How much do you learn about the history Dutch Empire, specifically the Dutch East Indies, in school? Is it taught in a negative, positive or neutral fashion?
Is time given to things like the Rawagede Massacre? I noticed your government officially apologized for this last month. Was that big news there?
Well I can´t speak for others, and being interested in history from early on, I am not ignorant about the negative aspects of Dutch colonial history. The slave trade definitely was on my high school curriculum (it was a major part of the Dutch West India Co.´s trade).
As for Dutch atrocities in the East Indies, I was aware of them from the Aceh Wars (late 19th century), which rounded up the conquest of present day Indonesia, the book
Max Havelaar by Multatuli (a favourite writer), as well as from the intervention during the Indonesian war of independence.
As for Rawagede, I can´t recall if it was specifically mentioned in school (I suspect it wasn´t), but I did know about it. The Dutch postwar record in recognizing war crimes isn´t very good. For instance, captain Westerling was never confronted with his atrocities: he was transferred, that was it. (There is a remarkable coincidence with the treatment of confiscated Jewish property during WW II, where, instead of giving a claimant the benefit of the doubt, he has to prove the property was his when it was robbed by Nazis or collaborators.)
This contrasts starkly with the treatment of the slavery issue: for instance, streets named after dubious nationals have been frequently renamed, and statues of such persons have been moved or removed entirely. Despite claims to the contrary by Wilders and the like, the Netherlands are very much a multi-cultural society (and for the most part immigrants integrate well).
We are thaught about the Dutch Empire but it is horribly biased. The role of the Dutch played with the slave trade is hardly acknowledged and so are all the other "black pages".
For instance; the curricullum teaches enough to know about the events that took place and how the Dutch East Indies developed. However the curricullum doesn't teach us how the natives were treated. It depends on the teacher whether or not you learn this. But even if you have a teacher that goes into it there just isn't enough time to go into everything.)
I can´t say that I share this experience. But we had a fairly good history teacher. Also, I don´t quite see how you can miss out on those black pages without misrepresenting actual history. The slave trade, South Africa, Indonesia: these are major part of Dutch colonial and post-colonial history.
What concerns me more is that knowledge of (Dutch) history seems to declining rather than increasing among the general population. On the other hand, history teaching has improved since the discipline was first started in the 19th century, when it was very biased indeed.
Similarly, in the United States we never learn about things like the My Lai Massacre. While this is sad and I really wish topics like this were covered a little better, I can't say it's more important than learning the actual causes and repercussions of the Vietnam War in general.
This surprises me: for one, the My Lai massacre was big news when it was revealed, even though itself was an incident. (But that´s a personal observation, as previous posters have indicated that Dutch atrocities in Indonesia aren´t well known either.)
That's actually a Flemish tv-program for children, which is also quite popular in the Netherlands. As a matter of fact, I think silly children's programs are one of our mayor export products to The Netherlands 
. When I was little (> 20 years ago), it used to be the other way around...
