Pedagogy, Culture and Society, Volume 12, Number 2, 2004

School and Ethnicity:

the case of Gypsies

MARIANO F. ENGUITA
University of Salamanca, Spain

ABSTRACT The schooling of Gypsy children has become a major challenge

for the Spanish educational system. After centuries of, first, exclusion and
then segregation in separate schools, an egalitarian policy and a sudden
enforcement of compulsory schooling have resulted in difficulties and
conflicts in numerous Spanish schools. The specificity of the Gypsy way of
life, paradoxically, brings to light the arbitrariness of the school system, i.e.
its dependence on a particular culture and way of life marked by nation-
state, market economy, wage labour, sedentariness, nuclear family, rule of
formal law, etc. After the initial stages of exclusion and segregation,
educational policy towards Gypsies is now going through a reinterpretation
of the idea of equality, departing from formal egalitarianism to arrive at
some form of multiculturalism. Yet this reinterpretation is always on the
basis of an external appraisal of the needs and opportunities of this ethnic
minority by different professional groups.

Introduction
Though I am not, and I am not trying to become, an expert in Gypsy
culture, I have been attracted by the problem of the schooling of Gypsy
people, especially in the current circumstances, because I see it as a
dramatic and paradigmatic case of ethnic conflict. The ethnic divide is
among the most important loci of division in our societies, together with
those divisions based on class (be they in terms of ownership or wealth,
of authority or power, of education and skills), gender, community or
territory and, maybe soon, age. The school system, on the other side, is
not simply one more stage in which, as it could have been foreseen,
ethnic prejudices and stresses appear once again, but it is an essential
institution in the production and reproduction of cultures, which is
precisely the element at stake in ethnic relations.

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The team that I lead, including myself, tried during a year to see
what was going on with Gypsies inside schools, as well as among schools
with Gypsies.[1] The existence of mutual prejudice, misunderstanding,
and harassment is well known, with the balance of power held by the
Gadge (non-Gypsy) side.[2] Newspapers have reported many scarcely
constructive episodes of rejection of Gypsies by Gadges in schools or
around them. But we tried to see something else: we tried to see directly,
on the ground, the very same actors, namely (Gadge) teachers, Gadge
pupils and families and Gypsy pupils and families. We also departed from
the idea that the school, as well as what is learned in it, is simply made of
syllabuses, programmes or textbooks, in order to consider the informal
interaction processes (the teachers’ comments on weather, on how
pupils look, and on the news of the day, for instance) which, even if
unforeseen and hard to control, consume a lion’s share of school time.
Further, we focused on the social structure of the educational process,
meaning the material experience of schooling (time and space
organization, authority relationships among teachers and pupils,
competition among pupils, etc.).
Before getting to the heart of the matter, I should say that I feel
particularly uncomfortable speaking about ‘Gypsies’. This is not due to
the content of the concept, neither as a noun or an adjective, nor to
anything that can be associated with it, but to the very use of the plural.
Every process of knowledge is necessarily a process of simplification, as
far as it consists mainly of an attempt to put some order into a reality
which appears tremendously rich, complex and diverse and, as a
consequence, too dispersed and casuistic. We sociologists used to get rid
of this problem by saying we were operating with an abstraction, or
referring to regularities of social action, interaction patterns, models,
structures, ideal types, etc. By this we mean that, when we talk about
‘Catholics’, ‘wage relations’, ‘xenophobia’ or ‘amoral familism’, we are
alluding to exactly or approximately mean or modal types – depending of
the topic of study and the feasible research techniques – which we
consider useful to illuminate aggregates of individual cases.
In the case of Gypsies, however, I think we cannot do this. I do not
know whether this impossibility derives from the specific case or
whether it is present in any ethnic problem. I do not intend to examine
this question now, but I want to say that I am not going to speak about a
mean or modal type of Gypsy, even if topical, but about an extreme
model. I do not know where the mean or the mode can be found when we
speak about Gypsies. What I do know is that there is, let us say, an
extreme type of Gypsy way of life based on a clan, itinerancy, a
combination of self-employment and subsistence economy, very different
from the Gadge way of life, and that, at some point in between lie most
individual Gypsies (San Román, 1976, p. 26; Acton, 1974, p. 54). I am
convinced that we shall be better placed to understand the problems of

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all of them, even those who are closer to the Gadge world, by reference to
this extreme type than looking for a mean or modal type that would be
difficult to find.
Having said this, my purpose is to examine briefly, first, the
pertinence of most general social functions of the school to the Gypsies;
then, some relevant aspects of the recent experience of ethnic conflict;
and finally, the situation recently provoked by certain social policies.

