In the Netherlands we have different levels of education within secondary education. The program with the highest level and the highest admission requirements is the gymnasium. The concept dates back to Greek times and the gymnasiums themselves have existed since the Middle Ages. The gymnasium course is the only course in the Netherlands that offers the classical languages Greek and Latin as a school subject.
History
The word gymnasium originates from the Greek word gymnasion. It is derived from the word gymnos, which means naked. Literally we can translate gymnasion as “place where you are naked”. The Greeks, because of their great fighting spirit and many wars, valued a well-trained body and practiced their sports naked. When, however, from 400 BC. The professional army was introduced, the emphasis on gymnasions shifted to mental training, rather than physical training. Thus the gymnasion began to resemble what we now call a gymnasium.
Middle Ages ?? 1917
Latin schools were founded in the Middle Ages. In 1253, the Johan de Witt gymnasium was founded as a Latin school, holding the record as the oldest gymnasium in the Netherlands. About 600 years later, in 1858, there were 31 grammar schools and 32 Latin schools in the Netherlands. Another two decades later, an important division was implemented: the gymnasium was split into an alpha and a beta part. The alpha part dealt with subjects such as history, Greek and Latin, the beta part dealt more with exact subjects such as mathematics, chemistry and physics. This is the first step towards the modern gymnasium.
1917 ?? 1998
Since from 1917, holders of an HBS diploma were also admitted to the university courses, which was not the case before. This created the lyceum, which combined gymnasium and hbs. As a result, the real gymnasium lost some popularity. Since the introduction of the Mammoetwet in 1968, gymnasium has actually been a form of VWO. The exam requirements of the gymnasium have so far been the same as those of the atheneum (pre-university education without classical languages). If you took your final exams in both Greek and Latin, you completed grammar school alfa, you did either, then you completed grammar school beta. At the time there was quite a lot of freedom in choice of subjects, it was possible to make a combination of Greek / Latin together with all other possible subjects. This has changed since 1998.
1998 ?? present day
The new second phase started in 1998. The second phase refers to the last three years of the VWO education. The new second phase meant that every student would follow a certain chosen profile from the third on. You can choose between Nature and Health, Nature and Technology, Economy and Society or Culture and Society. The alpha-beta dichotomy still exists: the first two profiles are beta, the second alpha. Since 2006, the subjects Greek and Latin are included in the profile, and no longer in the free space.
Categorial Gymnasia
Many gymnasium courses are part of a larger school community. This means that a school does not only attend gymnasium, but also VMBO, HAVO and atheneum. But there are also categorial gymnasia: schools where only the gymnasium training can be followed. Only 32 of these exist in the Netherlands. Categorial gymnasia are often older gymnasia, whose origins can be traced back to the medieval Latin schools.