1. From story to mechanism

What I wrote in Part I was my own experience. But my story does not stand alone. It was not an accident. It was not coincidence.

This is my vision.
The Dutch education system, and more broadly the society in which it is embedded, does not function on growth but on selection. Not on freedom, but on control.
Anyone who thinks this developed by chance is mistaken. What I went through is not an exception, but the rule. The system works exactly as it was designed to.

2. The root of obedience

Structure in itself is not wrong. A child must learn boundaries, understand hierarchy, experience order. Without that, there is chaos, and chaos shapes no one. Selection is not inherently bad either: not everyone can become the same, and choices must be made. But in the Netherlands, structure and selection are not in the service of development, but tied to programming. And that destroys.

Education in the Netherlands is built on industrial logic.
In the nineteenth century, factories needed workers: predictable, replaceable, obedient. The school system was aligned with that need. Children had to learn arithmetic, writing, sitting still. Not to develop themselves, but to become useful.

That logic never disappeared. It was refined. School is still not a breeding ground of autonomy, but the first factory hall of an obedient society. This does no justice to the teachers who dedicate themselves with full commitment, loyal to their duty. But they too cannot escape the system.

And the break comes early. Already before the age of twelve you are locked in by a school recommendation: vmbo, havo or vwo – three separate tracks. Those who “score low” receive vocational education and rarely make it to a university. Those who “score high” receive academic opportunities. Middle routes barely exist, and switching is rare. In many countries selection comes later, or there are ways to recover. In the Netherlands the door is almost always shut. One label often determines the rest of your life. For a foreigner this may sound unbelievable, but this is exactly how the Dutch system works.

But whether the label is high or low hardly matters. For the system it makes no difference: all children are drilled in the same logic. It is not about perfection, it is about obedience. Analysis is not taught. Seeing patterns, understanding yourself, does not happen. Children are programmed through education that is fully paid for and steered by the system.

Thus the system does not shape children into free spirits, but into competitive obedient products: trained to know facts, to score, to keep the machine running. Analysis and independence disappear. What remains are adults who never lose this: people who obey out of habit, and think that is freedom.

Real intelligence does not lie in remembering trivia, but in recognizing patterns and decoding connections. Yet the system produces children who think knowledge equals value. They are rewarded for reproducing facts, not for seeing through structures.

The result is a generation that often does not think independently, yet believes it is superior because it “knows” what is on the map. As if topography were proof of superiority. As if a head full of facts means more than a mind that understands itself.

3. The methods of selection

The system selects along three main lines:

Testing.
Grades and scores are not a measure of humanity or potential, but of usefulness within the norm. From primary school onward, every child is reduced to a number: the CITO score, the school recommendation. What falls outside the measuring stick is ignored. And this logic does not stop at school. It shapes you until death. Because even after school, life revolves around scoring: the best job, the biggest car, the largest house. And meanwhile you proudly proclaim you are a “socialist,” while you are already fully trapped in the competition you claim to despise.

Labeling.
Children who do not fit the scheme are not examined but classified. ADHD, dyslexia, “care student.” No question why, only a protocol. The child becomes a file. The child is suppressed. The label rarely helps; it mainly categorizes so the system can keep spinning. As if a child were a software bug to be debugged. Because if you cannot become the “perfect child,” if you cannot instantly point to New York on the map or spell Montreal without error, suddenly you are a zero. Not rejected for who you are, but for a detail that says nothing about your real potential.

Culture.
The ultimate slogan: “Act normal, that’s crazy enough.” It sounds harmless, but it is a command. A built-in code that turns difference into shame. Whoever fits is rewarded. Whoever deviates is discarded. Thus school becomes a filtering machine: not a place to discover who you are, but a mechanism to remove those who do not walk in step. You are programmed into slavery, while believing you are free.

4. Who profits?

The system serves interests. And those interests are clear:

The State.The State benefits from citizens who vote predictably, obey, and pay taxes. Your voting behavior is not born of freedom, but of conditioning.

Look at politics: all parties shout that they are different, but in essence they are the same. None of them wants to truly change the system. Why not? Because they live off it. Political parties exist by grace of subsidies, media attention, and the game of coalitions. Their power depends on the structure already in place. Anyone who tries to break that structure digs their own grave: excluded, slandered, or ignored.

Voting seems like freedom, but it is a ritual within boundaries long since fixed. The Netherlands presents itself internationally as a model democracy: stable, reasonable, consensus-driven. But that consensus actually means that new or dissenting parties are systematically excluded. In the Netherlands a coalition must always be formed to govern. That means only established parties hold each other up, while newcomers are blocked or neutralized.

This is what in the Netherlands is called “cartel politics”: a fixed group of parties guarding the system together, like a firewall against deviation. To a foreigner this may sound strange, but it is reality.

New parties are not judged on their ideas, but destroyed through media framing, swallowed in compromises, or simply excluded from power.

They promise variation, but deliver uniformity. The differences are only in the sauce: a different marinade on the same meat. And all of them lie: socialists hide their communism, and the parties that call themselves liberal do not believe in freedom but defend the monarchy and the system. Their words are façade, their actions prove the opposite.
Let’s be clear: social democracy is not a middle way, it is a lie. It is communism in disguise, a system that can only exist through moral coercion and façade.

Voting in the Netherlands is a façade. You vote, but nothing changes except superficial things. And they call that democracy. In reality, it is repression.

The Economy.
The economy needs workers who function within structures, not outside them.
You live only to serve. How quickly does society push you into a role? How quickly must you start working, form a couple, have children? Are these choices? No. It is directed pressure.

Feminism in the Netherlands has been reduced to working harder.
As a girl you learn: you must perform, only then do you matter. At the same time you must also be a mother: children on the bike behind you on the way to school, then rushing on to work. They call this progress. In reality, it is double slavery.