The Social Functions of the School and the Gypsy Way of Life
Even if a longer list could be proposed, we can probably agree on the
primacy of three main social functions of the school: first, qualification,
socialization and selection in order to assign people to productive adult
roles; second, the making and shaping of individuals as members of a
nation-state and citizens of a political system; third, but not least, the
care and custody of infancy (Fernández Enguita, 2002). A light reference
to them will be enough to make clear their lack of resonance with the
history and the reality of the Gypsy people.
School has become a substantial instrument of education for work
and labour, first of all because the modern productive process in
industrial or post-industrial societies requires work habits which are
specific to collective production and wage relations: regular activity,
cooperation, valorization of time, submission to ends and means
determined by authority, etc. Classrooms socialize pupils into adequate
behavior patterns such as time schedules, physical space allocation,
emphasis on order and quietness, simultaneity in task performance,
submission to contents and methods decided by the teacher or by others
situated above her, etc. But what distinguishes most Gypsies from
Gadges, wherever we look at the former, is the choice of subsistence
economy, self-employment or some combination of both (Acton, 1974,
pp. 252ff.) These forms of existence demand a kind of socialization
different from the one offered by the school, something visible in the
frequent complaints on the inability of this institution to foster in young
people a sense of initiative, entrepreneurial vocation, abilities for
independent work, etc. This is even truer if we consider that it is not
simply direct work for the market, but for a market in which the other
side, the Gadge, is seen as a constant candidate for deception in product
price and/or quality (which, in the end, is nothing but the extrapolation of
market logic), so that not only the structural form of school socialization,
itself functional for subordinated work, but the very fact of common
socialization with the Gadge public who are to be exploited in the future,
are counterproductive from the standpoint of Gypsies’ anticipated
economic activity.
School is also important for the Gadge’s incorporation into work
because most jobs demand basic common instrumental skills to be used

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regularly, because most jobs also require other specialized and

accredited skills that only schooling can formally provide, and because
technological and organizational changes demand a constant adaptive
response to new concrete needs that is only possible on the basis of solid
abstract capabilities. This, however, is not so true for the typical Gypsy
or at least for the topical one. Traditional Gypsy trades require important
specific abilities, but seldom abstract capabilities and knowledge.
Gypsies have kept clinging, by will and/or force, to the traditional jobs
and trades of handicrafts and agrarian, commercial or personal services,
but have remained entirely apart from the development of industry,
professions and services at the edge of the labour market, probably those
which most obviously require the abstract skills that the school fosters.
Last but not least, inasmuch as the school contributes to the
allocation of people to different roles and positions in adult economic life,
it offers a promise of individual social mobility or reproduction. It does
not assign places in society for classes, castes, clans or family units, even
if that arises in the final aggregate, but it does so individual by individual.
To those who come from disadvantaged or subordinate classes or
groups, in particular, the promise of the school is always the promise to
escape from the fate which awaits their group, be it a working-class boy
with a scholarship, a woman who has assimilated male values, a black
with a white soul or a ‘Gadged’ Gypsy. Individual mobility is the price of
assimilation and the cost of deserting the original group. However, the
Gypsy, who lives intensely in, through and for the family group, looks for
a social position or a mobility path not as an individual but for the whole
group, and the school is not even ready to talk about this (Acton, 1974,
p. 264; Barthèlemy, 1980, p. 15; Okely, 1983, p. 52).
I mentioned as the second social function of the school its central
role in the configuration of national identity (Fernández Enguita, 1991). In
Spain, for instance, schooling has served this goal not only by teaching
the Castilian language, Geography, History and all the variants of political
education, but also through Literature (always beginning with the Cantar
de Mio Cid, the Spanish epic of the so-called Reconquista or recovery of
the peninsula by the Christian monarchies) and Mathematics (in order to
unify the system of measures and weights). It is enough to see that
Castilian is not Gypsies’ original language, that Castillian historiography
ignores them, that geographical borders are irrelevant to them and that
literature gives a deformed vision of them and their way of life, precisely
because it corresponds to the cognitive and symbolic universe of a
nation, people and culture which are not theirs. Regrettably, the opening
of the educational system to the language, history and culture of the
different nationalities and regions of Spain has not provided any means to
let Gypsies in. They have been harmed, once again, by their extra-
territoriality.

