Slovakia: when seeing means myopia

“They [Romani people] don’t really care about
[education], the system is too abstract for them.”

“Roma [parents] don’t praise their children,
which results in their low self-esteem.”

“It’s the Roma parents themselves… I’ve
witnessed how some tell their kids: ‘you will never be anyone anyway’.”

(Some participants in the Teach for Slovakia programme.)

One of the permanent features of the
mainstream discussion about the ‘Roma issue’ in Slovakia is attributing responsibility
for Roma marginalization and poverty to Roma themselves. Statements blaming the Roma as a group for substandard achievements in the
field of education are aired in the media on a daily basis. These discussions have recently resurfaced in
the example of claims made by some participants of the Teach for Slovakia programme[1] in Slovak media. Far from
being a solitary offshoot, they resonate with widely-shared public assumptions
about the (non-)educability of Roma students held by many teachers, educators
and other state agents working with marginal groups.

The problem
with such statements is that it treats symptoms of wider social marginalisation
as causes, blaming individual failures or some innate and essential group
traits. These familiar perspectives will be criticised here for two main
reasons. First, they are marked by an underlying belief that it is primarily
the Roma who bear the lion’s share of responsibility for their difficulties in
education and their marginalisation in general. Second, these statements come
with a degree of authority assumed by those who have “seen with their own
eyes” and who have “spent enough time” with the marginalized Roma to understand
them. But have they really?

Although
first-hand observation-cum-participation is indeed one of the tools for approaching an understanding of socio-economic marginality – especially its racialised
forms – mere observation is not
enough. An educated expert, whether s/he is a political scientist,
a manager, or a medical doctor, is not necessarily equipped or skilled
to understand and interpret the perspectives and everyday experiences of those experiencing
marginalisation. Nor is s/he automatically able to place these experiences and
perspectives into the context that underlies them. Even highly-educated
individuals frequently interpret their observations through their class,
racialised or gendered positions. In addition, their understanding of social
reality is determined by their respective educational backgrounds and the
assumptions it produces. Although first-hand observation-cum-participation is indeed one of the tools for approaching an understanding of socio-economic marginality – especially its racialised forms – mere observation is not enough.

A critical
component of any meaningful interpretation of observations over a longer period of time (whether
ethnographic or through any other discipline) is reflexivity, personal and
epistemic, with the main goal being to understand the experiences of the “others” and their social conditions.
Without this reflexivity, observation can simply reinforce and strengthen one’s
own prejudices. Reflexivity is also crucial for understanding how statements
and experiences reflect larger forces, asymmetries, and forms of violence.

One
of the consequences of the mainstream discourse on the Roma echoed by some state and NGOs programmes, is that these prejudices are presented as the collective truth. Generalised, individual stories are judged
and interpreted from a position in which the taste and behaviour of the
middle classes represents the norm. This is reflected in the verbal judgments
passed along by teachers and other professionals working with Roma children
when they deem them to be ineducable.
In the best cases, a few of
those professionals hope that two or three Roma children might be able to
escape “their” environment if they make greater efforts and deveop self-discipline.

Some of
these experts misleadingly embrace a generalising thesis that conflates the
environment and attitudes towards education with the impossibility of social
mobility. Their assumptions can be ascertained from their anecdotal references
to “non-stimulating family environments”, to putative Romany language "backwardness",
and sometimes to a reliance on racist claims about genetic or cultural inferiority.
Little or nothing is said about structural conditions such as miserable
housing, lack of clean water and sanitation, lack of health services, the
absence of paved roads and the non-existence of public transportation for the
Roma inhabitants of some poor settlements.

Nothing is
said about the fact that in a neighbourhood with 4,000 inhabitants, the municipality
has not, for example, built a single playground. We do not hear about the
complicity of state institutions in reproducing these precarious lives through their
various disciplinary and punitive policies governing the poor – for instance,
how removing individuals from the register of social assistance beneficiaries
contributes to the intensification of everyday emergencies and critical events
in the "home environment". These critical events undermine the
possibility of continuous education for children and these precarious routines
result in frequent interruptions to their school attendance. Additionally, the growing
numbers of non-Roma children who are victims of similar structural inequalities
are practically invisible in media reports.

