Session Information
25 SES 06, Rights and Limitations
Paper Session
Contribution
According to the UNDP 2006 and 2011 surveys, more than the half of Roma living in Slovakia speaks Roma as their first language. In poor segregated Roma communities this shares is over 75%. Despite Slovakia’ Commitments to UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, acknowledgment of Roma ethnic group as “national minority” and the formal codification of Roma language in 2006, the opportunity for Roma children to be instructed in their language does not exist in Slovakia so far.
Neither the use of Roma language as supporting language nor the programmes developing the language of instruction competence for pupils with different mother tongue are organisationally buttressed in the Slovak education. Information about child’s mother tongue is not collected when enrolling in elementary school and mastering Roma language is not the prerequisite for applying for teacher assistant position in schools with Roma speaking children. Moreover, pupil’s non-mastering the language of instruction is not classified as the special educational need in the Slovak School Act.
The aim of the paper is to (1) outline legal, political and social context of the systemic ignorance of Roma child‘s insufficient language of instruction competence (as well as that of children of migrants and refugees) despite the large amount of the research evidence that non-mastering of language of instruction is the main factor of Roma children educational failures (Špotáková 2005; Kmeť 2010); (2) attempt to clarify why educators and advocacy NGOs do not raise strongly their voice to defend the right of Roma children to receive adequate linguistic support during the first year of schooling and (3) provide evidence on the basis of school ethnography that, despite the lip service to multiculturalism, Roma language is literally expelled to the breaks and speaking Roma is perceived as the lack of solidarity with majority children and the self-exclusion.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Amnesty International, 2013 Unfulfilled promises. Failure. http://www.amnesty.sk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/4121_Slovakia_CD_Nesplnené-sľuby-2013.pdf Brüggemann, Christian, Simone Bloem, 2013. The Potential of International Student Assessments to Measure Educational Outcomes of Roma Students. Sociológia Vol. 45 (6), 517-612. Online version http://www.sav.sk/journals/uploads/06201202Bloem%20-%20Bruggemann.pdf European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) 2004. Stigmata: Segregated Schooling of Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. Budapest. Farkašová, Eva, 2004. The Roma Pupils in Our Schools: Their Cognitive Development and Social Integration.]. In: Psychológia a patopsychológia dieťaťa. Roč. 39 č.2-3 Jarkovská, Lucie, Lišková, Kateřina, Jana Obrovská, Adéla Souralová, 2015. Etnická rozmanitost ve škole. Stejnost v různosti. Portál s.r.o. Praha. Kusá, Zuzana, 2013. Assessing the implementation of National Roma Integration Strategy since 2012 from a social inclusion perspective Country Slovak Republic. Ad hoc 2013 Report EU Network of Independent Experts on Social Inclusion. Kusá, Zuzana, Dráľ, Peter, Kostlán, David. Country Report on Ethnic Relations: Slovakia. Available at http://www.edumigrom.eu/sites/default/files/field_attachment/page/node-1817/ edumigrombackgroundpaperslovakiaethnicrelations.pdf Osborne, AB, 1996. Practice into theory into practice: Culturally relevant pedagogy for students we have marginalized and normalized ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY 27 (3) 285-314 Paris, Django, 2012. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: A Needed Change in Stance, Terminology, and Practice. EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 41 (3) 93-97 Slovak National Centre for Human Rights, 2013. Report on Human Rights Observation Including the Right to Equal Treatment and Children’s Rights in 2012. Bratislava UN Convention on the Rights of the Child World Bank 2012 study "Toward An Equal Start: Closing the Early Learning Gap for Roma Children in Eastern Europe.
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