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13. 02. 2014.

Bringing Romani issues into the Australian classrooms / By Adam Bruin




Bringing Romani issues into the Australian 

classrooms

By Adam Bruin

Furthering the commitment to developing an awareness of an issue within the classroom, is challenging some of the deep seated ideologies held by both the community and curriculum development writers in Australia. From a global Human Rights perspective, attention is usually drawn to human rights abuses that occur in developing countries, or indeed any nation outside of the West. Human rights abuses within both Eastern and Western Europe are largely ignored. Specifically referring to the situation faced by the Roma diaspora in Europe, there is an obligation to include Romani perspectives in history. Currently, the curriculum content in Australia does not specifically address the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Whilst homosexuals and those with disabilities were also experimented on and murdered in the death camps, the Porajmos, or Roma Holocaust has been largely ignored by both historians and the international community.
Whilst from a social justice point of view it is necessary to acknowledge the Roma Holocaust, it may be difficult to convey how the inclusion of other content relating to Romani people will enrich the Australian curriculum. In October 2013 the story of Maria, dubbed the blue eyed blonde angel by international media, became the focus of a global investigation and inflammatory media coverage that drew attention to the ingrained prejudices of the non-Roma community towards this ethnic minority. Victim to the false perception that Gypsies steal children, the adopted parents (who were eventually proven innocent) were accused of abducting the young girl based on the fact that she had fair skin and they could not produce official documents relating to her adoption. Subsequently, there was an international response which saw neighbours informing local authorities of fair skinned Roma children living with dark skinned parents, which resulted in more children being removed from their families for DNA testing. This blatant disregard for human rights was eventually queried by Australian media after they were contacted by the Romano Sinti Community Association of Queensland. In order to address the broader education of the community with regards to Roma history and the stereotype of child stealing, President of the Romano Sinti Community Association Yvonne Slee, engaged in both radio interviews and providing information to journalists for online newspapers. This resulted in a number of very positive articles that helped to shed light on both the reality of the Roma situation, and the false ideology that Gypsies steal children.
In order to link this theme back to an Australian context, obvious parallels can be drawn between the Anti-Roma laws of Europe and the assimilationist policies of the Australian government towards Indigenous Australians. The cultural fable of Gypsies stealing children is based on the perceptions of the European community when Roma families liberated their own children from state or foster care and went into hiding. Given the moral superiority Europe seems to assume within the global community, the fact that children are still being removed from their families based on race and ethnicity is a controversial issue worthy of investigation. In the broader context of education in the global community, it is worth critiquing the attitudes of the developed world with regards to the human rights of ethnic minorities. Given the lack of understanding of the history and culture of the international Roma community, this topic deserves particular attention in the international community.
You can find this article on http://www.sintiromanicommunity.org/and






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