Lara Belliot
25.11.2015
European Policy and Practice towards Ethnic Minorities
Antonin Mikeš
3080 Words
Education trouble among Roma people:
Focus on Hungary
Introduction
In 2000, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination described “the place of the Roma communities among those most disadvantaged and
most subject to discrimination in the contemporary world”. It is a truth that Roma people suffer from
exclusion, racism and poverty for centuries and if the Europe wants to appear as a powerful,
democratic and inclusive area, it has to tackle the issue of discrimination against ethnic minorities.
Sometimes called “Gypsies” with the negative connotations that Roma are cheaters and thieves, the
Romani people is an ethnic group originating from India over 1000 years ago and mostly dispersed
throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
Actually, the years between 2005 and 2015 were deemed “The Decade of Roma Inclusion” by
12 European countries—Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Spain—that pledged to close the
gap between the Roma and the rest of society. It has created much hope to address the issues of
health, employment, housing, and education and helped mobilize new resources for the inclusion of
Romani people, such as the Roma Education Fund and other projects that focused on desegregation,
preschool enrolment, and secondary school scholarships. Nevertheless, the results are not sufficient
and the policies of the Decade’s are not enough implemented on a regional level. Indeed, the
integration policy in the EU is still expanding and its responsibility is shared between federal state,
the regional and the local level.
Education is at the roots of the integration problem. In our Western societies, if literacy is
necessary to deal with the administration and to get a driver license, it is also as it were imperative to
have basic skills such as arithmetic and computer science to be of interesting market value and to get
out of their extreme lack of job security. If, by implementing more comprehensive education policies,
we manage to increase the schooling level of Roma people as high as the non-Roma people, it would
mean a real improvement for their integration in Europe and would produce a virtuous circle of
respect and harmony between communities and would lift them out of poverty.
1
In this essay, I will mainly focus on the material detailing the situation of Roma in Hungary
and we will try to discuss to see if the policies applied there are the most suitable ones to improve
Roma educational issues. First, I will give a portrayal of the bad results of Roma people in mainstream
education. Then, I will try to explain the roots of the low level of Roma education and to end with, I
will expose ways to improve education policy towards this ethnic minority.
Educational issues: looking at the facts
At first sight, one of clearest issue is low attendance of Roma pupils. Because of family
matters, such as wedding, funerals, or simply need of workforce, Roma children skip school and the
parents do not feel they owe the teacher any explanation. This low attendance damage the
children’s possibilities to achieve school curriculum successfully.
Then, many researches highlight the fact that the Roma children’s interest for education
decrease when they are old enough for secondary school: “Absenteeism and a loss of interest in
school matters become conspicuous and start hindering the successful studying of pupils over the
age of 12 or 13.”1 Then the school drop-out increases: “An estimated 3.5% start secondary education
while 58% of the 14-18 year-old Hungarian population attend a secondary school.”2 Indeed,
secondary school remains a rare phenomenon among Roma pupils. The lack of motivation due to the
need to earn a living and the refuse to leave the community is here at stake but also the shortcoming
of their previous education plays an important part: similar to other disadvantaged children, Roma
children should first be taught how to learn properly, in order to finish their school curriculum
properly. The focus on primary education seems to be primordial to allow further education for
Roma children: “even those who start vocational training have a very high chance of dropping out,
due to defects in their general education.”3 Furthermore, the certificates delivered by the vocational
education programs are often of questionable market value and these programs need to be
reformed to decrease lack of job security for low-skilled and poor workers.
Illiteracy stays an important issue: the majority of the parents do not know how to read and
write, that makes even more complicated the communication with the teacher if he send written
notes to the Roma family. This illiteracy explains also the unemployment of Roma people, who
cannot earn enough money to help their children’s education. The vicious circle of poverty and lack
of schooling is then hard to break.
Conflict with the authority of the teacher and inappropriate behaviour at school contrast
with the situation of the child in the Roma community. Any authority outside the community is seen
as unwelcomed, and even in the community, the Roma child is not used to experience authority of
older people.
The teacher, who most of the time does not speak Romani or Beash, tends to see the Roma
child as inferior because he does not speak the same language and because he does not understand
the specific needs of the Roma child. That is why an easy solution is to send him to “special schools”,
that is in fact an act of discrimination as he will receive there a lower education that makes even
harder to succeed in secondary school and high school afterwards, without any certitude the child
would be less smart that his non-Roma schoolmate.