Whoever stays at home is punished: financially, socially, morally. Work seems like a choice, but it is the only option the system allows. Freedom that can move in only one direction is not freedom. It is propaganda, packaged as emancipation.

Dual-income households seem to have more, but they are just as poor. The extra income has long been swallowed up by housing prices, taxes, and expenses. What you thought you gained was never yours.

This is not emancipation. This is slavery in new wrapping, even if some consciously choose that balance. The struggle of women for freedom is real. But the system has absorbed that struggle, safely within its own comfort zone.

You think that as a woman you are free, but you still live a life designed by a man, by the State, by the economy. Meanwhile men could become lazier, because the pressure of financial survival is now shared with women. Men have a choice. For women that choice was already made, by a man.

Do you never ask yourself: is this emancipation truly mine?

The Institutions.
Schools and universities: all gain their power through their role as filters. A school is not a house of development, but a conveyor belt. The university is not the top of thinking, but the end factory where stamps of approval are handed out.

In the Netherlands this filtering starts extremely early. Around the age of twelve, a test and a recommendation decide which path you take: practical work, middle level, or academic. That advice is virtually final, and switching is nearly impossible.

On top of that exists a separate type of education called “higher professional education”: nationally presented as prestigious, but internationally worth almost nothing. It looks like university, but outside the Netherlands it carries no weight. Diplomas are often retested, or not recognized at all.

Thus a tailor-made construction is created: the system keeps people inside. At twelve you are locked in, given a diploma that suggests national prestige but is worth nothing abroad, and with that you are chained to the Netherlands. You cannot move up, and you cannot leave. You are screwed.

And because the Dutch system deviates from the rest of the world, even the university diplomas are of lower level and lesser quality than elsewhere. Even those who “score high” remain prisoners of mediocrity.

The Monarchy.
They say it is ceremonial. But if you look closely, you see that the monarchy is also part of the structure: untouchable, rich, and always safe within the system. Not a detail, but a symbol. In another text I will go deeper into this.

5. The Consequences

For the individual this means loss of space. You do not become who you are, but what the system needs you to be.

For society this means loss of analytical strength. We do not produce thinkers, but executors. Not people who ask why, but people who know how.

Psychologically, it means the internalization of obedience. Whoever does not fit swallows pills. Whoever deviates learns to correct themselves. Not because the child fails, but because the system refuses to make room.

All of this is not a byproduct, but a design. A machine that molds you into usefulness.
There is no freedom here. Only control. Control so that the powerful can stay in power.

“Freedom” in the Netherlands is an illusion. Freedom within boundaries is not freedom. It is obedience packaged as choice, and every choice ends in broken connection.

Their systematic rejection of “polarization” is the proof. Because: as you read that word now, you already feel the aversion taught to you, just by reading it. But what does polarization actually mean? It simply means that you think differently. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Why must that be forbidden, without being officially forbidden? Because free thinking is not allowed.

Life under this system is therefore an illusion.

6. The Confrontation

None of this is a mistake. It is a design. The system does not block thinkers by accident, but by necessity.
A child who learns to think for themselves too early is not enrichment, but a defect in the machine. And defects are removed without pardon. Not openly. Not with violence. But silently, routinely, systemically.

What remains is a society that celebrates obedience as a virtue and medicalizes difference as a disorder.

Meanwhile, institutions continue unhindered. Where education shapes you in obedience, healthcare accompanies you in that same logic until your death.

Officially it is called “care,” but in reality it is management. In the Netherlands you are legally obliged to be insured. Not with the state, but with one of just four private conglomerates (Achmea, VGZ, CZ, Menzis) that together control around 85% of the market. The basic package is identical at all four: only the packaging differs. This is not a free market, but a cartel. Billions are divided, without any incentive to make healthcare better or more innovative.

And outside those four, you have no choice. There is no alternative system. No parallel private clinics, no direct access outside the insurers. Everything runs through the same funnel. Even those who have the money to pay themselves are forced into the same mill.

Internationally, the Netherlands scores high in healthcare rankings, but that is a façade. What is measured is how much money flows through the system, not whether patients are actually helped better. The billions vanish into the conglomerates themselves.

For the citizen this means: you are forced to pay hundreds of euros a month in premiums, and on top of that a so-called “own risk” of at least 400 euros a year. That amount you must pay yourself first, on top of your premium, before any costs are covered. And each year it resets. You start every year with hundreds of euros of debt to the system. This is not solidarity. This is extortion with a healthcare logo on it.

In return you receive mediocre care and waiting lists of months. And you cannot call a specialist yourself: in the Netherlands you must always go first to a “general practitioner,” a family doctor who acts as gatekeeper. Only if that doctor approves, may you go to a specialist. But general practitioners themselves are under pressure from insurers to refer as little as possible. The result: your health does not depend on your choice, but on the budget plans of an insurance conglomerate.

To foreigners this may sound absurd, but this is the reality: a cartel that rakes in billions, citizens with no way out, and a state that refuses to allow alternatives. This is called freedom. In reality it is carefully organized coercion, wrapped in the language of care and solidarity. Just like in education: here too you are being screwed.

7. Conclusion

The system exists. It is refined, efficient, and deeply embedded.
From education to emancipation and from healthcare to your death.

You think you are free, but in reality you are nothing more than Memory Flesh. At least you can point to Montreal on the map. The more you know, the more “worthy” you are. But what do you really know of freedom, beyond what was in your schoolbooks or said on the news?

The question is not whether you recognize it.
The question is whether you dare admit it.

Your children will not escape.
Unless you stop obeying now.
Otherwise you will not give them a future,
but only the system that already holds you captive.

How much do you really think for yourself?
And how much is thought for you?

Pascal Becker Hoff
September 2025
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