Catholic Education in the Dutch Caribbean

The Dominican Sisters of Voorschoten worked in the field of education on the Island of Sint Maarten, the Dutch Antilles, from 1890 to 1990. Sint Maarten is a Dutch Caribbean Island with its roots in the Caribbean and in The Netherlands. The Sisters set up the infrastructure of Catholic education on Sint Maarten, which is made manifest by the impressive number of schools that they founded. During their time on Sint Maarten, their mission was to teach and educate, a job they have done to the best of their abilities. Education seems to have had a rather conservative character, where the knowledge and virtue transmitted to the “other” were well intentioned but not fully in touch with the local setting. The language issue, whether Dutch or English should be employed as language of educational instruction, was a problem in their time and remains a problem even now. This cannot however be attributed to the Sisters since it belongs to the general educative policy of the kingdom of The Netherlands with which they also had difficulties. Many of those issues would later on, upon the Sisters'' departure, result in the call for a process of Antillianisation.