Na Slovensku Podľa Oficiálenho Ščítania Ľudí Domov a Bytov Z Roku 2001 Príslušnosť K Rómskej

The Slovak Educational Context with respect to Roma Children Brief Summary

PhDr. Rastislav Rosinský, PhD. (Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra)

It is natural that within Europe there are not only nations living in this area for whole centuries or millennium, but due to influence of various events, diverse groups of nations migrated here and became part of almost every European state. However, if we want to focus on Roma people, we must note that in this case it was not emigration of the certain group but rather an exodus of the whole nation, which had begun about 300 years BC and in several migration waves took several centuries (Horňák, 2005).According to official census of people and houses from 2001, 82.000 citizens of Slovakia declared their Roma nationality. Given the fact that these data are relatively inaccurate as many respondents did not put in the true information, the number of Roma people in Slovakia was estimated for 300 – 500 thousands. Based on results of sociographic mapping we can estiate that number of Roma people in Slovakia is estimated for 320 000. Approximatelly half of them lives difused and integrated among the majority population. In particular numbers it means that approximatelly 160 000 Roma people lives in 1087 towns and villages. Remaining half lives in:

 town or municipal concentrations (168 towns and villages, approx. 32 000 Roma)  settlements localized on the periphery of town/village (338 towns and villages, approx. 65 000 Roma)  in settlements that are outside the town/village or they are separated by natural or artificial barrier (river, railway, road, forest, etc.) (281 towns and villages, approx. 50 000 Roma) (Radičová, 2004)

Education of Roma people is a pretty complicated area of investigation and it is one of the most serious problems connected with present situation of Romanies. The position of Roma people in the labor market or their unsuccessful entering to this market and their dependency on state social support is to the great extent determinated by the level of acquired education. Despite of this necessity, deeper analyses of Roma attitudes toward education are still missing. The fact is that the level of acquired education of Roma people is significantly lower than of majority population. The greatest differences are among the higher type of formal education, i.e. in number of university and college graduates. This situation is permanently influenced by a lot of factors, which experts divide into two categories. There is a theory of different value system of Roma people, which causes problems with adaptation of children on institutionalized education on one side, and on the other hand we can talk also about social aspects of this problem, about culture of poverty and cultural exclusion, which influence to some extent failures of Roma people in education. Lot of authors (eg. Porubský, 2007, Ľuptáková, 2007) argue that the dominant cause of their failure in education is the difference between traditional education in Roma community and official educational system, which is significantly structured and directive considering pursuing the school duties, and Roma child is not able to adapt to this system naturally. The school becomes for him the place of fear and persecution. Roma child, for whom his family with its customs, values and norms is the whole world, in his six years comes suddenly to the completely different world, full of new people, rules and duties, which does not belong to “his” world. He comes to school class, which should be “his reference group”, where he could find his place and to be accepted. The phase of integration of Roma child from “different” world to the socio-cultural setting of European country appears to be problematic and for Roma child itself frustrating and often hurtful. In comparison with non-Roma children they begin school with visible handicap in the area of maturation and social attitudes. This state is caused mainly by these reasons: – Roma child does not master Slovak language, which is the official language of instruction, but he does not master mother tongue in necessary extent either, because vocabulary of Roma language is insufficient and language code evaluated as limited – Low stimulating, often pathological social and educational setting, which does not support effective socialization of a child in all its categories: maintaining hygienic and working habits, acquiring knowledge and skills, learning philosophical, ethical and aesthetical systems and forming the value system, acquiring the adequate form of social behavior, which corresponds to the norms of society – Low stimulating background, which does not supply enough adequate stimuli for personality development of a child, its physical and psychical development – Individual process of maturation acting on a basis of internal programmed changes is not sufficient for adequate development of psyche and motorics of a child, so a Roma child, whose physical age is 6 – 7 years does not reach the required level of fine motorics, because the process of maturation is not supported by stimuli from the surrounding – Perceiving the school as a repressive institution, where Romany experience only failures, problems, sense of inferiority, fear of rejection, because what is valued in community setting (temperament, noise, freedom, not doing independent decisions, etc.) becomes problem at school, while the theoretical content of education (especially in the second degree of basic school) differs a lot from the life needs of Romany living at the edge of society – Not developing of individual responsibility for one’s own actions, behavior and oneself, because decisions are accepted collectively by community (family) and are mandatory for every member. In this area, the influence of school is antagonistic to the influence of family, and this is very stressing situation for a child, which is not able to solve it by itself – Prejudices, which Slovak children have against Roma children and vice versa, and from which refusal of mutual contact between children originates – Roma child excellently and intuitively orientates in interpersonal relationships, feels kind heart of adult, while it doesn’t distinguish between Roma or Slovak, it is very lively, temperamental and requires a lot of constant attention from adults, what can cause negative feelings and reservation in a teacher – Roma child in mixed classroom is usually rather unfavorite than favorite child, often they are accepted by troublesome classmates, which they accommodate to, what consequently causes production of inadequate behavior, for which they are punished and rejected (Rosinský, 2006).

