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High school fosters Roma

Integration, and not segregation, is the goal of expanding network

By Hilda Hoy
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 23rd, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Students at the High School for Social and Legal Issues are able to study Romany language, history and literature in class.
As it approaches its 10th anniversary, the country’s only high school especially for Romany teens finds itself faced with a dilemma: Administrators fiercely defend the school’s future, but would rather it didn’t have to exist.
Founded in 1998 in Kolín, central Bohemia, the High School for Social and Legal Issues (SOŠSP) has since expanded to have seven branches throughout the country and has graduated a total of about 300 students. Today, they have about 600 full-time students nationwide, plus another 500 who take distance-education courses.
In the nine years since then, the Czech Roma community has made strides, says Emil Ščuka, a lawyer and Roma rights activist who founded the SOŠSP. But Romany teens continue to face discrimination that jeopardizes their attendance at normal schools. The dropout rate is high, and so is unemployment within the community.
“The reality is that there are only a very few Romany students in high schools,” Ščuka says. “So [our school should be around] until there are enough Romany students in high schools.”
“The most important thing is that Romany kids can complete their high-school education here,” says Marta Tulejová, vice principal of the Prague SOŠSP branch, which rents three classrooms from an elementary-school building in a lively Žižkov neighborhood. “Because most can’t do so at Czech high schools where they are thrown into a majority that doesn’t respect their identity. The Roma are the minority.”
At the Žižkov campus, there are about 60 students. The SOŠSP doesn’t limit its student body to Romany students only, and around 20 percent of the students there are non-Roma, says Principal Irena Meisnerová.
Still, the school provides one of the few environments where Romany youth can find themselves in the majority, among peers and teachers who understand their culture and their learning needs.
Besides taking the usual high-school courses mandated by the Education Ministry, the students here learn the Romany language in class and study Romany literature, culture and history. No other high school in the country can provide them that, and no other school focuses on social issues involving the Roma population, Meisnerová says.
This allows the students to learn some valuable lessons, says Zuzana Znamenáčková, who teaches English and Romany language and culture at the Prague school.
“In the Czech Republic, there are no good conditions for learning about Romany history and culture,” she says. “I think everybody should learn about their past, their history. But in Czech high schools… it’s not written in history books about the Roma.”
This means, for example, that youths — Roma and non-Roma alike — grow up being taught only about the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, even though an estimated 500,000 European Roma were also murdered. In Bohemia and Moravia, Hitler’s final solution nearly wiped out the Roma population.
Like the teens she teaches today, Znamenáčková grew up learning nothing about the Roma people. Curious about the Romany great-grandmother she never met and knew nothing about, Znamenáčková sought out books on Romany history. Today, she’s enrolled in a Romany-studies program at Prague’s Charles University.
“For [my students], it’s very new. Some of them are very interested in their history. Some of them are angry … about why they had to suffer,” she says.
Separate and equal?
Educational discrimination is nothing new for the Roma. Human rights groups here and abroad have harshly criticized Czech policies that once sent the majority of Romany children to “special” schools for mentally and physically disabled children.
In 1999, the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) issued a report that concluded 75 percent of Czech Romany children were sent to these special schools, versus only 4 percent of non-Romany Czech children.
“Romany kids were sent there because they were considered handicapped because of their skin color,” says SOŠSP Vice Principal Tulejová. Students at these schools are only taught basic reading and writing skills. Graduates have barely a fifth-grade education and receive a diploma that doesn’t allow them to continue on to high school, she says.
The ERRC helped a group of 18 Roma who had attended these schools lodge a complaint at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. A final ruling is expected later this year.
The government has made strides in recent years toward integrating Romany children back into the regular school system, and the situation is somewhat improved, says Znamenáčková. “But some teachers still don’t want Romany children in their schools. ... There’s still a lot of prejudice.”
Some critics have accused the SOŠSP of perpetuating the very segregation that Roma rights activists accuse the government of enforcing.
SOŠSP founder Ščuka soundly rejects those accusations.
“What is segregation, anyway?” he says tersely. “We can hardly be the same. In a democratic world, difference should be supported. It would be segregation if we were actually teaching the students segregation, but we don’t.”
Tulejová also adamantly defends the school’s importance. “Our history is neglected by Czechs, and I don’t think that is going to change in the near future. ... We are still at the edge of society and we fight literally every day for our chance to live here.”
— Hela Balínová and Naďa Černá contributed to this report.

Hilda Hoy can be reached at hhoy@praguepost.com


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