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No less significant is the sub-function of socialization into the

political system. Before, when that socialization was mainly as subjects
with multiple duties and scarce rights, and now, when it is as citizens
with a balance between both, Gypsies have remained outside the
mainstream. By law, they were repeatedly expelled from the territory,
prohibited to use their own language or dress and denied certain
individual rights (see Sánchez, 1977). Until very recently, and in some
aspects even today, they have been permanent victims of discrimination
in diverse fields of social and political life. To the Gypsy, the political
system and the civil authorities are simply part and parcel of the Gadge
world.
Concerning the third function, it is clear that, even if teachers do not
like it, schools, to a great extent, and maybe more than anything else, are
places where the care of children and adolescents happens when
households can no longer provide such care. There is nothing to be
considered shocking in this: migration to cities, with the substitution of
the urban unknown, unforeseeable and unsafe environments for the rural
well-known, stable and safe ones; physical, functional and emotional
segregation between different generations in one family and from other
consanguineous relatives (i.e. the coming of the nuclear family); the
dangers of homes with electrical and gas appliances and streets full of
motor vehicles; the massive access of women to the labour market; the
gradual disappearance of undifferentiated communal spaces in which
adults and children can mix; even schooling itself, which prevents older
siblings from taking care of the younger: all these have converged to pose
the need to look for forms of childcare for households no longer able to
offer that care. There is nothing more logical and comprehensible than
turning to the school, a place and an institution where children and
youths meet their peers, stay under the supervision of more or less
prepared, dedicated and specialized adults and, at least in passing, are
encouraged to develop distinct and more or less adequate skills,
knowledge and attitudes.
But, once again, this is not the case for Gypsies, for whom there is
neither need nor gain in segregating the care of children from the other
responsibilities of adult life. Subsistence activities and self-employment
allow simultaneous care of children from an early age. Indeed, in this way
the children learn their future work. A closed community, especially if it
has the characteristics of a ghetto, is a densely protective environment in
which every adult knows every child. Extra-domestic work by women is
subordinated to their ability to take care of the children. Not attending
school, finally, allows older sisters to take care of younger children; in
addition, this is their training for a maternal role that, undoubtedly, will
come soon.

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Mutual Closure and Ethnic Strain

Concrete Gadge and Gypsy groups have a hard road before them to find a
form of mutual understanding that is not separate coexistence, in which,
like parallel lines, as close as you like but never meeting, the differences
which distinguish one from the other immediately put into question
crucial elements of their respective cultures. To Gadges, the Gypsy way
of life collides with elements never explicit but indispensable for daily
coexistence, a part of what interactionists would call ‘the taken for
granted world’. To Gypsies, identity and ethnic frontiers are
compensation mechanisms before a hostile world and an instrument in
the maintenance of internal group hierarchies (Falque, 1971, p. 166). For
both groups, various recent economic developments and public policies
have precipitated undesired contact.
Territoriality, or more precisely, a sedentary life, is a part of our
lives much more important than we usually consider. It does not just
distinguish our particular personal or familiar life from the nomadic one,
but it makes possible different forms of coexistence which otherwise
would not be or, at least, would present other prerequisites. First of all,
territoriality is the basis of an assiduous relation that only a common
space can secure. Second, it provides a solid basis to mutual trust
relationships. We can never sufficiently emphasize this point, but think,
as an example, how much trust and fluidity in business, let us say,
between the grocer and her customer, depend on the apparently trivial
fact that, if the latter felt defrauded, she would always be able to find the
former again in the same place. Third, a stable relationship with territory
implies a much more careful attitude towards it than itinerancy, and the
itinerant’s activities almost always become costly externalities for the
sedentary dweller. It does not matter how much some anthropologists
insist on the contrary; the peculiar hygiene habits of Gypsies have much
more to do with the condition of itinerancy than with the Gypsy culture
as such, i.e. much more with the fact that they will soon abandon the
place than with their oriental origins.
The school is a public service closely tied to the idea of
territoriality. It is not only that the provision is territorial, but also that
the ordinary operations of the institution are based on the premise that it
addresses an eminently sedentary population. There is no other way to
understand the obstinate resistance to organized calendars and
timetables among a population in which temporary jobs are distant from
the ordinary site of residence, the whole family makes trips for economic,
social or ritual motives, or in which employment requires a common
effort of the whole family including children. It constitutes a paradox that
the school remains unable to offer an answer to the problem of mobility
in the epoch of social security travel cards, computer networks, modems,
planes and ‘Europe without frontiers’.

