Hogere Burgerschool

The Hogere Burgerschool or HBS (Dutch: Higher Civic School) was a secondary school type in the Netherlands and the Dutch possessions existing between 1863 and 1974. The school, with a five or sometimes six-year program, was continued in 1968 as VWO. The last HBS diplomas were given out in 1974.

The HBS is a mid-19th century creation by the liberal politician Johan Rudolph Thorbecke, and resulted from the law on secondary education enacted in May 1863. Along with the creation of burgerscholen in each city of more than 10,000 inhabitants, the HBS was intended as a practically oriented education for higher functions in industry and trade. It was explicitly not intended as a sufficient education to enter university. According to historian Hans Verhage the form "hogere-burgerschool" (the hyphen indicating that hogere, "higher", modifies burger, "citizen") is linguistically correct, since it was a schooling system geared toward higher-ranked citizens, and not a higher school for all citizens.

The law called for at least fifteen such (non-denominational) schools; where those would be placed soon became a matter of contention. The most famous of controversies (the H.B.S. kwestie) concerned the province of Limburg, which had only been part of the Netherlands since 1839. Maastricht, Limburg's capital, was the only city with more than 10,000 citizens, but the city refused since it preferred having a municipal rather than a government-run school, which allowed it control over the hiring and firing of teachers. Thorbecke, however, wanted a HBS in Limburg, since that would also strengthen the bonds between the (new) province and the central government: the HBS was to train the new national elite, and could thus aid in nation building. When Maastricht turned the HBS down, Roermond was proposed, where the local clergy feared that a HBS would damage enrollment at the local Catholic college, and the city council hastened to adjudicate the intended buildings to that college. A private letter from Thorbecke demanding the buildings be offered to the HBS was made public, leading to public outcry: at its heart, the conflict touched the special status of denominational education, and an additional source of anger was the government's raising of taxes in the province to bring it in line with taxes in other provinces. The HBS was founded in Roermond in 1864; the year after, Jan Augustus Paredis, bishop of Roermond, published an edict condemning "mixed" schools.

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