Session Information
23 SES 11 B, Finding Effective Inclusion Measures in Mainstream Education – Comparative Research in Ten European Countries (Part 2)
Symposium. Continued from 23 SES 10 B
Time:
2009-09-30
16:45-18:15
Room:
HG, HS 7
Chair:
Ramon Flecha
Contribution
Failed Inclusion Strategies of Roma Minority Education in Central Europe
This paper considers how notions of ethnic culture have influenced Central European Roma minority schooling in respect of class, racial/ethnic and gender inequality since 1989-91, the collapse of state socialism in that region.
Attention is restricted to policy measures that is in some sence culturally informed, even if the term „culture” is not explicitly used. While an appreciation for minority cultures is far from universal among educational policy expert community of Central Europe, theories about the cultural causes and consequences of inequality have strongly influenced development in that professional community.
At the micro level, minority/majority cultural interactions [Roma-nonRoma relationships int he schools] refer to deeply internalized attitudes and values, which are involved to explain differences in economic or social success for members of Roma communities.
The „cultural arguments” as stratifying or equalizing effects of ideologies and collective representations are usually influenced by actors promoting ideas about affirmative actions for those Roma communities.
On one side, social policies fighting for their legitimation among majority population try not to pay any considerable attention to the racial/ethnic boundaries among recipients from minorities.
On the other side, cultural policies are quite efficient in boundary building around and between the same communities. Education is in between of those two other policy subfields. F.e. the liberal educational regimes of the 2000ies in Hungary made a certain progress in de-ethnization of Roma/non-Roma boundaries in certain smaller parts of the school landscape. However the growing ethnization [and segregation] of intercommunity divison lines practically killed those effects. Even more, the states were unable to handle the rapid restauration of segregated communities [of course, mainly in new forms and places].
The inclusion programs –however the public administration [central and local] continues them using significant resources – are killed by those tendencies of ethnization of social relationships in the broader environment of the schools.
At this point, using strong regulationary possibilities and even in crises not decreasing usable public resources, the educational system is unable to neutralize [even partially] those forces, reconstracting not only boundaries simply, but [inter]ethnic hierarchies, as well.
A minority schooling [both in its more open straithforward and hidden forms] is more a victim, that an efficiant tool of change is this situation.
The paper uses 90 interviews with Roma political and cultural leaders in Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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