Segregated School
Cross-posted at the European Tribune
The new year has begun and the holidays will be over far to quickly and our thoughts will be turning towards the new school term starting on Monday. I want to tell you about one particular school that I visited a few weeks ago. It is in Aspropyrgos, about 20 km from the centre of Athens. We were greeted at the gate by a well co-ordinated and enthusiastic welcoming committee of smiling children and teachers. On the surface this was no different to any other primary school. A playground, (unusual only in that it was spotless!) and three small prefab buildings.
But this school IS different. It is a segregated school for Roma children. After the furious protests from parents and teachers at the main school in town against Roma children enrolling at the school, the local municipality, in all its infinite wisdom, built this place exclusively for them. Now the mayor and his henchmen can sit back and say that they have done something positive for the Roma community in the area and everyone is happy. Right ?
Wrong. There are so many things wrong with this segregated school idea that I was unsure how to even begin writing this post. It is pretty sickening to think that the racism that led to this situation has gone completely unchallenged. The parents at the main school have won their battle to rid their community of large numbers of Roma children and have been helped to achieve it by the authorities.
Yet again, it is the victims of that racism who are affected. They are sent to this “special” school where the teaching hours are woefully short, 8am until 12.30pm. The teachers, through no fault of their own, are there for a year at best and are then moved somewhere else. As there are only three rooms, children of different ages are taught in the same classroom.
There are 50 children enrolled there but most of the time attendance hovers at around 50%. As one of the teachers there pointed out, it is not their job to find out why a child is absent for three days or more. If my son is absent for three days the teacher calls me to find out why. This is impossible to do when most of the families here have no telephone. They simply do not have the means to check up on them and there are no social workers to cover the school. So the children just don’t turn up or appear sporadically and that’s the end of it. I covered many of the reasons why Roma children have a harder time staying in school once they are enrolled in this post.
Children are enrolled at the age of six into primary education here in Greece. There is NO reason why all children starting school for the first time shouldn’t be able to go to the same school. Instead these Roma kids are separated off, for racist reasons, to a school that has two or three grades in the same room. After spending their first years here, there is little chance that they will be able to go to the main school. The teacher told us that some of them are ready and could move on but only if they are accepted there. Language is a primary reason. There is no training in Greece for teaching Greek as a second language. So Roma children are at a disadvantage to begin with. Add that to the lack of teaching hours, the lack of continuity of teachers, the unwillingness to tackle the racism of the teachers and parents at the main school and it all adds up to a big mess. No wonder the drop out rate is so high with very few Roma children moving on to secondary education (even though it is compulsory)
My conclusion to all this is to tear the place down and work on integrating the children into mainstream school. Train teachers and social workers to work on both sides (with the school and the Roma community) to develop a better attitude to educating ALL children. The children I met there were vibrant and enthusiastic about learning. They were excited to learn a few English words and called “Bye” to us as we left. Why is it so hard for people to see that they are like any other children? They want to have fun, they want to learn, they want to play basketball, they want to show off their art on the walls.
ALL children have potential and they ALL deserve a chance to reach it. It is up to us to find ways of helping them achieve, however hard it might be. They deserve better than to be pushed away into “ghetto” schools and then forgotten about. Another generation of Roma children growing up without the chance of a decent and full education, condemning them to a life with little hope of improving their situation.
It is sad to see so much potential go to waste. To see those ready smiles and know that they will be gone soon. It makes me angry that we can treat our youngest and most vulnerable citizens in this way. And still call ourselves civilised. It’s a disgrace.
[I will state again that this situation is NOT unique to Greece. I happened to have had the chance to see it up close in this country. Thank you to the Greek Helsinki Monitor for organising the visit and for all the tireless work that they are doing here for human rights, particularly on behalf of the Roma communities. The post on my latest visit to Votanikos will follow soon]
UPDATE: Panayote Dimitras of the Greek Helsinki Monitor has confirmed that this school is illegal and that their lawyer, who was arrested while advocating the Roma access to the main school, is awaiting trial.
