“Behave yourself” is what parents and teachers in Spain and Argentina usually say when children fail to follow established social codes. “Doe normaal” (“act normal”), on the other hand, is what parents and teachers say in the Netherlands.

At first it might sound like a naive phrase or an insignificant difference. However, one has to have lived in the depths of the Netherlands for several years to really understand what that simple sentence means for someone who is still growing up.

Being normal (within the norm, normalized) is one of the greatest social achievements of the Dutch system, where everything works like a perfectly assembled machine.

How many times do we think that in other countries everything works, while ours is a disaster? How often do we gaze in wonder at spotless, orderly countries and lament that ours isn’t like that?

Well, it’s just a matter of experiencing one of these systems—worthy of the land of elves—to see the price that is paid for such foresight and organization: a cost that begins to be exacted from the very first days of life.
A system of maternity nurses (kraamzorg) “accompanies” and “assists” brand-new parents during the first weeks, while at the same time examining the newborn and monitoring family dynamics, from sleep and feeding cycles to visitors. A kind of sweetened, subtle coercion that, over the years, settles in firmly, laying down rules and modes of behavior under strict social control.

“From time to time he would lift his eyes to that immense face gazing down on him from the wall opposite.”
George Orwell, 1984

A society that is articulated so systematically inevitably runs into conflict when families used to different dynamics challenge the prescribed normality of the system—especially once they enter the school system, where control is exercised most strongly.

Brave New World

“Brave New World” is the most famous novel by British writer Aldous Huxley, first published in 1932. The novel is a dystopia anticipating advances in reproductive technology, human cultivation and hypnopaedia, and emotional management through drugs (soma), which together radically reshape society.

The world Huxley describes could be seen as a utopia, though an ironic and ambiguous one: humanity is ordered into castes, where everyone knows and accepts their place in the social machinery—healthy, technologically advanced, and sexually liberated.

No one escapes the system because it is perfect and it works.

And above all, because the propaganda both produced and consumed makes the people firmly believe they are living in the perfect world. War and poverty have been eradicated, and everyone is permanently happy.

Yet the paradox is that all of this has been achieved by eliminating many other things: family, cultural diversity, art, scientific progress, literature, religion, improvisation, philosophy, love, imperfection…
The Netherlands prides itself on high educational standards and outcomes, confirmed by various international institutions (PISA reports, etc.). Other reports also claim that Dutch children are “the happiest in the world”, and media outlets across the globe echo this message.

Naturally, questions arise: How is happiness measured? What is education? What factors are measurable? What categories are analyzed? What does “quality of life” mean?

In the Netherlands, such messages are constantly promoted, while voices of self-criticism are repressed.

Nor does anyone speak of the high percentage of workers suffering from burnout and depression

The country’s self-promotion is a perfectly functioning machine. The marketing behind it is subtle and relentless, reinforcing a sense of calm and superiority. Never before had I experienced this dynamic of a country as if it were a corporation.

Those of us who have seen other systems often feel a kind of alienation. As my friend says: “Living in the Netherlands is like living in a model village—everything looks perfect.”

Or does it?

Because there are indeed things that don’t work, but the Dutch are unwilling to acknowledge them—for that would mean destroying the image of an idealized place. And ultimately, that would harm the economy, which is the biggest concern.

Laura Basu explains in her article that we shouldn’t be surprised by the chaos in the Netherlands. With elections looming, the country’s image as Europe’s paragon is beginning to fade:

"What is happening is what always happens in this country, we don't talk about it.

If we don't talk about it, it does not exist"

The inability to question the system is largely tied to maintaining an air of economic and social superiority.

We already saw how, during the pandemic, the Dutch government pointed fingers at the “southern countries” for not managing their economies well (though Rutte conveniently failed to mention that the Netherlands is a tax haven feeding parasitically on its neighbors).

He also declared that, unlike the poorly managed lockdowns elsewhere, in the Netherlands quarantine would be carried out “intelligently.”
Needless to say, this “intelligent management” didn’t work, and the country ended up with one of the highest death rates per million inhabitants.
But that doesn’t matter. It never made the news, so for most citizens the government acted wisely, and the country remains perfect and intelligent—or at least more intelligent than others (?).

Both in Argentina and in Spain, the other two countries where I have lived, it is common to hear: “in this country everything goes wrong” or “politicians are a disaster”—not just in daily conversations but also on the radio, in films, as in “Argentina is a trap.”

In contrast, in the Netherlands there is very little criticism of politicians or the monarchy, and public discourse is utterly devoid of emotion or passion.

I don’t mean to say their statements are lies, no. What I am saying is that they sell themselves a beautiful package and then buy into it themselves. They believe their politicians, they believe they are being told the truth.

And we all end up buying into this narrative.

My husband and I bought into it when we moved here, seduced by the propaganda. So do education researchers and teachers abroad who analyze Dutch systems based on reports that don’t match reality.

So do professionals recruited to work for companies headquartered in the Netherlands—highly qualified, with their education financed by other countries, but ultimately cheaper labor than the Dutch themselves.

