Arjan van der Meer usually works at the CBS office in The Hague, but spent two months setting up the awareness campaign in the Caribbean Netherlands with his colleagues in Bonaire. CBS collects data in Bonaire to produce statistics about the islands. These cover a range of themes, from the economy to population to social care. Esther Meijer-Sedney works in Bonaire as a statistical analyst. ‘We have a very small office in Bonaire. Since we already work closely with our colleagues in the Netherlands in various areas, we thought it would be a good idea to have some communications support for this major campaign. When we were preparing for the campaign, we realised that it was an excellent opportunity to include ‘Learning with CBS’ in the campaign. That is a course where CBS helps familiarise primary school students with topics such as CBS itself, as well as statistics and how to spot fake news. For us at CBS, it is crucial that as many children as possible join this course in order to improve their understanding of statistics.’
Caribbean flavour
The school visits started on Bonaire, but there may be more on St Eustatius and Saba in the future. ‘The existing teaching materials didn’t include any figures on the Caribbean Netherlands. Since demographics is a subject in both the primary school campaign for the European Netherlands as well as this one, we opted to include the population figures for the three islands in the course material,’ explains Meijer-Sedney. ‘We tailored these guest lessons to primary school kids and I think it’s a smart idea to start early. In the Netherlands, you often hear CBS come up in the news, but not so much here on the islands. We still want to encourage people to use data here, too, though because in a few years, these school children will be using data to write university dissertations or in their jobs. So we want to give them the chance to familiarise themselves with data and its possibilities as early as possible.’
The guest lessons were split into three components. The first component was about the Netherlands, the second was about the island, and the third was about social media. Van der Meer: ‘We teach the children how to tell fact from fiction on social media, using examples from reliable and unreliable sources.’ In between these components, they showed the children figures on the BES islands in StatLine, the CBS database, as well as a video on CBS’s population data for the islands. Additionally, they use the children’s dashboard on population with the latest figures, including the ethnic background of people from outside the Netherlands. The kids work on assignments using a worksheet. At the end of the lesson, the students were given a CBS goodie bag, including several nifty gadgets.
A vision of the future
Van der Meer has hosted several lessons at primary schools in Bonaire. ‘It was a very special experience – really educational and fun!’ He noticed that the children had a good grasp of what they were supposed to do in the guest lessons. ‘The subject matter can be quite tricky for children aged 11–13, with all those numbers. There are always a couple of children who are streets ahead, while the rest of the kids try to keep up. But in the end, we managed to get our message across.’ Meijer-Sedney: ‘The vision for the future was an interesting part of the lecture. What should be done with the schoolyard if the school is no longer around in 2050? The children came up with a lot of interesting answers. Many of the them wanted to turn the area into a playground. The girls wanted a shopping mall on the island.’
Societal discourse
According to Van der Meer and Meijer-Sedney, the guest lessons were very well received by the children. ‘They were certainly very enthusiastic. There is also content in the lesson materials that can be used in regular lessons. In the future, it may be possible to organise guest lessons for different types of education, like HAVO, VWO or MBO.’ For now, the awareness campaign continues. ‘It’s all about perseverance. We shouldn’t quit while we’re ahead – we need to keep showing the public that accurate, up-to-date data is vitally important to the societal discourse.’