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Modern society is made up largely of relations between individuals,

based, when they are harmonious, on the principles of universalism and
reciprocity or, when they are in conflict, on the practices of isolating the
conflict and seeking arbitration. Universalism means, in this case, that
everybody must be treated according to the same patterns or, at least,
that these patterns must not change from relatives to non-relatives,
friends and non-friends, etc. Any other behavior will be rejected as
nepotism, cronyism, favoritism, factionalism, classism, etc. Such
universality behavior – that a price must be the same for everybody, for
instance – is fed by the expectation of general reciprocity, not so much
from the same people on the other side of the relationship at a given
moment, as from anyone who can be there at any given moment. We pay
our debts, for example, because we expect other people to pay us, even if
there is little chance that our creditors today will be our debtors
tomorrow; the whole of Kantian practical morality or ethics consists of
precisely this. To the Gypsy, on the contrary, a sharp line separates the
behavior to be followed with respect to Gypsies, with whom relationships
of reciprocity and solidarity must be kept, and, on the other side of the
line, behaviour to be followed with Gadges, who are the economic
element to be exploited. The reality, or even the simple expectation, of
this double rule is enough to discourage the Gadge from entering into
relations with Gypsies.
In case of conflict among individuals it is a social principle to confine
it to them and, if negotiation between them appears impossible, to apply
arbitration, not to impose a solution that suits one of the parties by
means of force or violence. Of course, this is not always fulfilled, but
nonobservance is seen as a contravention of norms. Contrary to this, in
Gypsy culture a conflict between individuals becomes automatically a
conflict between family groups, be they small or large; arbitration often
comes after some phase of violence, but the arbitrator lacks the means to
enforce arbitration, so that the effectiveness of this solution depends on
the favorable disposition of the parties. The modern state is grounded on
the legitimate monopoly of violence; the clan on its direct exercise by the
parties. Even if the Gypsy tends to limit such behaviour to conflicts with
another Gypsies, the Gadge always fears, reasonably, that his conflict
with the Gypsy may spill over to wider groups of people and higher levels
of conflict.
Another problem permanently present in schools is that Gadge
parents usually perceive the presence of Gypsy children as a risk factor
that can easily produce unacceptable violence. The image of Gypsy
parents coming in a group to school when there is some trouble, even if
uncommon, is enough to evoke such spectres. In the opposite sense, the
individualization of conflicts by the school and by teachers prevents the
Gypsy child from fulfilling the duties of solidarity that his culture and his
clan impose upon him.

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On the side of the Gypsies, and beyond the weight of tradition, the
reproduction of the ethnic frontier becomes a spontaneous response to
troubles and conflicts. Permanent conflict becomes a way to maintain and
strengthen the frontier (Barth, 1975). On the other hand, this frontier is
an indispensable condition for the preservation of inner relations of
domination, relations which are associated with gender, age and the
primacy of some clans or families upon others.
It has been said of ethnic honour that it is ‘the honour of the mass’,
and Dr Johnson could be paraphrased to add that it is ‘the last refuge of
the scoundrel’. It does not matter if one is Gadge or Gypsy, Spanish or
French, Catalan or Castilian; to praise the virtues of one’s own group, to
feel the opprobrium of the other group and to congratulate oneself for
having been born in the first group is comforting and liberating, because
it just requires one to have been born into the group. The important
point, however, is that this becomes more necessary the more
unfavorable the terms of comparison in other more objective fields, such
as education, wealth or power. Individual and group marginalization of
Gypsies strengthens their need to look to themselves as a source of
identity. Group conflict, besides, enforces solidarity and discourages
those individuals who want to cross the line, so that some aspects of the
Gypsy life such as the dedication of a part of the group to activities
outside or in the limits of law helps, in this sense, the cohesion of the
group (San Román, 1976, p. 183).
Ethnic conflict also has the effect of strengthening the inner
structures of domination. The real or imaginary outside hostility
legitimates the confinement of women and children and makes adult
males the only speakers for the group; it also privileges those who head
the most numerous family groups against those smaller. Monopolization
of contacts with the outside world, on the other side, becomes a source
of power in the inside world, as much inside families as between families.
Just as countries reinforce their inner cohesion by invoking the scapegoat
of the outside enemy, so do ethnic groups. Hostility and weakness
outside, furthermore, creates in adult males a growing psychic need for
power inside the group. Lastly, the stability and predictability of a
hierarchy based on age, gender and the number of heads per family is a
source of security against the uncertainty of a competitive outer world
(as much among Gypsies of different family groups as in the global
society).
Schooling collides with this web of relationships. To send the
children to school is to expose them to a hostile and dangerous
environment, not only because it is a Gadge environment, but also
because it can provoke an undesired encounter with other Gypsy groups.
Also, the school keeps together boys and girls of any age, but Gypsies
segregate them, confining girls when the first signs of sexual maturity
arrive. Gadge school practices subject male children to female teachers

