One nation, one spelling, one school: writing education and the nationalisation of orthography in the Netherlands (1750–1850)

Abstract

In 1804, the first official spelling of Dutch was published as part of a national language policy that had been argued for since the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1805, an official grammar was published. The orthography and the grammar constituted regulations for the written language (schrijftaalregeling), which were part of a broader effort at nationalisation. Other societal domains affected by this attempt at nationalisation included education. The first decade of the nineteenth century also produced a series of educational reform. In this paper, we first discuss the ideological aspects of the nationalisation of language and education. Focusing on writing education, we then discuss eighteenth-century teaching practices, and the criticism these gave rise to, particularly for the strong focus on technical skills. We argue that writing education became increasingly important in the new school system, in which writing was conceptualised as a grammatical and intellectual practice as well. As a result, new teaching practices were developed. Adopting the officialised spelling of 1804 was part of the grammatical aspect of writing education. We show how grammar books and reading materials pre-dating and postdating the official Dutch language policy shifted from a situation of variable orthographical practices towards orthographical homogeneity through a strict adoption of official prescriptions.