I cannot add to the story of the young man that was arrested. This was at a time when there was a lot of unrest and demonstrations from leftist groups, and they tore up the town center, while surrounding my plant and trying to break in. Many young people were bussed in to the city from all over Europe to march and agitate. There were a number of arrests at that time, including this fellow.

Both daughters became very proficient in Dutch--my wife and I far less so. They were mistaken for Dutch girls most of the time. They could pass the Scheveningen test with ease. We oldsters could fool no one.

I would say that our dinner invitations were reciprocated about half the time, but we went to a restaurant not a home in most cases. This was standard. Good friends did invite us to their homes, much as in the US, after we became close. We learned about Indish, outsmyters (sp?), and hutspot from them, as well as pannekoeken.

One factor that hasn't been brought up are the events surrounding WWII. American bombers having met bad weather for their primary target, diverted to this secondary target, literally wiping out the town next to us without any warning, killing a lot of Dutch civilians. Some of the victims' families could not reconcile that, which one can understand.

I encountered just one of these people, and he was very, very bitter, even so long after the fact. My friends knew of this group that bore ill will for Americans, probably to this day.

C'est la vie!

Americans are fed up with the Democrats, can Conservatives take advantage…Hillary gets campaign contribution for those pardoned by her husband…And more earmarks are airdropped into recent appropriations bills.
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They both had many friends, and brought them home at any excuse. Seems that the kids loved American cooking, so we usually had quite a gang at dinner a few nights in the week.

I'm sure your meals were a welcome respite from the traditional Dutch meals consisting of boiled potatoes, boiled vegetable and overcooked meat. The Dutch don't generally invite others to dinner. Were these dinner invites reciprocated?

The Indian princess thing seems to be a standard bit of misinformed school rumor. I've seen a number of similar incidents teaching in American high schools.

One of the friends of the oldest was arrested for subversive behavior by the Dutch authorities, and we never saw or heard from him again.

That is curious. Do you know anything more about that incident?

Finally, her teacher said to the class in a very sneering manner: "Oh, that dumb American can't learn a damn thing." My daughter stood up and said in perfect Dutch that this was an insult and she didn't have to take it from a teacher.

My guess is that the teacher would have said similar about a German or French student that they felt had not learned Dutch. Regardless, that is terribly inappropriate coming from any teacher anywhere. It is also quite impressive that your daughter was able to perfectly say the 'g's and 'sch's. As soon as I speak my accent is noticed and the person I am talking to usually switches to speaking English.

It is quite difficult to separate anti-Americanism from simple misunderstanding and ignorance about far separated cultures. I have noticed this living and teaching in various regions of the US (AL, CA, and HI). The ideas that American middle school and high school students have about people in these different parts of the US are mind boggling. Ask them about people in most other countries and their ideas are often even further off base.*

Re: pop culture forming opinions
I remember an exchange student from Iceland attending high school in AL in the 80s who had formed all of her opinions before she came from watching "the Dukes of Hazzard." She was initially surprised that our roads were paved.

* This is also true in the reverse.

A LOU DOBBS CANDIDACYDobbs is now confirming John Fund’s piece (below) that he is considering an egotistical run for ......

They both had many friends, and brought them home at any excuse. Seems that the kids loved American cooking, so we usually had quite a gang at dinner a few nights in the week. This was were I became directly aware of some of the attitudes--through chats around the table and after dinner. It was a trying experience to listen to some of those kids without counterattacking them, or even gently pushing them away from their fantasies about the US.

For example, we were accosted by a friend who said: "is it true that my oldest was an indian princess and had to go home to marry an indian prince she was promised to marry?" That took a lot of unscrambling!

One of the friends of the oldest was arrested for subversive behavior by the Dutch authorities, and we never saw or heard from him again.

But these are little stories. There are lots of bigger ones, but this isn't the place for them.

Has your wife observed the biased teaching I posted about?

She has not noticed this, but she is in the political mainstream here (a bit to the left of me) so her opinion of bias and yours quite likely differ. She has not seen the anti-Americanism that you mentioned. We have friends with elementary school to high school aged children, mainly in Leiden and Amsterdam and some recently graduated from high school in Arnhem, and none of them seem to have attitudes that would indicate that they were taught in this way, though I have not had in depth discussions with them about their curricula. I recently had a discussion with a middle school and a high school child (children of a family friend) who recently moved from the US to the UK. We talked for a while about the differences that they found between their schooling in the US and UK. The main differences they saw were in difficulty of courses (I was a bit surprised that they found their math classes easier). They also talked about some climate and culture differences, but had noticed no anti-Americanism in school.

Where your and your friends children attending international or local schools? She teaches in the local school system and we have little experience in the international school system here.