Technorati Tags: children, education, greece, human rights, roma
Violations of Roma Children on January 1st, 2009
Denial of Justice for Roma on September 1st, 2008
Recycling Copper at Votanikos on July 28th, 2008
Roma Discrimination Continues on July 24th, 2008
A Victory for Roma Rights on June 6th, 2008
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Reader Comments
is this legal/constitutional?
toomanytribbles, I am not exactly sure (Panayote Dimitras from Greek Helsinki Monitor will be able to tell us more) but I think the Roma community involved in the fiasco at the main school, were duped/pressured into thinking that a segregated school was the best thing for their children. I’m don’t think it’s illegal just a very bad idea.
i was thinking along the lines of the u.s. experience, where segregated schools were deemed unconstitutional. whether the roma community agrees has little to do with the matter — of course you know that.
Great reporting and really beautiful photos! Happy New year!
i can only second Craig,
Sorry for only an elusive answer.
DD thanks for the wonderful post and you are right about last year, except that it was much worse, as our lawyer ended up arrested while advocating the Roma access to school and is awaiting trial.
See our report at:
http://cm.greekhelsinki.gr/uploads/2006_files/ghm787_on_eumc_ghm_mrgg_on_roma_school_segregation_greece_english.doc
and copy from there all that is relevant to answer our friends here.
Sorry but I must say that this school IS illegal but then it has been cautioned by authorities and unfortunately the Ombudsman!
Thank you for clarifying that Panayote. I hadn’t realised that it was indeed illegal even though one would think that it must be.
thanks panagiote. thanks dd.
Folks’ it won’t do without to approach the locals who oppose the presence of these kids in the same school with their own kids.
When a mayor of a little village somewhere in the Peloponesse ordered that all Albanians should follow a strict curfew - be home before the sun falls or else - the presenter of a TV show from the state TV (Reportaz xwris suvora) bothered to visit the local cafe where Greeks and Albanians drunk their refreshments in neighboring tables and presented the story of the Greeks who immigrated to the U.S.A. and faced the same or even worse treatment. In the end all realized how silly was that measure, but you have to actually go and put pressure at the source - those parents who oppose the Roma as if they are a disease - if you want to see results. The mayor is probably following the sentiment of the locals, and he shall do whatever the locals pressure him to do.
Aspropyrgos is a VERY difficult place to live, surrounded by oil refineries that produce a variety of toxic stuff that spread all around. According to old information that I recall from my memory. a couple of those oil refineries should have closed according to E.U. directives because they are too close to inhabited areas and the national highway that leads to the Isthmus. The owners oppose that move by bribing the local and national authorities, and the latter redirect the anger of the locals to other recipients, you know what I mean…
Dont you think that there were efforts to approach the locals? We went out of our way to achieve this.
But the prevailing racist stereotypes on the Roma cannot be overcome with just one NGO trying that.
We did ask the state, we did ask the reluctant if not absent in the field of Roma rights Ombudsman, we did ask the deputies of the region, inclduing those who supposedly have “sensitivities” such as Pangalos (PASOK) and Leventis (Syn) to do that, we did ask the leading PASOK person in charge of education at the time Damanaki (with a long history of advocating for the Roma wehn in Syn) to take such initiatives, but they all refused. Even if the officila PASOK humna rights section issued a very good statement out of their HQ.
So the racist Pontioi leaders, who control multifold more votes than the Roma often not even voting in Aspropyrgos if voting at all, carried the day.
Incidentally it is not the refinery issue but more in general Pontioi also and rightly feel neglected and it is a well known pattern internatioanlly to go from frusrtation to racism, as they all want you to belive that your problems are due not to the leading parties but to the Roma, or elsewhere and at another time to the Jews, to the Greeks, to the Turks, to the Bulgarians, to the Albanians, to the Hutus, to the Tutsies, etc.
Disgusting. But thanks for the pictures of the kids. They give us all hope.
Please post follow-ups on this story.
Panayote, try to thing in an innovative way. In order to push you to that direction, I shall pose a little quiz to you folks in this forum.
