Kees Boeke - Biography

Biography

Cornelis or Kees Boeke grew up in a Mennonite family in Alkmaar. He studied architecture at the Delft University of Technology. As a student, he spent a year in England, where he met the Quakers. He became a Quaker and attended Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, a college near Birmingham. There, he found inspiration in Bournville, the garden town which the Cadbury family (owners of the chocolate factory) had built for their workers. He met and married Beatrice (Betty) Cadbury. The couple went to Syria in 1912 as Quaker missionaries. In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, they returned to England. They became active in peace work, the Fellowship of Reconciliation having come into being through Henry Hodgkin. In 1915, Boeke traveled to Berlin, where he met Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze, with whom Hodgkin had been working at the outbreak of war. Boeke began to speak publicly in England: "The Germans are our brothers; God did not create man that he might kill; the war will find its quickest end when all soldiers lay down their weapons." He was expelled from England and returned to Holland. His family followed; there they lived in Bilthoven, near Utrecht. Their home soon became a pacifist center.

After the war, Boeke erected a large conference center in Bilthoven, which he called "Brotherhood House." The first international peace conference took place there between 4 and 11 October 1919. Present at the conference were Leon Revoyne, Mathilde Wrede, Leonard Ragaz, Pierre Ceresole, as well as Hodgkins and Schultze. Boeke and Ceresole became the secretaries of this movement, which called itself “Christian International” or the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. Together with Helene Stöcker, Friedrich August Wolf (?) and Wilfred Wellock, they founded the Service Civil International and in 1921 "Paco", which later became War Resisters' International (WRI).

Kees and Betty Boeke considered war to be rooted in the entanglement of the state and the capitalist. As Betty was a Cadbury, she received large shares in her family's firm. She transferred this money to various charitable organizations such as the Quaker-Help Organization in Russia in 1920. Later, she gave the shares to a trust for the workers of the Cadbury factory. For a while, the Boekes abstained from using money, so as to avoid contributing to the state — since public funds are also spend on weapons. They would pay neither postage, tolls, nor taxes — and they never used public transportation. As a result, they were imprisoned several times, with one of their seven children being born in prison. On one occasion the Dutch tax authorities auctioned off the estate in order to collect back taxes. Queen Wilhelmina was in attendance at the auction, and purchased Kees' favorite violin with her own money, only to return it to him on the spot. Boeke supported his family by working in Utrecht in a building association which he had founded; he did not work as an architect (which was his training), but as a simple worker.

In the late 1920s Boeke increasingly withdrew from international peace movements. Believing he could build a better society through educating children, he started a school, called “De werkplaats” (the workshop). He founded his school when in 1926, as a result of a 1917 constitutional reform, all private schools, including the Montessori school his children attended, started receiving an equal amount of money per child from the state, to which he objected. His school, which uses Maria Montessori's methods, extended by Boeke's own educational ideas, became nationally known; even the Dutch queen Juliana sent her daughters there. The school has been hugely influential for its creative way of making the students co-responsible for their own curriculum, together with the teachers; many students who failed in regular schools have blossomed at "De werkplaats."

Co-responsibility in school did not mean a freewheeling life at "the Werkplaats". Children had to perform tasks such as cleaning the school, gardening to grow vegetables and fruits, and aid with cooking lunch. One could say that Boeke's notion of sociocracy was, in effect, a secular implementation of the Quaker ideals applied to education in such a way that children were treated as adults, and were on a first name basis with their teachers. The roster of highly creative and successful people from this school is impressive.

Boeke wrote a major book on education. One of his last works was Cosmic View (New York 1957). He died in 1966 in the company of his family.