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Adventures in learning

At Aventurijn, a small private school in the Netherlands, children decide what to study and how to study it.

Ineke Noordhoff | October 2008 issue

Fifteen-year-old Jurriaan de Vos doesn’t have to worry about his report card; his school doesn’t give grades. “There is a class schedule,” he says, “but that’s mainly for the facilitators so they’ll know what to prepare.”

Jurriaan raises his eyebrows a lot, which, together with his long blonde hair, gives him a kind of roguish Stan Laurel look. He’s a happy teenager; his school lets him decide for himself what to do.

Each weekday Jurriaan reports at 9 a.m. for the morning circle at Aventurijn, a private school in the town of Loenen in the centre of the Netherlands, which he’s attended since he was 5. All 22 students—between the ages of 4 and 17—start their days here with a game, a story or stretching exercises. The plans for the day are discussed and then Jurriaan starts on the schedule he has made for himself. Over the past six months, this has included physics, Web design and English. During his lessons, Jurriaan is hard at work, “because that’s what was agreed,” he says calmly. “I’m currently learning C++, a programming language. I have an English tutorial I’m using for it that I’m translating. That’s helping me improve my English and Dutch writing skills.”

Between classes there’s plenty of time for other interests: reading, gardening, building model airplanes. “I think it’s crazy that ordinary schools make their students sit at a desk all day,” Jurriaan says. At the same time, he’s pretty curious about those “ordinary” schools; after the summer, he wants to do a week-long internship to find out what they’re like.

Self-discovery is the basic tenet of Aventurijn, the school that Jurriaan’s mother, Hannah de Vos-Beckers, founded in 2000. She believes children have an innate desire to learn that’s undermined in traditional education by the standardized offerings. “Children learn to walk by themselves,” De Vos-Beckers explains. “They fall, get back up and try it again.” They do this not because they’re taught exactly how to walk when they reach a certain age, in De Vos-Beckers’ opinion, but because they really want to. “That demonstrates that every child is innately eager to learn.”

As the school’s website (aventurijn.org) reads, “It’s very difficult to read a book about a subject that doesn’t have your interest but you only have to read because the teacher told you so. However, when you read a recipe because you desire to bake the cookies you love so much, the motivation to read is entirely different.” This is the premise Aventurijn uses to offer a rich learning environment that caters to the interests of its students.

De Vos-Beckers—Aventurijn’s director, owner and supervisor, whose book Op avontuur met een vernieuwende school (“adventures with an innovative school”) was recently released in the Netherlands—has her long hair tied back tightly, allowing her curious grey-green eyes the maximum perspective. “In Dutch education, children have to conform to the system, which doesn’t work,” De Vos-Beckers believes. Classical teaching methods are particularly ineffective, she says. “A study once showed that only 7 percent of what you convey using verbal communication sticks.”

So the students at Aventurijn are often found outside the school building. After all, if De Vos-Beckers says nature inspires important lessons, she’s not referring to an incidental educational program in a wilderness area, but to climbing a tree or lying in a hammock listening to the rustling leaves—until a leaf falls and inspires questions like, Why does something always fall downward? And why are leaves green anyway?

The Aventurijn school building is hidden in the trees. A goat ambles up, bleating. Just inside the fence are a few old bikes, go-karts and a kids’ plastic tractor. In the middle of the schoolyard is a homemade firepit. The school operates on less than $75,000 a year. Tuition fees (a minimum of about $4,000 annually) are the only source of income. Aventurijn isn’t interested in government subsidies. Yet it isn’t an elitist school. Some of the students’ parents live on social benefits and “accept a lower spending pattern by living in a trailer, for instance,” De Vos-Beckers says. Aventurijn doesn’t need a lot of money. There’s no jungle gym; the students climb in trees, which are plentiful on the school’s two hectares (five acres). The vegetables from its garden fuel the students throughout the school day.

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