Ten Years After: A History of Roma School Desegregation in Central and Eastern Europe

The Politics and Reality of Romani School Desegregation in Bulgaria

The Politics and Reality of Romani School Desegregation in Bulgaria DR. KRASSIMIR KANEV The idea of the desegregation of Romani education in Eastern Europe originated in Bulgaria. There are at least two reasons for this: the first is the extent of segregation there, which seems to be the biggest in the region and took egregious forms. The second reason is rooted in the Roma civil rights movement, which was already quite mature by the mid-1990s and was almost unanimous about the need for desegregation. In about 1998, the government and civil society seemed to be in agreement on the need for desegregation and on the methods through which it was to be implemented . This consensus was written into official documents adopted at the top governmental levels. Commitments were subsequently reconfirmed on numerous occasions. Yet, started as it did as a non-governmental operation , desegregation continued to be implemented predominantly through non-governmental initiatives with little commitment from the government. This article will explain the meanderings of the issue of Romani school desegregation in Bulgaria, and look more closely at what underlies these developments. It explores the origins of segregated education, its forms and extent, formation of the consensus for desegregation, as well as subsequent political, policy and legal developments. In the end, it argues for some concrete measures that need to be implemented in order to achieve sweeping results. Origins of Segregated Education for Roma in Bulgaria For the most part, all the current forms of segregation in Bulgaria developed under communism. It is based on the segregated ethnic communities in place since the Ottoman-era mahala system1 and even before, as well as 1 OSCE, Report on the Situation of Roma, 70. 146 Ten Years After in the equally strong tradition of their mother-tongue schooling in separate educational establishments.2 In the peasant societies of Eastern Europe before 1945 however this did not automatically result in segregated education for Roma. There were no Romani mother-tongue ethnic schools at that time and the Roma children would usually attend, when they did, the only village or small town school together with the other kids. It was under communism that large Romani urban ghettoes emerged with schools attached to them. These were effects of the general process of urbanization and the rapid natural growth of Roma population due to its improved access to general welfare benefits and to health care. The creation and expansion of urban Romani ghettoes was a largely spontaneous process, partly a result of an inefficient integration policies and partly a consequence of the disregard under communism for the rule of law, especially in the sphere of property relations and urban planning. It was also an indication of the government’s turning a blind eye to the needs of Roma communities, an expression of traditional attitudes toward Roma as being part of a closed group with fundamentally different values and customs , where society has no stake and no need to invest into maintaining public order and creating institutions to serve community’s needs. Integration during communism was a period of sharp discrepancy between words and deeds: ghettoes and segregated schools developed unhampered despite policy documents of the Bulgarian Communist Party calling for their elimination.3 Schools attached to Romani ghettoes served exclusively the educational needs of the Romani children living there. In addition to their proximity to the neighborhoods, segregation was cemented also by the school districting system, making the free choice of school very difficult, if not impossible in practice for the Roma. These “basic schools with enforced labor education” (BSELE), also known as “Gypsy schools,” were created for students branded officially as having “a backward way of life and low cultural level.”4 There were 131 such schools in the country, of which 31 adopted special curricula intended to cultivate basic manual skills and vocational training already from the first grade. In addition to academic programs, they were expected to produce various goods for sale.5 Their curricula were different from mainstream schools, producing graduates 2 Sachkova, “Politiki otnosno obrazovanieto na mashinstvata v Bǔlgaria.” 3 Kanev, “Local Initiatives: Desegregation in Bulgaria,” 222. 4 Marushiakova, Tsiganite v Bǔlgaria, 91. 5 Ibid., 90–101. Bulgaria – Policy review 147 who were unprepared to continue to higher levels of the national educational system. The government’s approach to the purpose of Roma education was to offer “initial literacy and adoption of labor habits and...