In 1992 Roma people received status of national minority. However, Roma still do not have their independent national education system. First schools with attribute “Roma” started to occur recently. These schools are supposed to be attended mostly by Roma pupils. Curriculum in these schools is supplemented by so called romological disciplines that should saturate the need of learning about their own, Roma culture. In schools with high number of Roma pupils tools for decreasing of handicaps in school system are created: Zero grade – helps children to reduce problems of lack of experience with majority school system, because they do not have any social and hygienic habits. Content of 1st grade is distributed for 2 years. Teacher’s assistant – helps the teacher and children in overcoming the language barrier, s/he also operates in families, checks the attendance, supervises over school duties etc.

References

HORŇÁK, Ladislav (2005). Rómsky žiak v škole. Prešov: Prešovská univerzita, p. 357. ISBN 80-8068-356-5. RADIČOVÁ, Iveta (edit.) (2004). Atlas rómskych komunít na Slovensku 2004. Bratislava: SPACE, p. 191. ISBN 80-88991-27-7. PORUBSKÝ, Š. (2007). Outline on Solution of Creating the Model of Compensatory Education. In Komac, M. – Varga, R. (eds.). Social Inclusion of Roma. Ljubljana: Institute for Ethnic Studies, p.82. ISBN 978-961-6159-29-6. ĽUPTÁKOVÁ, K. (2007). Príčiny neúspechov rómskych detí v začiatkoch školskej edukácie. In Kasáčová, B. - Lipnická, M. - Gašparová, E. (eds.). Školská pripravenosť detí. Banská Bystrica: Spoločnosť pre predškolskú výchovu, p. 240 – 248. ISBN 978 – 80 – 89183 – 26 – 5. ROSINSKÝ, Rastislav (2006). Čhavale Romale alebo motivácia rómskych žiakov k učeniu. Nitra: Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa, p. 263. ISBN 80-8050-955-7. According to official census of people and houses from 2001, 82.000 citizens of Slovakia declared their Roma nationality. Given the fact that these data are relatively inaccurate as many respondents did not put in the true information, the number of Roma people in Slovakia has been estimated for 300 – 500 thousands. Based on results of sociographic mapping we can estimate that number of Roma people in Slovakia is estimated for 320 000. Approximately half of them lives diffused and integrated among the majority population. In particular numbers it means that approximately 160 000 Roma people lives in 1087 towns and villages. Remaining half lives in:  town or municipal concentrations (168 towns and villages, approx. 32 000 Roma),  settlements localized on the periphery of town/village (338 towns and villages, approx. 65 000 Roma),  in settlements that are outside the town/village or they are separated by natural or artificial barrier (river, railway, road, forest, etc.) (281 towns and villages, approx. 50 000 Roma) [1].

There are 2 subethnic groups of Roma in Slovakia: - Rumungro Roma – most numerous group of Roma (cca 90%), which is characterized by huge rate of poverty, unemployment (90%), large degree of analphabetism and high extent of social & pathological phenomena. They live in Slovakia for approximately 700 years. Their largest concentration is in the Eastern Slovakia. - Vlax (Olas) Roma – smaller group of Roma that lives especially on the south of Slovakia (cca 150 years). Characteristic feature of this community is trade, which is realized on parking places, market places, etc. They do not hesitate to travel around the whole Europe for their businesses, most frequently to Czech Republic, Poland, Austria and Germany.

Some information about education of Roma in Slovakia:  30-40% of Roma children attends school only irregularly;  98% of Roma children does not attend kindergartens,  58% of Roma children attends elementary school and 42% of Roma children attends special schools for mentally disabled children;  about 50% of adult Roma are analphabets;  25% of Roma children falls into range of verbal debility;  in 1st grade of elementary school as much as 22% of Roma children fails to proceed to the 2nd grade, they fail 14 x more often in general as other children;  5x more often they receive lowered grade for conduct problems;  30x more frequently they drop out of school before finishing the 8th grade;  almost 90% of Roma did not proceed to higher than elementary education;  only 2,5% of Roma attends secondary school [2].

In 1992 Roma people received status of national minority in Slovakia. However, Roma still do not have their independent national education system. First schools with attribute “Roma” started to occur recently. These schools are supposed to be attended mostly by Roma pupils. Curriculum in these schools is supplemented by so called romological disciplines that should saturate the need of learning about their own, Roma culture.

In schools with high number of Roma pupils tools for decreasing of handicaps in school system are created: Zero grade – helps children to reduce problems of lack of experience with majority school system, because they do not have any social and hygienic habits. Content of 1st grade is distributed for 2 years. Teacher’s assistant – helps the teacher and children in overcoming the language barrier, s/he also operates in families, checks the attendance, supervises over school duties etc.