1
András T. Hegedűs, 1998
András T. Hegedűs, 1998
3
Ilona Liskó, 1996
2
2
Reasons of these problems
We can highlight two main structural barriers to education for Roma people: racism and
poverty. In fact, the exclusion and the lack of essential goods cannot lead to a strong will for
education, as these people have to fight for everyday survival: “Throughout Europe, rejection in a
variety of forms remains the dominant characteristic in relations between Roma/Gypsies and their
immediate environment: accommodation difficulties, health hazards, evictions, denial of access to
public places etc”4. The disinterest and the absenteeism are not the main causes of scholastic failure,
but rather the conflictual relations between Roma community and the surrounding society must be
tackled.
The Roma people are often living under the official level of subsistence and the even if they
sometimes receive benefits from the state: “Even though state education in Hungary is still free of
charge, nobody would suppose that sending one’s children to school does not cost any money”. 5
Quite the opposite, education is a heavy burden for Roma families, with the rising prices of the study
material and the school lunch fees for example.
Most of the time, a form of clash of values can be observed between the teacher and the
Roma children: “The majority of school teachers are ethnic Hungarians who know precious little
about Romani cultural practices”. 6 The teachers are then expecting the same things from Roma
children and non-Roma children: “They imagine that all parents view school as important, that
parents are literate and, therefore, able to understand the nature of their children's school work,
they believe that parents will provide children with adequate time and space to do homework, and
they often assume that money is available for school uniforms, books, and school activities”. 7But
these conditions do not exist for Roma pupils. For both economic and cultural reasons, the children
don’t benefit from the same support at home than non-Roma children. They have no time dedicated
for homework, because they rather have to look after their younger brothers and sisters and help the
community… no desk, no calm to study. “They do not do their homework, they are not given any
help when studying at home, and they do not have separate rooms, desks or shelves where they
could work or keep their school kits”8. This lack of support at home is a strong explanatory factor of
underperforming at school. Roma children don’t have much social responsibilities before puberty but
they already have an important economic role for the community and the extended family, which is
hardly compatible with schooling.
Parents see mainstream education as a means to control the lives of their children and they
are afraid from assimilation and losing their culture. The danger to fail to integrate the modern
industrialised society is increased by the fear to be rejected by the community itself and then not to
belong to any reliable group. The risk of being marginalised is actually real: “The European education
system wants to create gadzos out of Roma children. Yet, if a Roma succeeds in school, they are not
accepted into the gadzo society anyway.” 9 Indeed, belonging to the extended kinship network of the
Roma community is essential to build confidence and to maintain social cohesion.
4
Minority Rights Group International Report, 1995/4
Ilona Liskó, 1996
6
Nidhi Trehan, 1995
7
Tracy Smith, 1997
8
András T. Hegedűs, 1998
9
József Choli Daróczi, 1996
5
3
Moreover, children learn only about mainstream culture, history and politics at school and
that is not of real utility once they leave school at the end of the day to go back to their extended
family. What is important for Roma people is the community, and their children develop at an early
age working and non-verbal communication skills. The Roma parents do not feel confident with
mainstream education: “the school as an institution is often part of what Roma/Gypsies perceive to
be an aggressive environment, education may be seen as yet another imposition, and one whose
quality leaves much to be desired”.10
The children are set apart in the classroom because of latent racism: teachers often think of
them as inferior and do not understand they have different backgrounds. The recruitment of the
teacher should be redesigned to avoid too common example of institutional racism. This can take the
form of remedial school solution mentioned below and that is too often a way to deny the
responsibility of the state to provide an equal education to children regardless of their cultural
background: “If a population is regarded as worthless, then only minimal measures will be taken to
deal with it; it is easier to separate Romani children into special classes than to develop
linguistically and culturally sensitive educational curricula to accommodate their special needs.”11
Roma children are much more likely to be send to “special school”, meant for mentally
disabled or retard children, even if they are not: “This means separating the children of the most
disadvantaged, e.g. Gypsy families from their peers and removing them from the “normal” system of
public education”, whereas it can only create greater segmentation and rejection of the surrounding
society. Poverty is understood by some teachers as a synonym of stupidity, and then they can reveal
discrimination (direct or indirect?) according to the Council Directive 2000/43/EC of 29 June 2000,
implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin
(i.e. The Race Equality Directive).
The teaching language is also a question that has to be solved: “For approximately 30% of
these children, the language of instruction in the school (Hungarian) is not their mother tongue.” 12
The learning of Hungarian grammar could be facilitate by the use of the mother tongue to ease the
learning process of younger children.
Actually, the teachers’ viewpoint on Roma children can reveal a risk of latent racism,
increased by misunderstanding of Roma children, as different systems of values are at stake. Teacher
are still public authorities so if they behave in a racist way, it cannot be seen as a private problem.