What is common between a bunch of folks who live on top of garbage in the middle of Athens and Patrai and Herakleion, another bunch of folks in Aspropyrgos who have a school especially for their own children, another bunch of folks in my native Serres whose village has the most educated (graduated from college) citizens per capita in the whole of Greece. If you don’t know about the last group, you can ask Papadakis of Antenna (if he still works there, but you know that TV presenter that I am talking about, don’t you?), and yet another bunch of folks in Herakleia near my native Serres who was chasing away some E.U. folks who advocated equal opportunities - as well as the funds that they were promising - because, as they said: “We are NOT gypsies, we are Athinganoi”!!! All of the above came as a result of lifelong loathing and segregation, and history shows that some folks managed to do more than overcome other peoples’ loathing on their own, as long as the found themselves in a favourable environment…
So Panayote, what makes the Pontians feel rightly neglected, and why are the Roma also neglected? Why aren’t my native gypsies not feeling neglected - not even feeling Gypsies! - and manage to survive without your or mine or anybodys’ assistance? All that despite being neglected as much as everybody who lives so far from Athens where all the big decisions are being taken…
read here
http://www.ana.gr/anaweb/user/showprel?service=3&maindoc=4946713
to see that in Herakleia they have no problem getting housing loans as gypsies once again although they do not qualify as destitute, and are allotted more than the Aspropyrgos destitute ones and the Patras and …and…
O.K. Panayote, you take a look at the list and tell me what you see? I’ll tell you what I see for sure.
All of the locations within Attica are underdeveloped neighbourhoods, some with a traditional presence of Athinganoi (or Tsiganoi, as the paper names them - neither Gypsies nor Roma!) like Agia Varvara and Zefyri, some with more recent arrivals. There is no mention of anybody seeking a loan in Maroussi or Vouliagmeni. Doesn’t make you wonder a bit? Are you sure that the folks of Aspropyrgos are more intolerant of these people rather than the folks in Maroussi? Do you have any idea of what would happen if a band of Tsiganoi took the initiative to settle in Maroussi? Just try to make such a thought.
Anyway, the second conclusion is that, while Attica makes up at least the 1/3 of the total Greek population (more likely 4/10), the total recipients of loans in Attica is less than half of the loans in the rest of the country. Another striking detail is that while Herakleion does not seem to offer many opportunities, a much smaller nearby settlement with a strikingly refugee name offers hospitality to more than tenfold the number Herakleion offers!
Another intriguing detail that I already mentioned is the use of the name “Tsiganoi” in the official document itself. The folks in my neighboring Herakleia rebelled just because of that some years ago, and they refused to take the money. More recently I was informed that local folks, possibly including Balamoi (you know who these are eh?) had requested loans in order to build homes, but forgot to mention that they already had a home, and just needed a home for their summer vacations!
Anyway Panayote, I see that you are struggling for no apparent reason. Do you want to find homes? There are plenty of them all around Greece that can be purchased and repaired at a low cost, if you’d bother to open your eyes and see tham as many legal and illegal immigrants have done already. I am talking of solid homes like mine, not the shacks like your home or your office dear…
…Honestly!
P.S.
Since you are so tolerant of the Tsiganoi and you care so much about them, tell me Panayote, where do you live, and how many Tsiganoi live in your neighborhood? What would your neighbors say if you told them that a band of Tsiganoi is coming to settle near you? Just don’t tell me that you live in a place like Maroussi…
…Do you?
DD I consider Peter’s posts not only ignorant of the situation in Greece, but also offending if not racist and do not intend to continue this discussion at a level that is not within the confines of the civility at this blog.
Thank you Panayote for your patience and your attempts to respond to Petros Houhoulis in a reasonable and informed way.
Petros, your comments have become extremely annoying to people here and serve no purpose other than to simply disagree with whatever I (or anyone else) posts. I am sure you will cry censorship or cowardice or something, but…so be it. The truth is that people have become bored with trying to respond to your sarcastic and belligerent comments and they are not contributing to any valuable discussion. I also consider some of your opinions to be offensive and I am no longer willing to host your hostility here. I would therefore, ask you to refrain from posting here in future. Thank you. DD