Unfortunately,
the mainstream discourse on the Roma, however well-intended in principle, which
blames individuals and does not pay attention to systemic failures, is instrumental
in establishing the collective archetype of "demotivated/-ing"
families and individuals who need to be "told", "instructed
","kicked", if they are ever to understand that education will have an effect on their lives.

Constantly
talking about undeserving Roma children and their irresponsible parents, or
glorification of the exceptional, singular stories of Roma “Obamas” who have
studied and succeeded thanks to their individual efforts and persistence – (“Yes
s/he can”, if only she wants to) – only contribute to masking the disproportionate
and erroneous enrolment of Roma children into “special schools” and the lower-quality
teaching they receive there.

A vision of
Roma parents without standard jobs who live in appalling conditions but, who nonetheless
enthusiastically encourage their children to study in the evenings, while not impossible, is rather illusory,
and not only for parents with incomplete or little education. In an environment
where even educated Roma have to face daily racism that disqualifies their
skills and education, and where equal qualification does not translate into
equal opportunities on the "non-Roma" labour market, it is very
difficult to nourish some ideal of how education is the key to a better future.
This ideal of the individual escape of a
capable Roma child is further ruptured when we consider the (flex-)exploitative
working conditions and salaries in the jobs currently accessible to Roma. These
are largely insufficient for escaping the spiral of poverty.

Project-based
initiatives with their efforts, enthusiasm and determination to change things
on the ground are certainly laudable, and serve as an example of willingness to
make change at local level. Understanding the teachers’ conditions of service
in marginalized localities is one of the main preconditions for changing the status quo.

But the
problem lies in how some teachers, educators and others involved in various projects
explain the causes of the phenomena of poverty and marginalisation that they
have encountered in the schools and beyond. An additional problem is the
assumption that these types of project-based interventions can solve the
structural shortcomings in the educational system in Slovakia.

The marginalization
of Roma in Slovakia is rooted in a complex set of political and economic
structures, historical legacies, cultural imperatives and inter-ethnic
relations. It cannot be overcome at the level of individual solutions or
time-limited projects aimed at a certain segment of real life. Foregrounding
the successes of individual project-based initiatives, such as Teach For Slovakia, in media reports downplays and makes
invisible the desperate need for structural changes in the education system and
the hard work of state-employed teachers.

The
moralising calls for better education as a guarantee of future employment
ignore the everyday realities of most Roma (educated or not), which are marked
by racial discrimination, exploitative, precarious jobs, and frequently also persistent
poverty. Project-based programmes and individual trainings simply do not offer
any sustainable or continuous solutions. This is further evidenced by the ambiguous impact of a range of development projects
that have been financed from European funds.

Moreover, taking at face value the
statements that have been recorded in interviews or in brief encounters with
students’ families is not enough evidence on which to base assessments. These
interpretations, while concealing the underlying structural problems associated
with material deprivation and discrimination, also rest on moralizing
assumptions about the psychological disposition, behaviour, lack of motivation,
attitudes and "backwardness" of the poor Roma. These can only
contribute to further deepening their marginalization and social exclusion,
touching the surface of these visible symptoms without addressing the deeper
causes and forces producing and reproducing racialised poverty in Slovakia.

If the Teach
For Slovakia participants would like to shape a future of progress, it is
crucial that rather than reproducing prejudices and stereotypes, they open up
debate about existing structural inequalities in Slovakia.

English translation edited by Gwendolyn Albert

[1] Teach for Slovakia is the Slovak partner
of the Teach for All programme, which aims to
strengthen the “movement of educational equity” and transform the educational
system through leadership. It recruits
“remarkable and diverse individuals to become teachers in low-income
communities” where they are committed to teach for two years. After this time
they appear to “know” because they have seen, lived and breathed the Roma
environment.

Slovakian Roma children from the Sarisska highlands, 2009. Wikicommons/Jozef Kotulič. Some rights reserved.

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