They strongly influence the opinion of the whole village about Roma community.
The point is, Roma socialisation process is completely different from the non-Roma one:
autonomy and independence of the children are very encouraged and there is no physical
punishment. The fact that the child always has his word can also explain the conflict with the
authorities at school: both the teacher and the child are right, but they don’t understand each other
as their value systems are completely different. The children will go out of the classroom, arrive late,
without thinking he has to behave in a different way when he is at school, because they are not used
to ask for permission in the Roma community: “The child has full rights as a member of society and
can participate in all family and community discussions.” 13 The teacher has to rethink his teaching
10
Minority Rights Group International, 1995/4
Hancock, 2000
12
Nidhi Trehan, 1995
13
József Choli Daróczi, 1996
11
4
habits, but most of the time, he only gives up and adopts a negative attitude towards all Roma
children.
Suitable solutions
Roma parents are increasingly willing to send their children to school: they recognise
education as the only possible route to literacy for their children: “ Literacy is imagined to be vital in
today’s society where even the most basic needs such as obtaining a drivers’ licence, filling in a social
security form, or requesting a residence permit require literacy” 14. Nevertheless, for the hereinabove
indicated reasons, it remains very hard for the Roma children to study in their home environment.
That is why we could think about a positive action policy to permit to the children to stay at school to
do their homework, in a calm environment and with a teacher in case of difficulty.
The topic is now urging because of the development of the surrounding society and its welloff middle-class: “Romani communities, like many other traditional non-western communities, are
being placed under increasing pressure to conform to mainstream social norms in areas such as
education”15. That is how they can then get a job, a better housing and healthcare…. Yet it is still
necessary to make sure they achieve the school curriculum.
In order to develop more confidence and a more peaceful atmosphere at school, it can be
interested to train the teacher with cultural competence but it seems to be only a first-step: “A lot of
foreign and a few Hungarian examples prove that it is not sufficient to “enlighten” teachers or teach
them about the Gypsy/Romani culture as their feelings, anger, stereotypes and body language will
hardly change”16. Further steps have to be done to increase the children interest but it is essential to
include tolerant behaviour and cross-cultural communication into the teacher training.
We have seen how the opinion of the teacher prevails and it is essential to praise the
children’s self-esteem: “Members of ethnic minorities very often regard their families as the only
community that serves to inspire and strengthen their positive self-esteem.” 17(35) Thus, education
policies should be implemented in order to stop the damaging diffusion of negative stereotypes and
to develop a better communication between school and community: “Previous attempts to discredit
Romani education and socialisation, in favour of replacing it with the values of the dominant culture,
have not worked. Romani people strongly believe that they have the right to determine the course
and direction of their children's education, and that educational decisions should not be imposed
upon them by an outside authority”18. Thus the education of Roma children cannot be made without
taking the specificity of this community into account. Roma people have to be part of the schooling,
there must be some Roma working in the educational staff and Roma teachers too.
Another step would be to stop seeing ethnicity as the only identity of one person: both for
teachers and Roma families, it has to be understood that everybody can have multiple identities at
the same time and that cultural differences are completely normal, “the education concerning it
14
Tracy Smith, 1997
Tracy Smith, 1997
16
András T. Hegedűs, 1998
17
András T. Hegedűs, 1998
18
Tracy Smith, 1997
15
5
should be integrated into the curriculum together with education concerning other forms of
differences”19, avoiding dangers of both universalistic and particularistic approaches.
The Hungarian government has already tried to change its education policies by initiating
reforms in favour of alternative schooling or pilot projects headed by NGOs. For example, the
Kishunhalas project, “attempted in the town of Kiskunhalas under the auspices of the County
Pedagogical Institute of Kecskemét”20 showed that teaching Romani along with Hungarian in the
classroom improved educational success and relations between teachers and parents. Thus bilingual
education programs seem to be efficient to help Roma integrate the Hungarian society.
The Hungarian government also financed in 1992 the creation of Gandhi Foundation in order
to help disadvantaged youth to success secondary school: “In Pécs, Hungary, a school has been set
up which attempts to find common ground between traditional Romani education and non-Romani
education. The Gandhi School teaches Romani children Gypsy ”languages, legends, music”, “dance”
and “traditional crafts” in addition to academic studies”21. The emphasis on Romani culture promote
the development of a self-confident and well-educated Roma intelligentsia, which is of great help to
defend their cultural identity within the whole society.
Teachers must definitely be exposed to the concept of cultural competence, and develop
specific knowledge to deal with the specific needs of Roma pupils and students to facilitate a more
effective teaching.
