Just like any other stay-at-home parent, most of the weight of the formal and mandatory education of my son falls on me. Logically so, no doubt. Nobody would expect Chantal, after having a full day at the office, come home to work on the homework of our son, would you? Moreover, being Chantal the musically gifted, and the dutch native-speaker, she already got on her the daily guitar practicing and the daily reading of one or another dutch classic to our little one. So there is no way around it, when we are talking about sitting him down and forcing him to suffer with homework meanwhile we both hear his friends out in the street, it is my task.

Which actually, it is not always as bad as it sounds. I do like to teach. Of course, to teach to somebody close to you is a peculiar thing, but still. Working our way through one or another math puzzle, I wait to see the sudden lightning of the "I get it" moment. Or the other moments, when Ayden turns to me and ask: "why don't they teach this at school?" I mean, even here, in the core of the first world, in a country with an excellently internationally ranked education, even here, the teaching of simple math in basic school is dreadful. But well, that's why we parents are at home, waiting and sharpening our preferred topics to inflict them on our kids, hoping for some brighter future for them.

Anyhow, those are the nice moments. There are other moments too, when being a probably-better-informed-than-the-teacher and migrant parent is not so much of a hot combination. The moments in which you are actually asked to go to the school, and discuss the results of your son with the teacher. Trying to stay silent through slow descriptions of irrelevant (according to you) developments in your kid, hoping that the time allocated to you will not be over before getting to the issues that you care for. Or far worse, becoming more and more aware of your mangled dutch, meanwhile trying to make yourself understandable to a teacher that have only ten minutes to talk to you, after having talked with ten parents, and before talking with the following ten. Is she thinking that you are as stupid as you feel, in this foreign language? Somewhere you have read that a relevant percentage of the evaluations that teachers make of students depend on their evaluation of their parents. So you want to come across as nice, intelligent, well informed. Good luck to you, dear boy. I hope that this teacher only evaluates Ayden, and not me.

And still the other moment, the one upon us right now. The moment of choosing college for your son, in a culture that even if sympathetic to you, remains foreign. The moment of founding myself arguing with Chantal about the goal of colleges. Are they meant to potentiate the social capacities of your son? Or rather to empower him with basic tools of understanding? Should colleges be a reflection of the society at large? Or could they actually represent a minority that you are sympathetic with? Questions that nobody can categorically answer, but also questions to which different cultures provide very different answers. What do you do when your beloved wife seems to think that your son of 12 should decide which school to go, meanwhile you think that the choice is on you two? And what if you think that the vibes of a school are far too groovy, meanwhile your wife love the grooviness? What do you do then, with your own image of being cool and groovy, discovering that actually you are far more conservative that your beloved one?

Luckily enough, above and beyond the culture chasm, Chantal and me share some few things. One of them the desire of checking things in time. So right now, when Ayden is actually 11 and we all have almost two full years to make a decision, all this visiting is merely exploratory. I suppose that, as in many other issues, we will keep on talking and talking after Ayden is in bed, talking and talking up to reach some sort of consensual compromise. Yeah, after all the dutch polder model is not that bad, not that bad at all.

There is the small moment, the instant. The second where you, and all of them around you, know that something has happened, that the tone and the content of the conversation has taken that turn that none of you wanted. Somebody said something, and would like to take those words back. But it's always late. The bad thing is that the turn isn't that bad. All of you understand that somehow, that faux pas shouldn't made anybody feel guilty. It was just a follow up. But it's a blunder all the same. You try to go on, and you can't. You have got the tiny black spot in the white carpet, the baby elephant in the tupperware fabric. There is no way back, gotta move on, but nothing is the same again.

When C arrived to Venezuela -and probably today as well- argentinians were the easiest people to make fun off. Argentinian were -and probably are- reasonably proud of their country, surely in comparison with their neighbors. Moreover, they are proud of themselves and their superior culture. No surprise that their fellow south american think of argentinians as hard to bear. To begin with, that is. It follows then that in all of south america are uncountable jokes about argentinians being... well, argentinians. C landed in the late seventies in caracas. Learning the ropes of a new city, integrating as it is called today, implied hearing those jokes and develop some sort of skin -elephant skin- on them. To be insulted by a joke would be ridiculous and diminishing. C, as many others, actually learned not to hear those jokes. Even when they were actually fun. Fun inside one group. C laugh endlessly with other argentinians about their own jokes. Just as venezuelans did. With their own company. that was. But in a mixed reunion? In a mixed reunion was difficult to make fun of each other. Of each other's culture, of each other's identities. And still somebody would eventually do it, and the faux pas would be made, and the fun would be gone.

Just gone.

It felt as the uprooting of migrating made us all insecure. The resident not wanting to repeat a known blunder, the newcomer waiting for it to happen. C stubbornly repeating to himself to stay cool, stubbornly getting more irritated by the minute, with himself. In the wc, a minute later, C would stare at the mirror, angry. Why to be so stupidly... arrogant and fragile? Could he not be better than the bloody joke? The insult, the real and definitive hurtful thing wasn't the insulting joke, actually, but the own and endless capacity to transform a joke into an insult. How stupid can you be, shout C to the mirror.

Angry at that insulting mirror.

Mijn complimenten voor documentairemaker Michiel van Erp voor zijn documentaire ‘Postmoderne hutspot’ over opkomst en ondergang van het Nationaal Historisch Museum. De documentaire is nog maar een week online en zeker verplichte kost voor een ieder die iets wil begrijpen van bestuurlijke processen, al bestaat het risico dat er na het bekijken van de documentaire meer vragen dan antwoorden liggen. In mijn optiek is het een leerschool voor politici, bestuurders en ambtenaren.

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VPRO: Het Uur van de Wolf (uitzendinggemist) \’Postmoderne hutspot\’

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Bijzonder is dat de vergadering nav het onderzoek door Grondmij gefilmd kon worden. Dit zit in het tweede deel van de documentaire. De bestuurlijke elasticiteit van de Arnhemse burgemeester Krikke valt ook wel op gedurende het traject. Ze blijft keurig in het gelid ondanks dat er van links en rechts allerlei strapatsen worden uitgehaald. Ze begint in het wiel bij Jan Vaessen en langzaam manoevreert ze zich in de waaier van minister Plasterk, die ook wel voelt voor de plannen van Schilp. Ik hoop ooit middels een biografie nog wel de echte mening van Paulien Krikke te horen.