Gypsies and Travellers [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION This report has been drafted in an attempt to respond to Resolution 125 (1981), adopted by the Conference of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, on "the role and responsibility of local and regional authorities in regard to the cultural and social problems of populations of nomadic origin". The Conference called on the Council for Cultural Cooperation (CDCC), among other things, to make provision "for a thorough study of the education and vocational training problems of nomads", to prepare "as part of its work on intercultural education, information dossiers for teachers on the history, culture and family life of people of nomadic origin in member states" and to study the possibility of setting up "a specific training programme for teachers with a view to enabling them to teach the Romani language". Education problems were also stressed in Resolution (75) 13 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, as well as in several earlier texts and reports. The Council for Cultural Co-operation first organised a seminar on "The training of teachers of Gypsy children" at Donaueschingen (Federal Republic of Germany) in June 1983. The report on the seminar (Doc. DECS/EGT (83) 63) emphasises both the complexity of the situation and the extent of the measures to be taken in so essential an area as school education, going on to place particular stress on the need for widespread basic information, both for teachers likely to have Gypsy children in their classes and for the general public, for the sake of acquiring better knowledge and understanding of an unrecognised social, cultural and political reality; once such knowledge and understanding exist, greater respect will follow. The prejudices and distorted stereotypes which mark the most widely accepted image of Gypsies and Travellers are largely responsible for hostility towards them, so that even measures taken with the intention of helping them often prove unsuitable. For the CDCC, then, this publication represents a contribution to the basic data required. Like all the dossiers for the intercultural training of teachers, published over a number of years and dealing with migrants and their families, it consists of two parts: "Socio-cultural data" and "The socio-cultural situation". But while, in the case of migrants and their