Opinion | Lucas Verweij
In this opinion piece, Lucas Verweij, a design teacher himself, observes that Dutch design schools are currently in a difficult position. The appeal of Dutch Design has worn off and foreign students are standing up for themselves more. At the same time, calls for internationalization are dwindling, while the current government wants just the opposite.
When Dutch Design became a substantial export product in the early 1990s, Dutch design education profited handsomely in its slipstream. Dutch Design was closely intertwined with this education. Our schools were bolder, less commercial and less conservative than foreign ones. The professed design attitude was freer, less craft-oriented and did not allow itself to be led by habits within the design sector that were often dominant internationally. Dutch design education was so intertwined with Dutch Design that it was both mother and daughter of this phenomenon. Generations of Dutch Designers were born, taught and in turn raised new designers.
Because of this close family relationship, Dutch design education received almost as much international attention as Dutch Design itself and grew profusely. This growth was mainly driven by students from Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, South America, and Oceania. The boom coincided with a government’s desired internationalization of education. The government, program boards, teachers and students licked their fingers at the expansion, the financial opportunities, the many jobs for teachers, the attention and the praise.
Meanwhile, programs that still taught exclusively in Dutch were also doing well. Although they received less attention, there was a stable market for students who wanted to be taught in Dutch and wished to have Dutch classmates. In particular, departments at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht and ArtEZ University of the Arts profited in the lee of the others. At those all-Dutch courses, design was often less ‘Dutch Design’, which is perhaps not as strange as it may seem: Montreal is also more French than Paris.
Meanwhile, this first wave of internationalization went extremely well: many foreign designers trained in the Netherlands settled here and became successful – ‘Dutch Designers’ could now also be Germans, Koreans, and Canadians. In this design Valhalla, there was not only a good education to enjoy but also a career to build. There were projects, exhibitions, grants, clients, and there was discussion and debate. The design sector and internationalized education experienced a dream marriage.
Hangover
In the meantime, the mood has turned considerably and we find ourselves quite suddenly in a bitter relationship crisis. Marital tensions are coming from different angles. What happened?
The current generation of foreign students has undergone an emancipatory awakening that has radically changed their perception of Dutch Design. They value their cultural background and demand recognition for it in tutoring and evaluation. The freedom, audacity and radicality of Dutch Design culture are no longer swallowed whole but approached critically. In the process, Dutch Design is seen as commercial, overpowering and insensitive to local context. Conceptual design is called neo-colonial, because it pays too little attention to local context and puts typical Western values on a pedestal (post-materialism, aesthetics, conceptuality).
Also, from right-wing quarters, the wide range of English-language education is under fire. Is all this English good for education? What is the point of educating all these students who go back to Hanover, Hanoi, and Hong Kong? It costs too much money; we have gone overboard. The current government wants to quickly de-internationalize education. Programs already have to prove that a curriculum is actually taught in English. Travel by foreign teachers is sometimes no longer reimbursed. More measures are to follow – predictable interventions prompted by right-wing populism.
At the same time, the change in attitude of foreign students has become increasingly pronounced. In short, foreign students are fed up with Dutch design courses and the government is fed up with those students. The schools are caught between the two.
For the Romanian market
Foreign students want guidance that is sensitive to their cultural and personal background. But if one sharpens this seemingly reasonable demand, it leads to complicated dilemmas: is it enough that a design by a Romanian student is innovative and cutting edge in Romania, or do we want it to be innovative by our standards and assessment criteria? Are we allowed to demand that it should be relevant in the Netherlands, because why should our values prevail in international education? The same goes for the aesthetic criteria: who gets to decide what is beautiful in Bucharest? How far does our respect for a student’s origins go: does it include the value pattern for good design? Are there any international, value-free assessment criteria? Probably no more than people ever have value-free opinions.
There has also been hefty system criticism from foreign students. At some schools, management has been criticized on the basis that the directors, deans, heads of departments, and back office are mainly Dutch. The promised international character of the schools is rightly called ‘veiled Dutch’. Students are no longer content with a vague designation like ‘international’, they are making concrete demands.
Guest workers and ‘regenerative education’
This development is suspiciously similar to the integration of immigrants in the 1970s. Guest workers were treated from a dominant Dutch perspective, with the idea that they would return to their country of origin in not too long. Foreign design students have undergone a similar development. They do not want guest rights but respect, integration and a full voice. They also no longer accept a leading (design) culture.
Critics propose an alternative they call regenerative education, embracing concepts such as ‘holistic’, ‘locally anchored’, ‘collaboration’, ‘involvement’, ‘self-esteem’ and ‘responsibility’. Foreign students want to be helped in further developing a position they already held before coming to the Netherlands. Dutch Design is no longer a coveted model for foreign students. They want something different.
This is also puts teachers in a difficult spot: can you expect them to understand the cultural backgrounds of all students in relation to personal tutoring? To what extent should they understand Sudanese male-female relations when supervising a Sudanese student? Can they expect that student to be interested in the gender discussion going on in the Netherlands?
Teachers cannot possibly know everything about regional conflicts, customs, and do’s and don’ts in other countries. The deeply international and culturally value-free teaching required for regenerative education simply cannot be delivered with the current numbers of students, the current number of contact hours, and the current forms of organization. And no design teacher can avoid their own cultural biases. Especially since we come from a ‘preacher model’, in which there was a dominant design ideology. In short, a false start for the new, context-sensitive international design education.
The once-happy Dutch Design family has irrevocably disintegrated. Herein lies a major cause of the current turmoil at most design schools in the Netherlands. A yawning gap has opened up between the demand for international design education and its supply. That gap has grown alarmingly large in a few years. It looks like this development is going to lead to shrinkage, with all its consequences: less international resonance in the courses, fewer cultural references for the students, fewer jobs for designers with a side income in education. Drastic measures have already been announced by at least two schools: due to the anticipated shrinkage, no one may be offered a permanent employment contract for the time being.
In this situation, how will the aforementioned all-Dutch courses, which are now more in the spotlight, fare? Certainly they face fewer threats, but the battle for Dutch students is bound to intensify. In surveys, these programs are often rated well by students and alumni. Where foreign students used to be more satisfied with the programs, now students at Dutch-language programs are more satisfied than average.
The loving relationship between the international student and Dutch design education was a marriage that lasted quite a long time and produced many children. But now they seem to have grown apart for good. Should they stay together for the sake of the children? If so, is there anyone who can act as a relationship therapist?
Photo: Maaike Ronhaar
