It is often claimed that historical inequities or cultural barriers (such as language) faced by the Roma are compounded by the school system. This was confirmed by a recent Slovak court ruling that schools had been unlawfully segregating children on the basis of ethnicity:
“This landmark judgment is a signal to the authorities, including the Ministry of Education, that segregation of Romani pupils on the basis of ethnicity violates the right to equality and Slovakia’s international obligations to end discrimination,” said Marek Marczyński, Deputy Europe and Central Asia Programme Director at Amnesty International..
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The segregation takes various forms. In some cases, such as in Šarišské Michaľany, Romani children are placed in separate classes. In others, Romani pupils are segregated in special schools or classes which provide inferior education.
Apparently one factor behind this segregation has been pressure from non-Roma parents. Similar problems are encountered by Roma children in other countries. Many drop out of school, and it this is certainly not always due to pressures from their own culture. Here is an account of one boy’s experiences in Bosnia-Herzegovina:
“I go to school every day but I have to fight with children since they tease me and say I’m dirty,” says Tarik, one of the few boys who attends school. Although Tarik appears to be one of life’s survivors, he needs psychosocial support to help him stay at school.
Such is the pressure on children like Tarik that they deny speaking Romani and only speak the local languages. It is a survival tactic adopted to win acceptance by the community.
Problems similar to those found in Slovakia are identified in this report into Czech schools:
Five years after the European Court of Human Rights condemned as illegal the Czech Republic’s disproportionate assignment of Roma to special schools – schools for children with special needs with simpler curricula than mainstream schools – little has changed. Overrepresentation of Roma in all forms of special education continues. In June this year a report issued by the Czech Public Defender of Rights found that, although Roma in the Czech Republic constitute between 1.4% and 2.8% of the population, Romani children comprise 32% of pupils attending “practical elementary” schools (former “special schools”) nationwide. In short, Roma remain more than ten times more likely to be assigned to inferior educational facilities than others.
In Greece, despite its many pressing problems, a very positive scheme for Roma inclusion has been pioneered:
“What this project does, which is unusual, is it takes the principals and the teachers into these communities to get to know the humanity of the Roma people,” Kalantzis said. “On common ground, it becomes a very different kind of relationship. They put a social worker/psychologist and an educator in every one of the Roma communities, and together with the community leaders organize transport of the children to school. They also give a lot of assistance to the families, especially the women, to help them value formal education and support the children in attending school.”
And in Germany the sufferings of the Roma and Sinti in the Holocaust have finally been formally acknowledged.
Hat tip: @DromaBlog