When they have to go to school, many Roma prefer to hide their ethnicity. The discrimination in schools forces many Roma graduates of the 8th grade to choose the open competition with the Romanians when they apply for high school, despite the fact that they have special places reserved, as an affirmative measure. They do this in order to demonstrate that they are as good or even better prepared than the majority.
Armando is 12 years old and is in the 6th grade in a school in Bucharest. He is the only Roma in a class of 26 children and because of this he is the target for all the malicious jokes of his colleagues. “They tell me rook just because they see me darker and I feel bad. Romanians don’t like gypsies and say that gypsies are bad persons”.
He is in good relations just with two of them, the rest of his colleagues marginalize him. “When our class teacher wants to move a child with me in the same bench, they refuse to move with me, saying that I am black, I am a Gipsy. Then our class teacher leaves me alone in the bench”. Not just Armando suffers such a treatment. Tens of Roma children receive the same treatment in the Romanian schools. Repeatedly excluded from their collectives in school, they learn that it is not good to say you are a Roma.
Are the teachers the promoters of discrimination in schools?
Oana Badea, secretary of state for the National Minorities Languages Education Department of the Ministry of Education, Research and Innovation (MECI) recognizes that some of the teachers have a discriminatory behavior, provoking identity problems to the Roma children. The secretary of state says that the teacher, through his mission, doesn’t look at the child’s skin color, but she recognizes that there are exceptions as well.
“I cannot deny that there are teachers with such behaviour, they have problems adapting themselves or have a special approach toward the Roma. I cannot eliminate this”.
Even if there is a body of 460 Roma mediators, plus school inspectors for Roma education issues, teachers of Romani language, due to these digressions, the Roma children continue to be segregated and the school abandoning is high; plus the Roma children avoid benefiting of the Romanian state’s affirmative actions toward them.
In three years Armando will graduate from secondary school. He will then have two choices in order to continue to study: he assumes his ethnic origin and accesses one of the special places for Roma pupils; or he competes for the places in vocational schools or high schools.
In 2009 there are 7.483 places for Roma graduates. But only 2.460 pupils applied for these places, 2.246 of them have been accepted.
Is there no need for special places?
Even if the special places are the affirmative measures’ result, meant to encourage the Roma pupils to access qualitative education system, the children prefer to avoid them in order not to be discriminated even more than they are.
“The Roma don’t go on special places, because they will be stigmatized for four years. Many high schools type an “R” next to the name of the Roma pupil and they keep it so for four years. Cezara David, the spokesperson of Romani CRISS explains that this is the procedure in order to show that the respective children were not capable to accede in high schools on normal places.
Romani CRISS gave this year 550 recommendations for Roma children, but the places for Roma pupils are distributed in a public meeting and this is an impediment for many Roma children. For these children this procedure certifies their incompetence in the eyes of the majority.
Roma, equally capable as the Romanians
Oana Mihalache was close of attending such a meeting when she applied for high school. She never denied her ethnic origin, but she preferred the direct competition with the others, both in high school and faculty. She did like this in order to show that a Roma is equally well prepared as a Romanian. “I considered that I can take some private lessons, to learn more, because I have good conditions, I have a house and what to eat. But there are many Roma from poor families and they cannot go to high school in order to advance a little bit”, says the young student, now studying in the Bucharest Law School at the University.
In her opinion, a child as Armando, who always has been marginalized because of his ethnicity, will not be able to state during a public meeting: “Yes! I am a Roma”. “Many children are ashamed to say they are Roma. They think it’s bad to be a Roma, because this is the negative way the others treat them. They are afraid of discrimination”.
Or they can follow the example of Loredana Dumitru. She is now a student at the National School for Political and Administrative Sciences (SNSPA), but when she had to go to high school, she chose the special places. “It was an opportunity I deserved, because this government’s measure is very helpful for us. Many Roma children don’t have other possibility of going to high school or college” says she.
Oana Mihalache and Loredana Dumitru believe that the special places are an effective measure, but the accent should be on combating discrimination in schools and on making aware the Roma children that it is not a bad thing to be Roma.
But what will be Armando’s choice? He likes very much biology and the Romanian language and wishes to become a cook. He would like to use the opportunity of special places, but is still not determined. The way his colleagues treat him bothers him, but he doesn’t regard this as a major obstacle for his professional fulfillment. “It is not a serious impediment for me. I can be Romanian or Roma, still I am a human being”.
(Mihaela Dumitrascu – DIVERS – www.divers.ro) (This text was published with the support of the Open Society Institute Budapest, a program of the Next Page Foundation)