Explores the role of genre painting in the education and socialization of 17th-century Dutch children. Focuses on three types of painted scenes that transmitted educational messages: the private sphere of family life and the public domain of the street and of the school. (MJP)

Maintains that issues of religion and the schools have surfaced again in the public forum. Discusses the controversy between public and private education in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in the 1800s. Concludes that public schools can never meet the needs of all and that the Utrecht compromise suggests that alternatives are possible. (CFR)