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when, at home, they have already some authority over their sisters and,
often, over their mothers. These practices challenge their idea of
manliness.
In recent years, various factors have exacerbated the Gypsies’
problems, making their contact with Gadges more intense and more
frequent, and have put strain on the threads that unite the communities.
The growth of cities and the fast rise in price of urban land, for example,
have made the sites that some groups illegally occupied more valuable
for residential and commercial uses, or else the last chance to build
social facilities instead of cheap dwellings for rehousing. The policy of
rehousing (or shanty-town eradication), the expansion of social work and
the abolition of bridge schools have thrown an unforeseen avalanche of
Gypsy children into some public schools. It has enforced the schooling of
Gypsy children who, were it not a condition to obtain assistance income
or (wrongly) supposed to be a condition for obtaining new housing,
would never been been sent to school by their families. In this way,
instead of Gypsy children coming to school more or less in harmony with
the will of their parents and themselves, they have come against their
will, often in large numbers.
The high rate of unemployment, the polarization in the distribution
of wealth and income, the fiscal crisis and cyclic economic crises have
produced a sharpening of the contest among the most needy groups for
welfare resources, so that, some time ago, we witnessed what could be
described as a ‘war among the poor’, if only for crumbs. The urban soil
that Gypsies have occupied or wish to occupy is not in high-value
residential zones, but on land where some Gadges barely survive.
Assistance for transportation, meals, textbooks, etc. are not given in
schools in which all other people have their needs well satisfied, but
where families have serious trouble to meet the costs of education or to
pay for their children’s access to the school dining room.
To summarize, the conditions combine to generate a movement of
the ‘white trash’ type, in which the poorest section of the dominant
ethnic group becomes the most openly racist or, simply, the battering
ram of a discriminatory reality which the privileged sector of society can
condemn with the ease that distance provides.
Finally, the real or apparent augmentation of crime, the psychosis of
urban insecurity and especially the serious dimensions of drug traffic,
and the growing implication of Gypsies in these problems – more as
intervening factors than as ultimate causes – make them an easy target
for Gadges’ racist impulses. On the one hand, a growing yet minor
proportion of Gypsy groups slip towards these activities, pushed by the
lack of alternative economic chances, pulled by the attraction of easy
money and assisted by the inertia of the moral double standard around
the ethnic divide, the solidarity links of extended family groups and the
detachment from territory. On the other hand, such cases are used and

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abused from the Gadge side to stigmatize groups and to legitimize

cultural stereotypes and discriminatory attitudes, if not to launch
hostilities that approach pogroms.

