A Symbolic Gypsy In The University

A symbolic Gypsy in the University

Juan Miguel Hidalgo

A SYMBOLIC GYPSY IN THE UNIVERSITY
Juan Miguel Hidalgo Maldonado Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands INTRODUCTION Although Spanish statistics endorse that Gypsy1 students have experienced notable improvement in their educational situation during the recent years, they still are far from the educational parameters believed normal fora developed country such Spain. This statement leads us to think that there is something wrong during the instructional process of Gypsy children. This hinders them to normalize their situation and integrating themselves with the rest of the students under equal conditions. In order to advance in the process of the educational integration of Gypsy students it is necessary address the problemswhich determine this community tendency to reach high levels of absenteeism, school abandonment, and school failure and find a solution. Moreover, we have to take into account that the integration of the Gypsy population is a complex and difficult problem where many factors converge. This makes it virtually impossible to find a global solution for all these questions. This research is an attempt toanalyze and explain the causes of such a phenomena. Namely, the high index of school failure in Spain among the Gypsy community which makes that only few of them attend university 2. By the end of this report some questions about possible solutions to it will be raised. The Gypsy culture is widespread all over Europe, however my efforts are directed to those who live in Spain, more specifically tothose who are in Andalusia. This is mainly due to the fact that around 45% of the Gypsy population in Spain lives in Andalusia. Therefore the actions, policies and solutions for the gypsies in Andalusia is being analyzed through an Andalusian framework. Although my purpose is to study the educational situation of the Gypsies in Andalusia and most of the information sources I use are about thisspecific case, there is worth information about Gypsies and their education from researches out of Andalusia, such as in the United Kingdom or France. These researches help to better understand the problem in Spain. Conversely, the knowledge find out among the Andalusian
1 The term Gypsy (also “gypsy” and less frequently “gipsy”), is a common word sometimes used to indicate Romani people, Tinkers orTravellers. It may or may not be considered to carry pejorative connotations by those described. From now on the term Gypsy is going to be used in this text because the other terms do not fit with the characteristics of the Spanish minority this text talks about. The best English translation for the Spanish term “Gitano”, which is used by Spanish authors without any pejorative connotations, is the“Gypsy” one. Therefore I just want to make clear that there are no bad intentions in the use of this term throughout the text, but only the intend to make everything more simple for the reader using a single term. 2 According to some estimates the number of Gypsies who attend superior education does not exceed 500 in Spain, others set this cipher in 250. Moreover the Gypsies who have Universitystudies represent just 0.01% of the Gypsy population in Spain which is 600.000 to 700.000 population. Race & Ethnic Relations in Education (2010)

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A symbolic Gypsy in the University

Juan Miguel Hidalgo

Gypsy community can be used in other contexts. We can not forget that although Gypsies from Andalusia and Gypsies from England may be not totally similar, they all share severals main featuressuch as being a minority, having a culture which differs from the mainstream one and the school's one, and also be excluded or rejected by this dominant culture. In order to fully understand the real situation of this community's educational issues this research will cover the following topics: (I) brief history about the Gypsy community in Spain offering background information abut the Gypsy...