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

Interview with Klára Orgovánová from Slovakia

Interview with Klára Orgovánová from Slovakia Klára Orgovánová was the Government Plenipotentiary for Roma Affairs between 2001 and 2007, in which capacity she coordinated the policies towards Roma of the Slovak Government. She was program director for the Open Society Foundation in Slovakia, director of the Foundation for Romani Children, and director of the InfoRoma Foundation. The interviewers were Iulius Rostas, Mihai Surdu and Marius Taba. Question: Looking at your career, you have been involved in quite a number of things. Klára Orgovánová: Yes, it is true. But first of all, I would like to tell you that I am not an expert in education—I am a clinical psychologist. I started to become involved in Roma-related issues in 1989, and for the past approximately twenty years I have been in different positions. I started my work in a non-governmental organization, and in 1991, we established the first Romani NGO in Slovakia. It was the Foundation for Romani Children, and I was its executive director. From 1992, I worked for the Soros Foundation in Slovakia, where I was the program director of Roma programs, and in 1995 I set up the InfoRoma foundation. After that, in 2001, I moved to a government office as a Government Plenipotentiary for Roma communities where I worked for six years, and now, for three years, I have been working in a special NGO sector. This means that, in my career so far, I have worked more like a manager than an educational specialist. Q: Moving to the issue of Roma and education in the communist period, how would you describe Roma education in that period? What were the positive and the negative aspects of Roma education? K.O.: In the period prior to 1989 Roma assimilation was the state’s official policy, but after the fall of the Communist regime, Roma were acknowledged as one of the national minorities in Slovakia. Before 1989, 304 Ten Years After most Romani parents were employed, but many children still received free meals or clothes, especially those in kindergartens. Even at that time there were Romani (Gypsy) classes or schools, especially the special schools. But there was stronger pressure on Romani children to go on to secondary schools and at least finish the apprentice schools (vocational schools), which lasted for two or three years and graduated without a graduation examination. I was also educated in that educational system, but I think that I never had any problems at school. Usually I was a good student. Still, I had certain emotional experiences. At that time, especially in elementary schools, certain institutions collected information about Roma students and I did not understand that. One day when I was in the classroom a person asked me to come out. There were some people there who asked me basic questions about me, my father, my mother, and I did not know why. At home I asked my mother, and she said that they were collecting data about Roma. In many Roma student records, after their name, there was a letter “C,” for “Cygan.” Q: Was there a type of policy targeting Roma, or focused on Roma? K.O.: I do not think there was some type of policy targeting Roma affecting me, also I lived in the city, not in a ghetto, and I have to say, what opened my eyes after the change of the political regime in 1989 was when I for the first time saw a Romani ghetto. That sight was very different from where I grew up, where there was a good co-existence of Roma and non-Roma. The official state policy was assimilation of Roma and in that time, there were the special Romani classes or schools, or some quotas existed, for example for university study. My experience with the educational system is more from post-communism. My sister is a teacher, we established the Foundation for Romani Children. What we did, among other things was providing scholarships for a lot of Romani students to secondary schools and universities, and we established four “educational centers ” for children in pre-school age. Q: Did you have Romani peers at school? K.O.: Never. Always during my studies I was the only Roma. In first grade, there was one Romani boy at the beginning, but he disappeared to I do not know where. Then I was the only Roma at the secondary school, and later at the university. I was...