Peter Hartkamp

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Peter Hartkamp (b. 1961) is a child's right advocate, and a democratic education pioneer in Europe. He is an honorary signatory of the Declaration of Educational Emancipation.

Peter has spent 7 years in Dutch and European courts fighting for the right of his Sudbury Valley type school to exist. Twice he landed in the European Court of Human Rights. He was personally criminally prosecuted in the Netherlands! In his country, parents who employ freedom and free learning are at risk of losing the custody of their kids. In the end, Peter managed to free his own children, but had to close his school when they reached adulthood.

After 11 years of struggle, in 2014, Peter opened his new school: Sudbury School Amersfoort. It was finally officially certified by the school inspectorate.

If such an iconic figure struggles with bureaucracy for so many years with limited success, we know that the Prussian model of schooling is still pretty well-entrenched in Europe.

In contrast with the Netherlands, Poland seems to be the land of milk and honey. However, when freedom-oriented School in the Cloud attracted 10,000 pupils in just 3 years, the authorities got nervous, and a new bill has been proposed. The bill is aimed to hamstring the school known in Polish as Chmura (the cloud).

In the Netherlands, like in Poland, freedom of education is enshrined in the constitution, however, judges belong to the most well-schooled population. After many years of Prussian drill, their reasoning is biased. In that light, Peter nodded to our idea of school strike in the name of freedom (see: End School Slavery).

For an interview with Peter and to comment, see: End School Slavery on Facebook.

This text is part of: "Problem of Schooling" by Piotr Wozniak (2017-2024)