The School as a Setting for a Mis-encounter

We come to the point at which the more or less sudden irruption of
numerous Gypsy pupils, new but not necessarily voluntary, makes some
school routines stagger. It submits Gypsy children to an often scarcely
gratifying experience and calls into question educational policy
addressed to the Gypsy people.
The process makes it suddenly self-evident that schooling is not
only a right, as we had come to believe after so much invective about its
inadequacies and deficiencies, but also an imposition. This is clear when
the centripetal triangle of the educational state, anxious parents and
compliant pupils is replaced by a centrifugal one, in which the state is the
same and pursues the same ends, but parents’ and pupils’ goals are not
the same as the state’s. How far can parents choose the education of their
children? In the Gadge world, this problem is reduced to the choice of the
type of schooling. If parents do not secure schooling for their children,
both they and society view it as the unquestionable violation of a right
and departure from a norm. But what happens when Gadge state and
society think in these terms, but Gypsy society, clan by clan, does not?
In daily life, the coming of these children to the classrooms makes
manifest how many and how basic are the implicit conditions of
schooling. Teachers discussing, in full Montaignean vein, whether the
question is well-filled heads or well-made heads, can find that bodies also
have to be taken into account. Suddenly, children appear who are not
ready to stay for hours seated in a closed environment, remaining silent
and performing activities that they consider incredibly monotonous.
Further, their households do not share the Gadge criteria of cleanliness.
An academic maze is the outcome. A portion of the newcomers
arrive at school for the first time, much older than Gadge children at the
beginning of compulsory schooling. Very few have ever gone to infant
schools, which poses the difficult problem of whether to place them with
other pupils of the same age, notwithstanding the knowledge gap, or with
other pupils at the same level, notwithstanding the age gap. The lack of
interest of many of them towards what the school tries to teach them is
manifest, and teachers are not ready to suffer it to such an extent.
Absenteeism is part and parcel of everyday life, but impossible to fit into
a school system in which planning of activities consists mainly of
religiously carrying out an agenda. Definitive drop-out comes as soon as
Gypsy boys and girls can help their parents or the latter show the first
signs of sexual maturity, around eleven or twelve years old. Even if
automatic promotion makes them move forward one course after the

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other, very few of them attain the goals of every school grade or stage
and only some, to be counted on the fingers of one hand in schools that
accommodate them by dozens, reach the third stage (6th to 8th grades)
of General Basic Education, or now, compulsory secondary education
(ESO), second cycle. Teachers, finally, must face a diversity in quantity
(level) and quality (culture) inside the classroom that they are not
usually trained to deal with – certainly not by their initial and/or formal
education – and schools must face a public which is incapable of fitting
into the bureaucratic routines on which their regular operation rests.
On the side of the Gypsies, it does not matter how convinced some
of them are that their children must abandon the ‘hole’ in which they are,
and that education is the way out; schooling is a form of enforced
separation that provokes fear and rejection. It is enforced in a strict and
actual sense, as far as it is imposed in direct and indirect ways through
the policies on housing, integration, subsistence wages, etc., as well as
through the constant pressure of social workers and other Gadge agents
and authorities. We must not forget that in Spain the state decided, in
1749, to split up Gypsy families through extensive forced labour in
garrison towns and arsenals (Sánchez, 1977; Leblon, 1985). Even in the
1950s, hundreds of children were separated from their families by force in
Germany. These two facts, among many others, remain very alive in the
Gypsy oral tradition, albeit in an imprecise way (Kenrick & Puxon, 1972;
Vaux de Foletier, 1981; Liégeois, 1986). Even without this, school is, as I
pointed out before, a potentially hostile place to which they have to send
the weakest and most defenseless members of the family group. Gadges
send children to school with the idea that they will be safer, but Gypsies
do it with apprehension (Liégeois, 1986, p. 153).
Once in the school, it is rare that they do not suffer one offence after
the other to their dignity and self-image. It is not that all teachers or
pupils abuse them in a systematic way, but simply that there is always
someone who does, and the memories that grown-up Gypsies retain from
school are always seasoned with unpleasant experiences of rejection and
disqualification. Even without that, to submit to learning a culture which
ignores them or constantly subjects them to evaluation criteria – formal
or informal – in which they repeatedly fall below most of their classmates,
who happen to be Gadges, cannot be a nice experience. Another variant,
and not the worst, is that they experience school as a form of ‘soft
confinement’, which consists of staying in the classrooms at the back
desks, without taking part in the tasks of their fellows. Or they may be
taught by a well-meaning teacher who sets them to draw, on the
condition that they do not cause disorder, letting her get on with the
‘normal’ activities of the class. The institution entertains them and they
devote themselves, in a strict sense, to killing time.
In sum, many Gypsies could summarize their school experience by
saying that they were uprooted from their social milieu to be taken to a

