Middelbaar Onderwijs (Secondary Education)

This Dutch lithographic cartoon satirizes restrictions on secondary education through three figures in a cramped interior: a stern military officer reads official documents while a small boy sits between him and a portly gentleman labeled "Uitgebreid Lageronderwijs" (Expanded Primary Education). The composition ridicules the tension between limited secondary schooling and expanding primary instruction under government control. The work belongs to the 19th-century tradition of political caricature inherited from Hogarth and Gillray—using exaggerated physiognomy, symbolic props, and spatial relationships to critique policy. Dutch picture-sheets like this one employed lithography for mass circulation, establishing visual satire as essential to public discourse before the emergence of modern comics.