Abstract:

How is the failure of Roma pupils in school that we define as transfer to special school or unfinished schooling or lack of higher education influenced by culturally specific understanding of the educational situation in so called excluded localities?

In Czech Republic, „excluded localities“, in fact Roma ghettoes, currently present large social and political problem that started as one of consequences of economical changes after the revolution in 1989 and periodically extends over the borders of the country. Poor education of inhabitants and thus very limited access to (any) jobs severely limits possible solutions to the problem.

Attempts of the government and of non governmental organizations to improve the level of education are hampered by issues that can be very vaguely described as „cultural conflict“. This conflict cannot be understood simply as a conflict of two sets of cultural norms. It is rather a process of mediated misunderstanding where stereotypes and multiple failed hermeneutic operations play important role. Under these operations, we refer to various conflicts between pupils and teachers and parents and teachers, processes of exclusion of Roma pupils from mainstream to special schools (Greger, Levínská, Smetáčková, 2008) and failed attempts to motivate towards higher education.

Our research aims to describe and analyse cultural stereotypes that drive this dis-hermeneutic process and to observe interactions between Roma children, parents and school or other institutions where these stereotypes originate and get reinforced.

We build upon concepts developed in the field of anthropology of cognition (cultural models and their motivational force, Holland; Quinn, 1995) and the main field of the research consists of discourse: how the participants speak of their experiences, how they reflect and presents their strategies.

The research is planned for three years (now in the third year), and is supported by Czech Science Foundation (Function of Cultural Models in Education, GAČR, reg.no 406/08/0805). The fieldwork takes place in a remote location (small town and surroundings) in west Bohemia close to the border with Germany in an area of dramatic post war history of extensive migrations, first the transfer of the Czech than the German, and then influx of mixed Czech-Roma population. On site, there are four officially recognized excluded localities We gained access to three of them.

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