Integration not Assimilation

The post-industrial society of the late twentieth century is characterized not only by the feature of permanent structural employment, but by an ever-widening gap between the affluent majority and an ever-growing underclass of impoverished and disenfranchised minorities. The opportunities for employment in traditional trades and small family businesses have dramatically declined as a consequence of technological transformations. In addition, the complex and transferable sets of skills and knowledge required to compete in today’s job market cannot be learned within tradition family networks. Roma parents are painfully aware that in order endeavor to secure their children’s future, it is no longer sufficient to pass on traditional skills within the family. They know that their children need formal education and are confronted with the discomfiting necessity of having to send their children to schools, in which they do not put any trust, which they look upon with resentment, and which will interfere with family life. But Roma parents are also deeply aware that formal educational qualifications offer no firm guarantee of a secure future for their children. The harsh reality of the job market is that employers will still prefer a German, a Spaniard, a Hungarian . . . anyone, to a Roma.

"Real integration" differs radically from assimilation. It means equality, respect for different cultural identities and involves a radical shift the majority communities’ ways of thinking. In the area of education it necessarily involves fundamental change in the schools and kindergartens. The ethos, the language of instruction, the curricula all reflect the dominant, majority culture. Minorities are supported, but only in order to make them adjust and assimilate. The starting point is thus the deficits of the Roma children - not their strengths, their existing knowledge, their languages, their abilities. This aggravates the feelings of inadequacy within the Roma, and degrades rather than strengthens their personalities. Any conversation with Roma about their experiences in school, reveals how deeply rooted and pervasive this feeling is.

Changing one’s way of thinking means that schools with children of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds should reflect this difference in teaching methods and content. The basic and traditional requirements of literacy and numeracy need to be complemented by developing the children’s capacity to "learn how to learn," to develop communication and co-operative skills. A sense of independence and self-responsibility must be cultivated to strengthen their sense of self-worth. Special efforts should be devoted to developing the pupils’ linguistic abilities.

These aspects need and demand a different approach to teaching and education. The teachers’ role will differ in that they will work as advisors and create a framework within which Roma pupils can fully achieve their potential. Such a framework makes room for a plurality of culture and language. For such change, teachers who speak Romanes are urgently needed.

It is essential at all stages, that parents be integrated into the learning process undertaken by their children. This would provide the opportunity to lessen the effects of what is, for the most part, an unequal relationship, characterized by mutual mistrust. Such a relationship must be transformed so that teacher, parents and pupils engage in open dialogue on an equal footing.

To develop acceptance and to win trust requires mutual understanding and reciprocity as well as the protection of the interests of all those involved. State institutions must take the first step; they have the resources, the security and the power. To take this step, the following changes are necessary:

• Schools must take the native languages of the children seriously, and incorporate these as an integral part of the curricula.

• Effective linguistic communication between parents and teachers must be ensured by interpreters or bilingual Roma working in the schools.

• Teachers should provide parents with the opportunity to get to know and understand the school, and reduce the sense of hostility and misunderstanding caused by bureaucracy and regulations.

• Schools should co-operate with Roma-representatives in order to revise school curriculum and content.

• Schools should undertake to revise their general working practices, incorporating anti-discriminatory and anti-racist principles. Signs, leaflets and general information should be multi-lingual. Teachers and pupils alike, should undergo anti-racist and intercultural education training.

• Roma advisors should be employed in the schools. Training programs should be co-ordinated to ensure that a proportion of the teaching staff is Roma.

• Where necessary, to improve attendance and enhance learning, arrangements should be made for flexible daily starting times for Roma children.

School authorities must accord recognition and respect to Roma interests. What makes this so difficult is the weight of preconceptions, low expectations and stereotypes harbored by the majority community about the Roma. Teachers and instructors must endeavor to recreate a shared reality that embraces the perspectives of Roma pupils and parents. Resistance to this challenge, to be able to take the standpoint of the other, hinders learning. Teachers must ask themselves:

This observation came from a teacher who has worked successfully for a number of years with pupils from a wide variety of ethnic and national backgrounds. Such practitioners realize that to meet the challenges of multicultural education, schools must adopt new approaches and embrace new tasks, The failure, to date, of many expensive and well-intended programs to integrate children of cultural and social minorities attests to the urgency of meeting this challenge.

One example of the innovative type of program which should be emulated is that of the Dutch Anne Frank Foundation. The program is based on the following maxims: the acceptance of strangeness; that children are human beings with rights, and one of these rights is to be as they are, and another is the right not to be molded against their will. This is emphasized to counter the tendency of educational systems to see children as unformed beings, full of deficits which need to be remedied. Of course, schooling must prepare children to be able to live as autonomous beings in the public life of civil society, to equip them with skills to earn their living. However more than this, educationalists must recognize that learning is easier for those children who are confident, aware of their potentials and capacities, and who know their worth. Developing these resources in children from minority groups is a necessary prerequisite and indeed should be seen as an enriching experience for the teachers involved.

To understand "strangeness" as positive and enriching is a first step towards a successful and meaningful form of integration without assimilation. To understand "strangeness" as normal helps to recreate a shared reality, a deep appreciation of the perspectives of the other, and a richer approach to problem-solving. Such approaches not only stress the complexity of a child’s individual identity, but cultivate a shared positive image of the minority cultural identity. To harmonize educational programs with the cultural mores of children from minority cultures, educators should start by exploring the children’s own narratives and life experiences. This is an invaluable resource as a starting point for realizing the wealth of the children’s capacities and experience, and from which educational structures can be developed, structures which enhance the children as individuals, respecting and celebrating their difference.

To improve the lot of Roma children in state education throughout Europe requires nothing short of a radical set of reforms, new and dynamic responses to the challenges of multicultural education, and a completely different mindset among educators and legislators. Real integration without assimilation means according equal respect to minority cultures and celebrating rather than denigrating difference. Meeting this challenge requires ambitious programs which will perceive "strangeness" as positive and enriching, building trust and understanding in a dialogue of equality between teachers and Roma pupils and parents.

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Mareile Krause is a lecturer at the Institute for Advanced Education in Hamburg. Her work emphasizes pedagogy with Roma and Sinti, intercultural learning, anti-racism and mother-tongue instruction. She has previously done work on "Education as Persecution of Roma and Sinti" (1981-1984).