THE TRAGIC PAST AND PRESENT OF EUROPE’S ROMA CHILDREN

In an Editorial from The Slovac Spectator, under the title - The danger of instant solutions –it includes the following statement:

“SNS deputy chairwoman Anna Belousovova rushed to suggest that children from ‘socially inadaptable families’ [i.e. Gypsy children] should be placed in boarding schools. She said that in this way children would be given a choice about what type of life they would like to choose.”

In reality this method of ethnic cleansing, namely to deprive a child of its own cultural background in order to deny its cultural identity and hopefully live like the rest of the majority, goes back centuries. Children were brutally removed from their Gypsy parents in the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment, in order to ‘civilize’ them. Marie Therese of Austria and the leaders of many other European countries pulled Roma children from their parents and placed them with peasant families, to grow up ‘proper’. Now in present-day Europe they are forced to attend schools that discriminate against them and revile them. Not a “proper” learning environment for any child. The other method is to place them into schools for the retarted.

I have known Gypsies or Roma for most of my life. Fact is Roma love their culture, it is a beautiful culture. Roma love their children, most consider their children their biggest wealth. They bring up their children to live their traditional lives as much as possible. As intelligence goes, Roma children have plenty of it. They would not be able to survive without.

So what is the solution? According to Roma I talk to, schooling has to be a mix of traditional and academic. They need at least some Romani teachers. We have these schools for other ethnic groups in the U.S., why not have one for Roma here as well? Set an example for Europe. Morally and idealistically, this country stands for human equality. Here is another chance to prove it.