QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

These are the results of an e-mail exchange with School Springteam Hilversum in the Netherlands, and their answers

Thank you to their teacher, Cees Breederveld, Spring Teacher 2003, and to them all!

Drugs

Do young people often take drugs?
Some kids take drugs, mostly because they have problems or they think it is wise to copy others, like some do as they get into drinking alcohol and smoking.

Is it easy to find drugs?
In the Netherlands, when you are 16 years and older you can buy soft drug for free. You can buy it in coffeeshops. This is legal, so good quality, little risks.
At some disco's people are also selling drugs, illegal, so no good quality and much risk. At some parties there are also teams of people you can have your drugs examined before using them. So you don't have any risk of taking something dangerous.

How you can find them?
Where can you buy drugs?
Who buys it?
Are all drug illegal in your country?
Soft drugs are not illegal in our country. Other drugs yes.
We think that people who are addicted to drugs are sick, ill. They need good medical care, so at some places medecins are distributed in order to avoid that drug-slaves get into stealing in order to get money for their drugs. It is important that drugs should not be in the illegal circuits.

Which drugs are cheaper?
It depends what you buy and where you buy.
Sometime illegal drugs are easy to get and cheap, but then dangerous for becoming drug-slave.
When you buy drugs in a coffeshop they are a bit more expencive, but them you know you have controled quality.

Housing

Is the price of housing rising , or is it going down in your country ?
Houses are expensive in our country. There are many people who want a house of their own and not much space, so prices are going up.
So, there is help for starting households. They get money to get started.

Does the government take mesures to help young people to purchase a flat?
Yes, if they can. But then you have to wait two years or more before it is your turn.

What is the policy of your government as far as the price of housing is concerned?
We don't know, we think they want to help young families and give them some money ..

Is young people helped by their family to find a house?
If it is possible yes, but mostly it is not possible.

Does/Did becoming a member of UE help to reduce the price of housing in your
country?
No.

When the moment in your life arrives that you feel the need to purchase a flat, is
it difficult to find a house?
It is sometimes very difficult. Not when you are rich, but when you don't have much money you have to wait sometimes for more than two years. When you want to live in the city it sometimes takes longer.

Music

What's the fashionable music that you listen to in your country?
We often listen to the music you hear and see on MTV or The Box. So, music with clips.
We also listen to the radio 538. It is a very good radio station. This music comes from all over the world.

Do you study music in your high school?
Studying music in our school is the same as studying religions: We can't find a good teacher for that.

What is your opinion about music in Europe?
We like music a lot, but our taste differs from one person to the other.

Do you think that music connects people from different country?
Music can make peace. That's what we think!

What's traditional music like in your country?
We don't listen to much traditional music anymore.We have what we call: 'smartlappen' which is music, often sad music about drinking problems, dying friends, etc., which originated from a part of Amsterdam called the Jordaan. But we, young people, don't like this music very much. It is the type of music for some of our parents like.

Have you got special clothes for traditional events?
There are still some people wearing special clothes for special traditional events, but not many. We could not think of any examples to provide.

What do you think of our traditional music? Do you know "Flamenco" and "Sardana"?
Sometimes we hear music like that, but then it is on holiday. So, for us it is linked to summer, sun etc. For the rest of the year we don't hear much music like that.

Do you think that traditional music isn't as important as fashionable music nowadays?
Yes we do

Do people in your country study or play traditional music?
Probably, but we don't know anyone.

Is traditional music important for you? Why?
Not for us. Modern music is better than old fashioned music.

Do you know catalan rock music?
No.We have some Dutch groups and singers who are very good, like you have in Catalonia.

Night life

In general, what's is night life like in your country?
We have cafes, discos etc., but we don't go much yet, because we are often too young to get in.
You must be over 16 or 18 to get in and we are only 14/15 years old.

Are there drugs? What type of drugs?
Yes, in The Netherlands you can buy soft drug in coffeeshops, but only if you are over 16 years old.

Do people drink many alcoholic drinks?
Drinking beer is a problem with young people. Many drink too much.

Are there people who change their image at night?
Of course, as everywhere we have people who like to dress up for going out, or change completely like travestites.

What type of music sounds at discos?
We have all kind of music and disco's here: Small ones and big ones.

Are there macrodiscos?
Yes there are, not in our direct regions, but there are.
If you have a car you can go there.
You must be over 18 years old.

What are more typical, pubs or discos?
That depends.
For us we think pubs are more tipical. You have many sorts of pubs: Dutch pubs but also English or Irish pubs.

Do young people go to cultural sites? (Cinemas, theatres, Concerts)
Yes, we often go to cinema, and sometimes to a concert. In Hilversum we have a place called Tagrijn, where you can listen to modern music and live music, for cheap mostly.
We don't often go to the theater. We sometimes go with our parents. This is often expensive.

Pollution

Do you recycle plastics and glass at home?
Yes, in several places in our town you see large containers where you can throw away glass. We have different containers for white, green and brown glass.

Is is common to do that?
It is common to do that for many people, not for all.

What polutions problems do you have?
Our country is very small, with a lot of people, so we have many pollution problems with the air (around big cities), the swimming water and the ground (where our cows eat the grass which sometimes is not clean.

Does people find solutions to these problems?
They try.
At home we have two waste containers: one for 'all' the waste, a black one;
and a green one for the organic waste:
Paper, glass and clothes are picked up in special containers.

All our cars have or will have special equipment for cleaning the smoke that gets out, so will factories.

Has pollution increased in recent years?
Yes

What does the government do about this problem?
We pay a lot to prevent pollution.

Religion

What types of religions are there in your country?
All kinds of religions, like in Spain, we think.
What is maybe special in our country is that there are many differences between reformed churches. Our teacher thinks there are about 15 different churches within the Reformed Church.

Do you have religion as subject in highschool?
In our school, which is Catholic, we have no religion lessons. It is not possible for the school to find good teachers for that subject.

What's your religion?
In our group nobody goes to church anymore. Some of us have parents who say that they are Catholic, but don't go much to church either.

Do you belief in Jesus?
Jesus is not very important in our daily life.
It is difficult to say that we believe or don't believe in him.

Do you think it is possible that in the near future there will be religion wars?
It is possible, sure when you look at what is happening in Iraq and Palestina. We hope a war does not take place, for we have a lot of Islamic students in our school.

Do you know the religions of Asia?
Not much, and we don't think much of them.

If you do, what do you think of them?
Today there are many teenagers who know nothing of religion. What do you think could be done to given them information? Or do you think that religion isn't important?

We think school should provide us with lessons that make us think how to become a 'good' person, to think about right and wrong and issues like that (Philosophy). Everybody must learn to think about these things and know that if you decide on something you have reasons for that and you should know what reasons, arguments are important to you. So you can disaggree with somebody, but then understand why the other person thinks in a different way, what his are arguments. Understanding will alwaysbe very important.

Our summaries on what The Netherlands are like