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school to show that they were inferior. After all, what the school does
with these children is to transform their cultural difference into academic
or school ‘failure’. It tries to blame them for the fact of being different.
This bilateral disaster should lead us to question the policies of
schooling Gypsy people. History shows some notable exceptions, from
the Escuelas del Ave María inspired by the conservative priest Andrés
Manjón to the untimely ended experience of the Institución Libre de
Enseñanza, or a handful of present-day schools with less well-known but
not less interesting experiences. Nevertheless, it can be said, even if in
somewhat abstract terms, that Gypsy people have gone through four
successive stages, of exclusion, segregation, formalist egalitarianism and
professional diversification, as I will explain next.
Let me point out, before anything else, two issues. One is that the
first three stages, so formulated, are much like those experienced by
other social groups who are equally disadvantaged, underprivileged,
oppressed, and exploited; namely, the working class and women
(Fernández Enguita, 1997). This should not be a shocking analogy, as
class, gender and ethnicity are the main inner fractures of our societies.
In all events, working-class people, as much as women and Gypsies, have
been first excluded, then separately schooled and finally incorporated to
similar conditions of schooling. The second issue is that, in the case of
Gypsies, these stages are less explicit, because the policy towards them
has often consisted of denying or ignoring the existence of these stages,
and even decreeing their non-existence.
Gypsies were first simply excluded as part of a general policy of
rejection and later as an aggregate result of the life conditions of every
individual family, family group, clan or community. To put it another way,
Gypsies remained in a great measure outside because of their itinerant
way of life, because they remained in the most depressed rural areas,
because they migrated to the less well-equipped urban areas, because
there was neither the will nor the means to assure universal schooling,
because they themselves had no great desire to appear in the classrooms
and because Gadge decision-makers did not have an specific integration
policy towards the group. To sum up, it could be said that first they were
excluded by rule of law and later simply by default.
In the second stage, Gypsies were massively incorporated into so-
called ‘bridge schools’, a form of segregated schooling. In the past decade
the incorporation of all Gypsy pupils into ordinary schools was made law,
but these were institutions whose syllabuses, programmes, textbooks,
etc. absolute ignored their culture, whose organization and operation
routines were blind to the specificity of their way of life and whose ethos
overlooked their values. Gypsies, in brief, have been stuffed into schools
made by and for Gadges, just as workers were inserted into the schools of
the urban petty bourgeoisie, and women were inserted into schools for
men.

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Nowadays, even though official policies toward the Gypsies are

mainly ones of formal egalitarianism and of simple incorporation to
Gadge schools, the idea is getting through to decision-makers and
important sections of the teaching professions that we need some way to
acknowledge and pay attention to differences generally, and particularly
concerning the Gypsies. However, there exist different ways to perceive,
interpret and approach difference. In recent years, and even nowadays,
we can observe at least two ways, and maybe suggest the possibility of a
third one.
The first one can be called the deficit one. It is acknowledged that
Gypsies are different for some reason, but this difference is seen and
interpreted as a deficit. Their problem is that they lack something, be it
intelligence, motivation, work habits, cultural tradition, family support or
any other factor, and it does not matter whether this is due to genetic,
cultural or environmental causes, or any combination of them. (The core
of the argument, needless to say, is that, whatever the problem, it is with
the Gypsies, because the school is innocent.) A double intervention
develops. On one side, and in the short term, a policy of compensatory
education is developed to repair in the school and for school purposes
those handicaps which are alien to it; on the other side, and in the long
term, there is an intervention around problems such as housing, health,
access to employment or political organization and participation. The
usual expression of this policy is the compensatory education classroom,
which is usually the Gypsies’ classroom (see also Liégeois, 1986, p. 151).
This option has a variant, distinguished by its emphasis on determining
the needs of children one by one. It usually leads to the the same
outcome. Special teachers and special classrooms are now called
‘support teachers’ and ‘support classrooms’, and the deficit approach is
described as an ‘integration policy’.
A second way is the explicit acknowledgement that we are facing a
group with another culture. This approach announces a differential
treatment under such slogans as ‘respect for the difference’, ‘adapting the
school to the pupil, instead of the opposite’, ‘multiculturalism’ or cultural
relativism. It then calls for adaptation or diversification of academic
contents, teaching and learning methods and even school routine
organization, as well as for specific training for teachers, their
specialization, or the constitution of a new ethnic group of teachers. The
main difference between this approach and the first is that this one does
not inferiorize the Gypsy pupils. It acknowledges a qualitative distinction,
where formerly only a hierarchy based on apparently quantitative criteria
was seen, even if they were really qualitative criteria.
But there is a common element to both approaches: both give the
floor only to the professionals. In a certain way, we can see them as
different stages in the wider process of the struggle of teachers for their
professionalizationn. Formal egalitarianism responds to the difference in