Conclusive remarks
To sum up, the answer to low education level of Roma people lays in a rethinking of
mainstream schooling. The role of the State is here essential to develop a more respectful relation
between mainstream education and the Roma community. It has to be a two-ways process in which
both parts have to actively participate, otherwise it will only produce greater distrust towards the
state’s institution or else simply not produce any change at all.
Nevertheless, they want it or not, the integration of Roma people in our Western societies
also means their integration to the globalisation. The risk to lose their identity at school is even
greater in the world-wide Occidentalised context. Thus it is even more important for them to take
advantage from schooling as it can as well be a tool to integrate and to conserve and promote their
own identity.
The EU framework dictates minimum standards but these standards are very general and
thus are not sufficient: countries have to develop integration policies at a national and local level.
The examples found in Hungary prove that integrating Romani culture into the school material and in
the teacher training can provide great improvement.
19
András T. Hegedűs and Katalin Forrai, 1998
Nidhi Trehan, 1995
21
Tracy Smith,1997
20
6
Bibliography
Tracy Smith (1997), Recognising Difference: The Romani “GYPSY” Child Socialisation and Education
Process, Romani Association of Australia, Prospect East, Australia, Source: British Journal of Sociology
of Education, Vol. 18 Issue 2,p243, in The Roma Education Resource Book, Open Society Institute –
Institute for Educational Policy, Budapest, 1999.
András T. Hegedűs (1998), The Tasks Concerning Gypsy Children’s Socialisation at School, Source:
Social Cohesion, Szolnok, in The Roma Education Resource Book, Open Society Institute – Institute for
Educational Policy, Budapest, 1999.
József Choli Daróczi (1996), “School Success for Roma Children” meeting in Cluj, Romania, December
11-13, in The Roma Education Resource Book, Open Society Institute – Institute for Educational
Policy, Budapest, 1999.
András T. Hegedűs and Katalin Forrai (1998), Particularism, Universalism and Teaching Someone to
be Different, Source: Cigány gyermekek szocializációja [The Socialisation of Gypsy Children], Aula,
Budapest, in The Roma Education Resource Book, Open Society Institute – Institute for Educational
Policy, Budapest, 1999.
Minority Rights Group International (1995), Education Policies: A Concrete Hope, Source: MRG
International Report, 1995/4, in The Roma Education Resource Book, Open Society Institute –
Institute for Educational Policy, Budapest, 1999.
Nidhi Trehan (1995), Educational Policies and the Hungarian State: The Case of the Roma, paper, in
The Roma Education Resource Book, Open Society Institute – Institute for Educational Policy,
Budapest, 1999.
Ilona Liskó (1996), Supporting the Vocational Training of Gypsy Children (A proposal to the
Department of Ethnic and National Minorities of the Ministry of Culture and Education), in The Roma
Education Resource Book, Open Society Institute – Institute for Educational Policy, Budapest, 1999.
Hancock, Ian (2000) “The Consequences of Anti-Gypsy Racism in Europe” in Other Voices. The
(e)Journal of Cultural Criticism, v. 2, n.1 (February 2000),
http://www.othervoices.org/2.1/hancock/roma.html [Last Accessed: 12/10/2015]
European Policy and Practice towards Ethnic Minorities
Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University
ESSAY ASSESSMENT FORM
7
Student’s
name:
Lara Belliot
Name of
assessor:
Date:
25.11.2015
Please refer to the field research handout if you have any questions
Excellent
Good
Average
1) Introduction
a) Does the introduction
have a clear thesis
statement or hypothesis?
b) Is this sustained in the
report?
x
x
2) Methods
a) Is the methodology clearly
explained?
x
b) Is the methodology
integrated into the report?
x
c) Was the methodology
clearly executed?
x
3) Data Usage
a) Is there enough data to
support the hypothesis?
x
b) Has the source material
been well integrated into the
report?
x
c) Is the data well
documented?
x
4) Representation/
Reflections
a) Do these connect to your
hypothesis?
x
b) Is the fieldwork
experience well-integrated?
5) Interpretation
a) Is the data synthesized
well?
x
b) Is the report sufficiently
critical?
x
8
Poor
Not
acceptable
Comments
c) Have you combined this
report with the information
you learned in class?
x
d) What is the significance of
your report?
x
7) Expression/Presentation
a) Are the style, grammar
and general use of English
adequate?
b) Is the report professionally
presented?
x
x
8) Closing
Remarks/Referencing
a) Is the thesis re-stated?
x
b) Were your conclusions
summed up?
x
c) Are your sources properly
acknowledged? Remember,
fieldwork is documented!
x
Field Report grade:
Further comments:
9