“Roma do not attribute any value to education” – this is an argument or stereotypical belief commonly used in public and often even in expert debates. It is the argument used to explain the failure of Roma children in the Czech educational system. Indeed, Roma do achieve lower education in comparison with the majority population (GAC 2015), however, we disagree that the mentioned argument should be taken seriously. A starting point to defend our position can be that education does not represent a value by itself for an individual because its value is strongly linked to the fact that it opens opportunities and establishes the individual’s position in the social reality. The relationship between family upbringing and education is not straightforward. 1. A relationship based on continuity may exist between the school and the family whereby the experiences and practices from both environments are transferred and shared, or there may be a relationship based on discontinuity where there is a lack of sufficient sharing of “educational” experiences and practices among family members and between the family and the school representatives. 2. That it depends on how the school opens opportunities for acquiring (by reproduction or uplifting) social status to an individual and what is the net price that the individual has to pay for education. 3. That the knowledge acquired in school challenges the authority of parents and that the parents must find ways to deal with this pressure. By presenting the stories of mothers who decided to complete their basic education we would like to show how the topic of education can “come back” to the family. At the same time, it is clear that in the context of life situations of people living in excluded localities and in the context of their self-image, education is not seen as a path leading to social uplift. It can even be said that the school and its organization is one the tools consistently used to evidence social and cognitive deficiencies of people living in social exclusion. The paper is based on our ethnographic research carried out since 2008 in excluded sites in a rural area. Our approach is based on cognitive anthropology and we interpret our data in accordance with the schemata theory, which understands schemata as patterns of thinking by which meanings are created in the mind Lakoff 1990, Shore 1996, Strauss and Quinn 2001).

GAC (2015), Analysis of Socially Excluded Localities in the Czech Republic, Prague. Retrieved Januar 3, 2017, from http://www.gac.cz/userfiles/File/nase_prace_vystupy/Analyza_socialne_vyloucenych_lokalit_GAC.pdf LAKOFF, G. (1990): Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press SHORE, B. (1996): Culture in mind, cognition, culture, and the problem of meaning. New York: Oxford University Press STRAUSS, C. / QUINN, N. (2001): A cognitive theory of cultural meaning (3rd). New York: Cambridge University Press The present paper is based on the following research projects supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) 2012–2015 “Decision-making processes of helping professions in the area of intercultural relationship”, (Reg. No. P407/12/0547); 2008–2010 “Function of Cultural Models in Education”, (Reg. No. 406/08/0805); 2005–2007 “Education and Its Value from Roma Perspective: Education as Seen by Roma Mothers”, (Reg. No. 406/05/P560).