EDUCATION FOR REMEMBRANCE OF THE ROMA GENOCIDE

Education for Remembrance of the Roma Genocide…
35
fully recognized by institutions and society in general. Participation
of hundreds of people united for memory and the struggle
for recognition found a meeting point in a space of great communicative
interaction, in which all opinions and experiences
could be shared freely. The magnitude of the event and the rate
of participation were of great historical importance and made it
the biggest Roma commemorative event ever held.
Such an initiative is a key element in the processes of empowerment
of the Roma who, since their arrival in the European
continent, have been victims of numerous discriminatory acts,
being the target of persecutions, tortures and hate crimes 24 . Roma
people could find in this event a place for convergence and joining
forces to define common objectives and to express their demands
for the recognition of their particular and common historical
destinies. If there was something crucial that the participants
could learn, it was the importance of education in the recovery of
historical memory and the empowerment of youngsters. Creating
non-formal educational spaces is important for the awakening of
social consciousness and critical spirit among the new generations.
These spaces should be positively valued as an educational alternative.
The formal educative institutions transmit only a part of the
history, a “selected culture” that makes educational resources in
the reflection of certain ideology and makes textbooks legitimizing
tools of a unique historical vision that does not consider the
history of certain groups 25 . Thus, the transmission of knowledge
in informal and non-formal spaces as well as outside the socially
accepted sources of knowledge becomes indispensable to recognize
the forgotten groups like the Roma and the histories ignored
by institutions. The experiences shared by Roma survivors with
24 Julio Vargas Claveria & Jesus Gómez Alonso, “Why Roma do not like mainstream
schools: Voices of a people without territory”, Harvard Educational
Review, 2003, 73(4), pp. 559–590.
25 Nieves Blanco, “La dimensión ideológica de los libros de texto”, Kikiriki
Cooperación Educativa, 2001, pp. 61, 50–56.