Monika HorakovaMember of the Czech Parliament
in conversation with
John W. ErwinDirector, The Stories Exchange Project
Czech Ministry of Foreign AffairsPrague1 December 2000
Jack Erwin
What kind of school did you go to in Brno, Monika?
Monika Horakova
I studied psychology at the Philosophical Faculty.
Jack Erwin
I was thinking about when you were younger, but – what was your experience at university?
Monika Horakova
It was a good experience – as I think it was for other students at the university. I had a good time. And I don’t think it was difficult.
Jack Erwin
Has it helped in politics?
Monika Horakova
To study psychology? Yes, I think so. [laughs] Somehow it helps you.
Though I think that every person is a psychologist him- or herself. And when you study psychology you have the usual professional deformation and sometimes you see normal things from a psychologist’s point of view – which is not always [laughs] a good attitude.
Jack Erwin
Maybe not. But that’s gets us back – me at least – to stories. Stories are about psychology as well as situations… how people react in different concrete situations.
When you were growing up, what kinds of stories were you told? Did your parents tell you Romany stories? fairy tales and so forth?
Monika Horakova
They told me many stories about their lives and fairy tales and things like that – but I’m going to tell some of my story.
I had never been in kindergarten. I grew up with my mother, and my first experience with a big group of Czech children was when I went to first grade in elementary school. When I came there, I was really surprised by the reaction of the children. They called me "Gypsy” and “blackbird” and things like that, and I really did not understand because I had no experience of this kind of thing. So I went home and I was crying and I was complaining to my parents and I was very sad.
But then my mother did a really beautiful thing. She went to the school and asked a teacher if she could speak to the children in my class.
She came to my class and she said to all the children, “Look: she’s Romany. She’s dark. She also speaks another language. She doesn’t speak only Czech but also Romanes. She grew up in a different society, a different culture. But she’s the same girl – she’s the same child as you are.”
And it helped. From that time the problem was almost solved. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t have to face other problems, but this was very helpful.
Maybe everybody isn’t as lucky as I was. I hope that teachers will be more open to these kinds of things, and will understand what it is for a child to be a member of a different culture, of a minority.
Jack Erwin
Very beautiful.
And I must say, very similar to a story that Eva Bajgerova from Usti nad Labem tells in the Stories Exchange Project – it’s actually on our Web page — when she went to school when her son was having a similar problem with the Czech kids.
[ see ” We all worked together” in this menu (“Learning”)] Of course it wasn’t the teacher who took action, but your mother.
Monika Horakova
Yes –
Jack Erwin
— and that’s a very wonderful. Because Romany parents are not able to do at lot of things publicly, so they don’t always know that they can have an influence at school. But they can, as your story proves – and Eva’s as well.
Monika Horakova
Yes, I think so. Of course it also depends on the will of teachers and other people. But they’re their children, so they should take care of their lives – in school too, where they spend most of their time.
Jack Erwin
Yes. Some people say – some Czechs say – that Roma don’t value education.
Of course there are a lot of different reasons that they say so.
But what do you think about the way a not very well educated Romany family feels about their kids’ careers in school?
Monika Horakova
I think this is a generalization, and it is one kind of prejudice. It’s true that for some Roma education is not something of value, but I don’t that this can be said generally. And the number of educated Roma is increasing, so that’s speaking for itself.
It’s true that there are people who don’t see that to be educated is the most important thing in your life but I don’t think that this exists only in the Roma community: it exists everywhere.
Recent Comments