Boeke considered war to be rooted in the entanglement of the state and capitalism. As Betty was a Cadbury, she inherited large shares in her family's firm. She renounced her wealth, transferring this money to various charitable organizations such as the Quaker-Help Organisation in Russia in 1920. Later, she gave the shares to a trust for the workers of the Cadbury factory. For a while, the Boekes abstained from using money, so as to avoid contributing to the state — since public funds are also spent on weapons. They never used public transport, nor did they pay postage, tolls, or taxes. As a result, they were imprisoned several times. On one occasion the Dutch tax authorities auctioned off the estate in order to recover taxes. Queen Wilhelmina was in attendance at the auction, and purchased Kees' favorite violin, only to return it to him on the spot. Boeke supported his family by working in Utrecht in a building association which he had founded; he did not work as an architect (which was his training), but as a simple worker.
In the late 1920s Boeke increasingly withdrew from international peace movements. Believing he could build a better society through educating children, he started a school called "De werkplaats" (the workshop). He founded his school in 1926 when all private schools, including the
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His school, which uses
Co-responsibility in school did not mean a freewheeling life at "the Werkplaats". Children had to perform tasks such as cleaning the school, growing vegetables and fruits, and helping with lunch cooking. Boeke's notion of sociocracy was, in effect, a secular implementation of the Quaker ideals applied to education in such a way that children were treated as adults, and were on first-name terms with their teachers.
In WWII, Kees and Betty sheltered Jews at their own peril, saving several lives. For this work, they were enshrined in Yad Vashem ([4]) in 1992.
Boeke wrote a major book on education. One of his last works was Cosmic View (New York 1957).
On 3 July 1966, Boeke died in the company of his family in Abcoude, Netherlands.[1]
Legacy
Boeke's system of sociocracy still survives, and his work was expanded upon through the efforts of a well-known student of Boeke's ideas, Dr. Gerard Endenburg, who in the 1960s and 1970s developed a governance and decision-making methodology by the same name while directing the Endenburg Electrotechniek company.
Boeke's essay/book Cosmic View (1957) presents a seminal view of the universe, from the galactic to the microscopic scale. It inspired several films:
- Cosmic Zoom (1968) produced by the National Film Board of Canada
- Powers of Ten (1968; new version in 1977) by Charles and Ray Eames
- The IMAX film Cosmic Voyage (1996) produced for the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.
- Superpowers of Ten (2013), a theater piece produced by ZKMin Karlsruhe
- Cosmic View is mentioned as an inspiration by Will Wright, creator of a video game, Spore (2008).[5]
See also
External links
Media related to Kees Boeke at Wikimedia Commons
- (in Dutch) Official Website of the Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap
- (in Dutch) Archief Kees Boeke
- Online copy of the book Cosmic View
- Cosmic View, the Universe in 40 Jumps (1957, John Day Company)
References
- ^ Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
- ^ a b Ojajärvi Rony. Spirit of the Comintern? Historical Contexts of the Movement towards a Christian international 1919-1923. In Kircliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History 1/2020, 168-178.
- ^ (Dutch) De school van Beatrix. Andere Tijden, 25 september 2008
- ^ Yad Vashem 4963.1
- ^ Cosmic view, inspiration for a video game. The Guardian, 14 September 2008