Kees Boeke

Cornelis "Kees" Boeke (25 September 1884 3 July 1966)

After the First World War, Boeke erected a large conference centre in Bilthoven, which he called "Brotherhood House." The first international peace conference took place there between 4 and 11 October 1919. Present at the conference were Leon Revoyne, Mathilda Wrede, Leonard Ragaz, Pierre Ceresole, as well as Hodgkin and Schultze. Boeke and Ceresole became the secretaries of this movement, which initially called itself "Christian International", later the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. Together with Helene Stöcker, and Wilfred Wellock, they founded the Service Civil International and in 1921 "Paco" (the Esperanto word for peace), which in 1923 became War Resisters' International (WRI). The school has been hugely influential for its creative way of making the students co-responsible for their own curriculum, together with the teachers; many students who failed in regular schools have blossomed at "De werkplaats", but on the other hand many talented children could not reach a high level in this school.

Co-responsibility in school did not mean a freewheeling life at "the Werkplaats". Children had to perform tasks such as cleaning the school, growing vegetables and fruits, and helping with lunch cooking. Boeke's notion of sociocracy was, in effect, a secular implementation of the Quaker ideals applied to education in such a way that children were treated as adults, and were on first-name terms with their teachers.

In WWII, Kees and Betty sheltered Jews at their own peril, saving several lives. For this work, they were enshrined in Yad Vashem in 1992.

Boeke wrote a major book on education. One of his last works was Cosmic View (New York 1957).

On 3 July 1966, Boeke died in the company of his family in Abcoude, Netherlands.

Legacy Boeke's system of sociocracy still survives, and his work was expanded upon through the efforts of a well-known student of Boeke's ideas, Dr. Gerard Endenburg, who in the 1960s and 1970s developed a governance and decision-making methodology by the same name while directing the Endenburg Electrotechniek company.

Boeke's essay/book Cosmic View (1957) presents a seminal view of the universe, from the galactic to the microscopic scale. It inspired several films:

Cosmic Zoom (1968) produced by the National Film Board of Canada Powers of Ten (1968; new version in 1977) by Charles and Ray Eames The IMAX film Cosmic Voyage (1996) produced for the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Superpowers of Ten (2013), a theater piece produced by Andrés Jaque and performed at the Lisbon Triennial, the Chicago Architectural Biennial, Museo Jumex in Mexico and ZKM in Karlsruhe Cosmic View is mentioned as an inspiration by Will Wright, creator of a video game, Spore (2008).