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Holland natives say students are shy |
By Maria Borri
Apache Staff
Two college instructors from the Netherlands are finding IVCC students to be a bit quiet but friendly.
Bernie Raaijmakers and Irma Bulkens, on campus through Oct. 28 as part of an exchange with two members of the IVCC, have been visiting classes on campus and at area schools since they arrived Oct. 17.
Bulkens said: “Students are a bit shy and quiet here compared to my students. Sometimes I have more trouble getting my students to be quiet than teach.”
Bulkens teaches psychology at Koning Willem I College, a two-year college in Hertogenbosch, a city of 125,000 in southern Netherlands. She is staying with psychology instructor Jill Urban-Bollis.
Raaijmakers teaches English as a second language at ROC De Leijgraaf, a two-year technical college in Veghel, a small town 60 miles south of Amsterdam. She is staying with counselor Jane Sack.
Describing her first impressions of IVCC, Raaijmakers said, “I think everybody is so friendly — the students, teachers, people I encountered in Chicago, everybody.”The visitors arrived in the U.S. through O’Hare Airport on Oct. 14. They toured Chicago with their hosts for two days, seeing the sights including Navy Pier, the Sears Tower, the Art Institute and Water Tower Place.
Sack said, “Both guests are artistically talented and were familiar with the displays at the (Art) Institute.”She said the women wanted to see the Chicago skyline and famous buildings.“They recognized many of the buildings, such as the John Hancock, from (the television show) ‘ER.’” Sack said. “Many things in the Netherlands are Americanized.”
Raaijmakers agreed saying, “Many things here I expected because we have many American things like American television stations where I live.”I
n May, Sack and Urban-Bollis will travel to the Netherlands to complete the exchange, and they will be hosted by Raaijmakers and Bulkens.
n the Netherlands, the IVCC faculty members will observe an educational system that differs from the system in the U.S. As the visitors described their system, students enroll in primary education at age 4 to 6 and graduate from primary school at the age of 12.
Secondary education, the equivalent to America’s high school, has a four-year, five-year, or six-year level. Before students graduate from primary school, they are tested to see which of the three levels they will enroll in. The four-year level prepares students to go to a community or technical college, and students have a choice of practical or theoretical study.
Practical study is training for a job — an internship. The higher level of study is theoretical and is not an internship. Students choose between the practical and theoretical study at the age of 12.
Students who qualify for and enroll in the five-year or six-year levels go to university colleges.
Each student who graduates from the secondary level receives a scholarship, the amount of which depends on the family’s or the student’s income. The scholarships range from $50 to $600 a month. Students pay tuition for college to the government, and the college gets paid by the government based on the number of students who are attending.
Attending college classes is treated seriously, the visitors said. A student who misses a class must call the teacher, and if the student doesn’t, the teacher calls the student or their parents. After a number of absences, the student loses the scholarship. Bulkens said students are in all of the same classes together in college and that makes them more group oriented.
“In my school, students are running around in groups,” she said. “It is more individualized at IVCC. There are different students in each class here, where there are the same students in each class (in the Netherlands).”Bulkens and Raajimakers, who met when they arrived in the U.S. on Oct. 14, have started to plan the activities they will host for the IVCC faculty in May.
The exchange is made possible through the Illinois Consortium of International Studies and Program, made up of more than 30 Illinois two-year colleges. In addition to the faculty exchange, ICISP also sponsors study abroad programs in Austria and England for IVCC students.