The Rebellious Quaker

Gentle, grey-haired Kees Boeke started out as something of an anarchist and eventually founded a school that should have caused most parents to turn away in dismay. Instead, Schoolmaster Boeke has become one of the most respected and respectable educators in Holland. Last week, as he retired at the age of 70, his school in Bilthoven (near Utrecht) was not only thriving, it boasted such eminent alumnae as the three eldest daughters of Queen Juliana.

A graduate of Delft Technical College, Boeke really began his strange career while studying at the University of London. There he fell in with a group of Quakers and decided to renounce all worldly things in favor of becoming a missionary-teacher in Brummana, Lebanon. Meanwhile, he also decided to marry, but since his Quaker wife was the daughter of one of the founders of the Cadbury chocolate company, the couple came up against the problem of what to do with her money. They solved it by turning her income over to a trust for good works.

The Other Cheek. Boeke's idealism did not stop with money. Back in Britain during World War I, he tried to tell the English to turn the other cheek, soon found himself languishing in jail as a pacifist. In 1918, he was deported to Holland; but by the time he and his family settled in Bilthoven, he had already acquired other convictions. For one thing, he decided that all governments were based on force and that therefore he could have nothing to do with them or their byproducts. He refused to use the railways, telephones or post office; and though he did give English and violin lessons, he took only food or clothing in payment. When the Dutch government asked him to pay his share of school taxes, he said no. Instead, he withdrew his children from school, announced that he was going to teach them himself.

As the months passed, Boeke's thinking began to take a new direction. He gradually abandoned his anarchism ("I found that we were a burden to people outside"), but he did develop some new theories of education. With no school supplies, Boeke realized that "the children and I had to make things ourselves." This became a cornerstone of his whole philosophy.

Workers & Jobs. For more than a year, the Boekes struggled alone. But they began to attract attention. In time, other children came to work with Boeke--and so did a number of teacher-idealists willing to earn as little as $130 a year. Though the new school taught the sciences and classics, it otherwise resembled no other school. Its pupils were not pupils, but "workers." Its teachers were "co-workers," its classes "groups," its lessons "jobs." Boeke gave no grades, no punishments and few tests; he never allowed anyone to be flunked. Instead of principal, he called himself "general leader," and his school became known as a Children's Workshop Community. Discipline? The workers must impose that upon themselves. "I don't want them to learn to obey," said he. "I want them to think." The type of community he was aiming for: a pure "sociocracy," in which the whole society would be sovereign.

Sociocrats or not, Boeke's workers apparently learned quite a bit from their jobs. They not only got a thorough grounding in everything from physics to history, they also learned to cook for the community and to keep it in repair. Finally, after World War II, a peace-minded Princess Juliana heard about Quaker Boeke, asked him to take on Princesses Beatrix and Irene; two years later she sent Princess Margriet to the community. After that, the school's success was assured. The government gave it an annual subsidy, and the community's population grew to 600 workers and 60 coworkers.

Last week, though retiring, Boeke declared that he was far from through. With the aid of a new foundation, headed by former Prime Minister Willem Schermerhorn, he and his wife intend to return to Lebanon, hope to set up a community for poor Arab children. Says he of those children he once knew so well: "We would rather like to give ourselves to them."

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