Three generations look back on the 100-year-old Nassau school in Groningen. ‘The director read from the Bible’

Let three generations talk about their primary or primary school years and the stories will tumble over each other. It’s about playing marbles, hopscotch, reading the Bible and singing.

About lining up in neat rows as soon as the bell alias buzzer rang to enter the school.

“No,” it sounds very decided. “That’s in the past.”

Mila den Hartog (11) from Groningen is speaking. She is in the 8th grade at the Nassau School and she knows nothing about lining up in order to enter. “The bell rings and then you have five minutes to go inside.”

Her mother Fannie (37) bounces back. ,,The bell? There’s a buzzer going off, right? We already had a buzzer.”

Gerrit Hagendoorn (69) – father of Fannie, grandfather of Mila – listens to it. “We had a bell that rang.”

Gerrit Hagendoorn grew up on Ernst Casimirlaan in Groningen, where his parents ran restaurant Ina halfway down the street, in a different house than where they lived. According to him, it was logical that he went to the Nassau School, because the school was around the corner and was also Christian. His mother was Christian, he was baptized.

“Six rooms, six classes,” says Hagendoorn.

Fannie: “We had four classrooms and a documentation center.”

Mila: “We just have six classrooms.”

When Hagendoorn taught there in the early 1960s, the school was located on Nassaulaan. Later, an annex followed on Graaf Adolfstraat, where the substructure is now housed. The upper grades are taught in the original building, which is located next to the Noorderplantsoen.

He enjoyed going there and was in class with 32 children.

“There are 18 of us,” says his daughter Fannie. “The school has grown enormously. In my time the school had 180 students, now it has over 400.”

Mila is in a class with 24 children and knows no better than that her school has many students. She praises the school because she can do plenty of crafts and play games there. “And during the breaks we play outside in the Noorderplantsoen.”

That was impossible in Hagendoorn’s time. “There were fences around the lawns of the Noorderplantsoen with signs stating that it was forbidden to enter the grass.” His daughter: “We were not allowed to play in the Noorderplantsoen either!”

Hagendoorn says that education in his time was excellent. He remembers that arithmetic and language were taught properly and that a lot of cramming was involved in subjects such as history and geography. “We had French in the fifth and sixth grade. And it was always about stories.”

On a school trip they went to Schiphol to look at planes. He also mentions the red bench in the hall, next to the stairs. Anyone who was sent out had to sit on that red bench as punishment.

In sixth grade, students from the defunct Valeton school on Guyotplein came to their school. That is how Gretha Hopma came into Gerrit Hagendoorn’s class.

Both schools differed considerably from each other, says Hopma. “The Nassau school was based on classes, while at my old school everyone was equal. It was much more playful than the neat Nassau school.”

She remembers how much she missed the craft teacher at Valeton School. He helped her and encouraged her to make the most beautiful embroideries. Things were… different at the Nassau School. “I made a pinafore for my eldest brother’s baby. When I finished it, I wasn’t allowed to take it home. And when that was finally allowed, the baby had already grown.”

Hagendoorn and Hopma have a class photo of them both, they remember sixth grade, but not each other. They did not see each other.

Not then.

Years later, when she was working in the Uurwerkersgang at the information center for working and unemployed young people, a long-haired man entered. Gerrit Hagendoorn. He asked her: “Hey, are you Gretha Hopma?” They spoke for a while and not much later they ran into each other while they were out in the city center. They were running late and when she went home on her bike, he followed her in the car. For protection.

At her birthday party that followed, they started dating. They moved in together and had three children: Douke (41), Kasimir (38) and Fannie (37), all three of whom went to the Nassau School.

The school regularly passes by at the table. Then it is about teachers, about excesses and about the differences between the past and now. “We had as many as 20 teachers in groups 4 and 5,” says Fannie: “One day we rang the doorbell with a few children from class at Johan Supèr, a substitute teacher who had treated us to a Big Mac. We asked him if he would teach us again.”

Mila listens with her mouth open. “Did you know where he lived?” she asks in disbelief.

The Christian foundation of the Nassau School is still reflected, although significantly less than before. Fannie: “On Monday morning the director read from the Bible and then we sang from the songbook. We had an opening and a closing and we prayed before and after dinner.”

Then Hagendoorn remembers that he always ate at home at lunchtime. “We had a two-hour lunch break. Then we had a hot meal at home.”

Mila hears it all. There is no more praying. “At Easter and Christmas we read from the Bible and sometimes we sing Christian songs.”