Tongeren-Borgloon in 1879-1884: the school war by state archivist R. Nijssen.

In the nineteenth century, the school landscape was legally regulated by the School Law of 1842. In most villages, municipal schools existed in 1879, and here and there a private schoolmaster was still active. The School Law of 1879, which removed religious instruction from the municipal school curriculum, prompted the Belgian bishops to instruct their pastors to provide an alternative to the official schools in their parishes. Unexpectedly, the school campaign of the Belgian church was very successful. In Limburg Catholic free primary schools sprang up like mushrooms. This is the origin of the current primary school landscape, with mixed free schools in most villages. Statistics show that many municipal schools disappeared in 1884, when the School Law of 1879 was abolished, and that they were replaced by free Catholic schools. Elsewhere, the municipal boys' school continued to exist, and education for girls was taken over by free convent schools. Behind those statistics, a hard struggle took place with many personal dramas. De Rijksarchivaris tells us about those fascinating years in the history of the villages of Tongeren-Borgloon. Together we look at the intention of the School Law of 1879, the social context in which it was implemented, the reactions of the people in our villages, and the factors that—from a liberal point of view—caused it to fail.