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a wholly routine and bureaucratic manner, with no other formula than

the application of a common mechanism, which is to say it opts for a
normalized and standardized, non-professional, kind of work.The
compensatory approach individualizes the diagnosis and quantitatively
graduates the treatment, offering some pupils more of the same – more
teacher time, more attention in the classroom, more hours, more
resources – which represents a first element of professionalization. The
multicultural approach, finally, diversifies not only the diagnosis but also
the treatment and declares both of them to be within the teachers’
competence, so that they take care of everything in the same classroom
without delegating, which represents the pinnacle of professionalization.
After all, what distinguishes the professional is his or her real or
supposed capability to apply an abstract knowledge to concrete
situations. The teacher who denies the Gypsy difference denies the
concrete case, and so needs no abstract knowledge, but only concrete
and routine knowledge to be applied to all cases. One who adopts the
compensatory approach recognizes the difference, but leaves to others –
social workers, psychologists, pedagogues, and ‘specialized’ teachers
such as ‘compensatory’ teachers – the task of diversifying the teachers’
professional competence. In opting for the multicultural approach, the
teacher demands the ability to apply abstract knowledge to the concrete
case, in diagnosis as well as in treatment, and/or the ability to apply
specific means to common and/or differentiated ends, and thereby claims
an exclusive competence.
If the story sounds good up to this point, I want to emphasize that
the crucial element in it is not: the permanent role of ‘stone guest’
assigned to the Gypsy people, of someone who is present but does not
participate. However, if one recognizes them as a people with their own
culture, one should also recognize that a basic consensus does not exist
for the routine or professional performance of the teacher, as in the case
of Gadge children. If they are another group with another culture, then
they should have another voice.
It is time to move from taking decisions for the Gypsies to taking
decisions with them. I am not saying that they should decide alone, but
that society should decide with them. They belong to an ethnic group
with distinct ways of life and cultural traditions, which supports a
separate existence. Yet, at the same time, they do not have an
autonomous economic life. Their economy overlaps with the Gadge
economy or is parasitic on the Gadge economy. All this offers, I believe,
the basis for thinking that the education of Gypsies is a question to be
ruled from both sides, not simply one. In other words, the form of
schooling for the Gypsy people should stem from bargains or trade-offs,
in time and in space, between them and the host society. I use the term
‘bargain’ for two reasons: first, because I think the acceptable results
should fall between what global society wants for all and what the

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specific group wants for its members, and second, because it is what I
consider should be the way to arrive at a decision: an agreement in which
both parties listen and participate, acknowledge the other’s legitimacy
and yield, in some degree, to their desires.

Correspondence
Mariano Fernández Enguita, Universidad de Salamanca, Dpto.
Sociología/Edificio FES, Campus Unamuno, 37007 Salamanca,
Spain (enguita@usal.es).

Notes
[1] This is an abridged version of the conclusions of research which have
been published as a book: Mariano F. Enguita, 2001, Alumnos gitanos en la
escuela paya (Gypsy Pupils in the Gadge School), Barcelona: Ariel. The
research was sponsored by the CIDE (Centre for Educational Research
and Documentation, Ministry of Education and Science). It involved
intensive and extensive case studies in eight primary and secondary,
public and private schools in Madrid. Fieldwork was performed mainly by
Fernando Suárez Galván and Ana García Pérez, and we counted on the
advice of Luis Felipe Martín Lluch, then president of the Association
‘Enseñantes con Gitanos’ (Teachers with Gipsy Pupils).
[2] ‘Gadge’ is the most common Gypsy denomination for non-Gypsies in the
English language. It is derived from gaché or gachó (masculine) and gachí
(feminine), which designate, respectively, the pimp and the whore and are
despisingly used for all non-Gypsies (see Ropero Núñez, n.d.; Llorens,
1991). In Spain, the term most widely used is payo, whose original meaning
is rustic, villager, silly, dumb, idiot, rough and ignorant peasant
(according to the standard dictionary), which must be the idea that the
roaming Gypsies took of the Spanish peasant. Its current meaning of non-
Gypsy is accepted on both sides.

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