An elementary school in the eastern Slovakian town of Šarišské Michaľany has created special classes for Roma children that isolate them from other pupils at the school. Management claims it is not dividing the children up by their origin, but by their ability to master the curriculum. The school is facing a lawsuit and criticism from non-governmental organizations over the segregation, the Slovak weekly Plus 7 dní reports.
“We don’t want to discriminate against anyone. We want to guarantee education for all 100 %. If some need special care and more time to understand the material than others, they will receive more time from the instructor in separated classes,” school director Mária Cvanzigerová said in defense of the decision.
The school, located in a small town not far from Prešov, started splitting the pupils up after many majority-population children stopped attending it. These children allegedly complained to their parents that Roma children from a nearby settlement were behaving poorly at the school, allegedly beating them up or taking their snacks. The Roma children are also alleged to have fallen behind in their schoolwork and to have needed more attention from instructors. “The question is who is discriminating against whom. When the teacher wanted the children from the settlements to understand the material, she had to give them special attention and the others were bored,” Cvanzigerová said.
Teacher Margita Dorková, who has taught at the school for more than 30 years, is in charge of the Roma children’s class. “All of the pupils in my class need an individual approach. Even though we are working on the same material as the other third-graders, I must work individually with each child. There is no chance they will prepare at home. Simply put, the only thing that stays in their heads is what I pour in there during instruction,” she said.
Dorková says mixed classes do not benefit Roma pupils. “They are often ashamed. If they were in a class with children from the majority group, they would be behind in their learning and constantly exposed to ridicule for not getting it like the others. This way, everyone is on the same level,” she claimed.
While [non-Roma] parents in Šarišské Michaľany have welcomed the separation of the children, not all of the Roma parents are unified on the issue. “I graduated from the school in Šarišské Michaľany. There were 20 ‘whites’ in the class and six of us. The fact that we were all together meant the ‘white’ kids pulled us along with them, because we wanted to do as well as they did. Because the Roma children are currently separated from the others, there is no one to pull them along,” one resident of the Roma settlement in the nearby community of Ostrovany said.
Non-governmental organizations are opposed to separating the pupils from each other, arguing that such separation deepens the gulf between the majority population and those of Roma ethnicity. “We can say, based on small-scale research that has been done, that integrated children achieve better school results, have higher aspirations, and are better motivated to learn despite the fact that a certain form of tension exists between Roma children and others in shared classes,” Vladimír Rafael of the Open Society Foundation (Nadace otevřené společnosti) said.
Slovakia has faced criticism from international organizations for its alleged exclusion of Roma people from public life and for the ongoing segregation of Roma children in its schools. Several hundred thousand members of the Roma ethnicity are estimated to live in Slovakia, which has a total population of five million people. Roma people often live in settlements on the outskirts of towns or villages, very often in poor hygienic and social conditions.
CAUTIOUS enthusiasm accompanies the European Commission’s recently issued framework document setting out priorities for tackling problems of Roma living in Europe. It certainly does not promise to turn Slovakia’s Roma shantytowns into model communities overnight but Roma human rights activists call it a first step towards more concerted effort by countries of the European Union.
