Project: Inclusion of Roma Women and Men in Security Sector

11Feb2015

Say what you will about the controversial Czech public television reality show Class 8A, it managed to surprise all the way to its final episode at the end of last year.

The beginning of the eight-part series, which took teachers into the toughest school to see if they could make a difference, seemed like an unfortunate experiment that only confirmed for the majority audience its prejudices against Roma.

But in the end, viewers came to better understand the world of Roma teenagers, and clichés about the “ineducability” of the children of the ghetto started to drop away. More broadly, the show interestingly touched on the general dilemma of contemporary education as traditional schools lose their ability to engage children.

The concept of this reality show was taken from the Swedish original. Three outside, competent teachers come for half a year to the “worst class in the country” to see if they can help the children and teach them something. While in Sweden, this was a class of immigrant children, in the Czech Republic, the producers chose an elementary school in Brno that is almost solely attended by Roma children.

After the first few hours, the enthusiastic teachers are just as shocked as the television viewer. The adolescents from 8A completely ignore them, and if they come to school at all, they do what they want. They eat, scream, sing, walk freely around the classroom, stare at their mobile phones – and it seems that there is no force that could redirect their attention.

As expected, the series prompted a hateful litany of online comments that there’s simply no way to help these lazy Roma.

Initially, the viewer might have blamed Czech Television for missing the mark. The situation in which this Brno school (and many others in the country) finds itself in is the result of a clear political failure. Most schools refuse to accept Romani pupils so as not to scare off “white” parents. As a result, in areas with Roma populations, monochromatic “dark” schools have arisen, which must accept these children because they are local. Such schools are then missing the more motivated, hard-working students who pull the class upward, and the negative effects of the ghetto snowball.

Although the show does explain the logic of this segregation in the first episode, it doesn’t tackle the issue again, so the resulting image is false and unjust. We follow the Sisyphean efforts of the likeable (white) teaching staff, who unsuccessfully try to help the arrogant (Romani) teenagers. We sympathize with these exhausted teachers – who, however, after half a year of shooting the show return to their comfortable schools – and not with the children and their miserable future, which the ghetto has long ago predetermined for them.

Part of the story the show does not tell is that the cities are the trustees of schools and can coordinate the activities of their principals. They could have reached agreements with them to promote ethnically diverse and healthier school environments. But they haven’t, and a “free market” results in segregation. The Czech Television viewer then voyeuristically observes the consequences of this political inaction, instead of learning something about its causes and possible solutions.

These initial objections, however, with each additional episode, eventually fall away. As the viewer gets to know the children, he sees through their tough-guy masks to their insecurities, social limitations, joys, and desires. It is increasingly difficult to perceive the situation in simple stereotypes. Indeed, Classroom 8A might be an unusual remedy for prejudices – just by providing enough time for the children of the “worst class” to present themselves until the viewer gets used to them and sees them as normal human beings.

The pedagogical problems in 8A are hardly limited to poor Roma. The 15-year-olds’ ostentatious lack of interest in the material being discussed highlights a more general problem that schools face. “And what good is it for me?” is a common question that rings out, not only in 8A, but certainly also in many wealthier families of the majority population. In an information age, the classical recitation of facts is quickly losing its relevance, and technically sophisticated children know that. Those from university preparatory schools protest just like Bobo or Frenky from the Brno ghetto – only thanks to the influence of a motivating environment they are more aware that they must conceal it for the sake of their future career.

When we watch how desperately these educators rack their brains in front of the cameras about how to get Roma children interested in quadratic equations or the fate of Mozart, it’s good to know that at that moment they are not just looking for supportive crutches for the weakest among the Czech pupils. They are looking for an answer to the question about how the future of education will look. We are all to some extent attending this kind of 8A.

This contribution from the Transitions Online was included in our weekly newsletter. If you want to recieve weekly news about public policy issues, Roma and minority groups, LGBT, security and more, you may subscribe to our newsletter PublicPolicySerbiaWeekly.