Christianization of the Soul: Religious Traditions in the Care of People with Learning Disabilities in the Netherlands in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Educational and therapeutic optimism with respect to those with learning disabilities led to new developments in some countries around the mid-nineteenth century. In the Netherlands there was little specialist care and few special initiatives were taken before the end of the century. The dominant expert opinion was that these people required the standard care offered by the asylum. Two mid-nineteenth-century initiatives, however, are worth analysing, since they signal the caucious start of special institutional education in the Netherlands: the Idiotenschool (School for Idiots) in The Hague and the class for idiots at the Meerenberg Asylum. However, the most important alternative to care in the asylum was offered by institutions with explicitly religious motives, which evolved from Catholic charity and Protestant philanthropy for many different types of socially weak and dependent groups. This article will examine the nineteenth-century religious roots of the care of people with learning disabilities in the Netherlands; it will also show how older educational ideas began to reappear in this context by the end of the century.

mental retardation, charity, religious traditions, education, the Netherlands