Vice-Rector for Education and Student Affairs, Nadine Engels, is a professor at the Multidisciplinary Institute for Teacher Education (MILO) associated with the VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel). MILO is the academic institute that runs educational master’s programmes and conducts pedagogical and subject-specific research. Since the 1990s, teacher professionalisation has been a central theme throughout Nadine's research career. She was one of the founders of the initiative Onderzoekende School?! (Research-Oriented School?!), which arose from the observation that both trainee teachers and in-service teachers often approached problem-solving in an intuitive way, lacking research-based insight. This led to the introduction of evidence-based practice in education.
“We had to fight long for the freedom of education,” says Nadine Engels. Yet, shortly after Belgium was established, educational freedom was enshrined in the constitution, allowing anyone to start a school. However, it took over a century before this was interpreted as meaning that every child could attend a school of their choice.
In Belgium’s early years, the Catholic Church made good use of this constitutional right. A whole network of Catholic schools quickly emerged, and for the first 50 years of Belgian history, almost all primary schools were under the Church’s supervision. During this time, Catholics and Liberals governed together, and public schools existed. Yet, most Liberals were content to include Catholic religious lessons in the curriculum of municipal schools.
"You can only be free if everyone is free. That is a significant responsibility because, in our view, you only have one chance to do good for humanity"
In 1879, the Liberal Party passed a law secularising public education, requiring every municipality to have a state school and banning religious education during school hours. This triggered a lengthy school conflict, which included putting moral pressure on families to avoid public schools and urging teachers not to work in them. This strategy worked: public primary schools were almost empty. From 1884, municipal governments were once again allowed to adopt a free school and choose whether or not to include mandatory religious education. In theory, this opened the door to school choice, but in practice, this option wasn't available to everyone. It wasn't until 1988 that this freedom was explicitly stated in the constitution. The situation was different in higher education. As many know, in 1834, a group of freethinking Liberals founded the ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles) as a response to a new Catholic university.
The VUB’s mission is tied to freethinking humanism. Freethinking means being free from external pressure or control and free from prejudice, irrational beliefs, or self-interest in one’s thinking, actions, and expressions. The aim is for individuals to think freely, form opinions, and act based on facts and reason, liberated from subjugation.
Linking this to humanism provides an ethical foundation for freedom: human dignity as an independent basis for ethics. We don’t rely on a divine basis for morality. Being free and autonomous means that we impose the law upon ourselves. Moral awareness pertains to our own human freedom and that of others. You can only be free if everyone is free. That is a significant responsibility because, in our view, you only have one chance to do good for humanity. There is no afterlife offering a second chance.
"The social background will always determine school choice. Additionally, due to the shortage of schools, especially in big cities, the freedom of choice is not always realistic"
Reason doesn’t naturally take precedence. On the contrary: we are constantly influenced by emotions and beliefs we've inherited. While we may not always act rationally, it doesn't mean we lack the capacity for rationality. We can turn ourselves into objects of study. Free thinking can be practised. Humans have the mental space, room for reflection on primary impulses; we can weigh up alternatives and decide accordingly. Freethinking humanism also serves as an excellent foundation for citizenship education: it requires that our education system be a space for open and courageous dialogue, where everyone learns to think freely. This is a vital mission for the VUB and a challenge to engage our diverse student body in this journey.
This cannot be confined to a single subject. Recently, we have encountered several instances of polarisation among student groups, with some retreating into their own cultural, ethnic, or ideological groups, or being pressured by such groups to conform. This runs counter to our goals. While we embrace diversity, it is essential to enable a learning process where everyone learns to question their own views through reflection and free inquiry. To achieve this, we need to develop a learning trajectory that is integrated throughout the curriculum.”
*"This is a machine translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies."