Michaela Stejskalová, PhD student, Slovak nationality

travulienka@gmail.com, +420731971824

Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.

QUESTIONS FOR THE BURNING SESSIONS:

I would like to discuss the topic of language education of the Roma children living in the Czech
Republic or in other countries too. Especially the question of what language these children should
be educated in as a part of an ethnic minority and at the same time coming from socially
disadvantaged environment.

As psychological researches have shown the Roma children in the Czech Republic know far less words
when starting compulsory school attendance than their peers from majority. But this doesn´t apply
only for the Czech language, but also for the Romani language which can be considered as their
mother tongue. They should have a right to be educated in their mother tongue, but on the one hand,
they are not able to speak it and on the other hand, they are usually not even officially
recognized as members of language and ethnic minority.

The question I´d like to discuss is then in what language the Roma children should be educated in
Czech schools to really make their learning experience comparable to the experience of children
coming from the majority, or how to provide the Roma children with the proper pre-school
preparation in a way that would serve them and not bring up negative feelings of the Czech
majority. The topic is quite complicated, because it´s not only whether they should be taught in
their mother tongue, but at the same time there is a problem of their very limited vocabulary in
general, which makes them vulnerable and disadvantaged when first entering Czech educational
system.