Most expats (since the word “immigrants” carries a negative connotation, foreigners prefer to call themselves expats—a label that suggests a skilled, welcome professional in a rich country hungry for strong, qualified labor) live in Amsterdam, a city with the dynamism of the world’s major cosmopolitan capitals. But...

Amsterdam is not the Netherlands.

Amsterdam is a bubble within the country, a bubble that contains the vast majority of expats. Anyone can live their entire life in Amsterdam without speaking Dutch; as long as you speak English, you can run a business or even manage a multinational.

The conflict arises when the expat family grows and their children must enter the Dutch school system. Then the bubble bursts, and many foreigners are forced to leave because they run up against a strict, tightly controlled system, where family involvement is undermined by the language barrier. The same happens when families are pushed out of Amsterdam due to lack of space and unaffordable housing prices.

To make matters worse, expat families usually lack extended family support, which means they must rely on daycare—where costs are sky-high.

And here again the Dutch fantasy bubble bursts: the government pays part of the daycare costs, but these subsidies are a double-edged sword, because they are actually loans that the government later reassesses based on family income.

Dutch childcare benefit scandal

This led, in recent years, to thousands of parents (especially from ethnic minorities) being accused of fraud when in fact it had been a supposed “error” by the state. This oh-so-perfect system harassed and criminalized thousands of families—mostly of Turkish and Moroccan origin—accused of defrauding childcare benefits they had used to look after their children. Many were forced to repay enormous sums, sometimes up to €100,000 within weeks, losing their homes and jobs in the process. Most outrageous of all, they were denied any right of appeal.

“At first I thought it was an isolated incident, but as years went by I saw more and more Dutch colleagues calling me with the same problem. I realized they were being targeted by nationality, and that’s when I brought the case to the authorities,” said Spanish lawyer Eva González, who exposed the corruption.

Of course, no one talks about Dutch corruption. The government made a show of resigning to save face, but remained firmly in place, arguing that it was not an “appropriate” time for the country.

Once again, a country that presents itself as open-minded and welcoming of other cultures proves that here, people are not integrated—they are tolerated as long as they are useful.

But tolerating is not the same as integrating.

For instance, in this supposedly inclusive, progressive, modern country that claims to respect individualities and identities, the 1985 Transgender Law, while allowing trans people to change their legal gender on birth certificates, simultaneously required irreversible sterilization—a requirement only abolished in 2014, after affecting more than 2,000 people.

We find not only the racist undertones of the Zwarte Piet tradition (the “Black Pete,” supposedly a humorous figure for the Dutch—once a slave, now Sinterklaas’s “helper”), but also structural and institutionalized racism throughout daily political and social discourse. As Sylvana Simons explains: “Racism in the Netherlands is structural and institutionalized.”

Just two weeks ago we tried to file a bullying complaint against my son’s school, which was itself responsible for the harassment. Not only were we prevented from filing the complaint, but the teacher literally told us: “You should try a school that’s not that white, you know what I mean.”

And we wonder: Why can’t we file the complaint?
Why does the same thing happen to my friend, a victim of domestic violence, who is unable to have a complaint registered by the very police officers who visit her home every time her husband beats her, see the bruises and injuries, and even watch the videos of him hitting her in front of their children—only to label the report as “a family argument”?

Simply because if there are more official complaints, the national indicators (on violence, education, health—those used to compare countries) go down.

And if the indicators go down, the Netherlands stops looking like the marvel it is selling to the world.

In his country, you don’t say what is really happening.

Of course, I’m not the first to notice this. For those interested, here’s an article explaining why foreigners rarely stay more than ten years.
Returning to education: while it may be true that the Netherlands aims to implement “New Age” learning, this goal is far from the reality of its schools. The well-meaning intention of fostering student independence collides with requirements of quality, standardization, order, and competition—imposed through constant grading. From primary school onward, the CITO test scores determine not only students’ future careers and social status but also the amount of money each school will receive from the state.

Public schools therefore select students based on their parents’ credentials, checking the family’s educational background in the hope that they will push their children to achieve above average—ensuring more funding for the school. (I speak from experience: a principal once tried to recruit my son to fill his foreign-student quota, assuring me not to worry about our postal code being outside the district, because he could “fix” the lists.)

Thanks to this corporate-style system of rewards, “black schools” inevitably arise—those located in poorer neighborhoods, where families (mainly immigrants) have less access to education and thus do not demand above-average performance from their children.

Unsurprisingly, the issue is kept out of sight, and on the rare occasions it emerges, the narrative suggests it is already taken care of, like in this article.

There are more than 500 “black schools” in the Netherlands.

“Doe normaal” is the foundation of Dutch education.

At the same time, the severe shortage of teachers—especially in daycare centers and primary schools (where wages are so low that young people prefer other careers)—has led to the closure of numerous classes and schools. The country’s solution: ask parents to teach. Not just at home, but in the schools themselves. In my son’s school, for example, three parents with no pedagogical training were teaching classes. This has been going on for years (and again, nobody says anything).

To be part of the well-oiled machinery where everyone knows their place—an environment that allows no surprises, a corporate system where flexibility and improvisation do not exist—

Act normal, and you’ll be just crazy enough.