Fundación Secretariado Gitano

Samuel´s question; a question no one has been able to answer [editar]

Samuel´s Question Campaign

"Samuel's Question" is an awareness campaign by the all the NGOs in the State Council for Roma People, including the Fundación Secretariado Gitano.  The campaign was launched on 8th April, to mark the International Roma Day and it intends to focus attention on the absence of Roma history and culture from school resources and make society and public authorities aware of the need for greater and better knowledge of the Roma community in order to change, as early as in childhood, the negative image of Roma people and to eradicate stereotypes and prejudices that lead to discrimination.

Why are Roma history and culture not in my schoolbooks?

Schoolbooks contain references and historical data on people such as Eskimos, Guanches and Native Americans and their cultures, but no mention at all of Roma culture and history. 

The campaign concept hinges on the idea that “It is very hard to learn something you are never taught”.

One day, while Samuel was doing his homework, he asked his parents why Roma people did not appear in his schoolbooks. Not knowing what to answer, his parents told him to ask his teacher.  His teacher referred the question to the school headmaster, who in turn passed it on to the education inspector... Nobody could answer him, which is why he ended up at the Ministry of Education.

The aim of this campaign is to turn an innocent question into a formal demand by the Roma community to the public authorities.

An awareness raising action of the Ngos in the State Council for Roma people

“Samuel´s Question” is a campaign launched by the NGO´s in the State Council for Roma people on 8th April, 2017 to mark the International Roma day. The day was officially declared in 1990 in honour of the 1^st mayor international meeting of Roma representatives, 7–12 April 1971 in Chelsfield near London.

For the past decade, the 8th April has been gaining great notoriety, becoming an occasion for celebrations and communications by many national, European and International institutions. It is a key date for institutional events, public declarations, reading of manifestos, cultural and protest actions and more.

In recent years, Fundación Secretariado Gitano has used the occasion to carry out awareness actions endorsed by the NGOs in the State Council for Roma People, as a way of promoting the cohesion of the Roma associative movement. In addition to designing campaign posters and other materials, in recent years these actions have resorted to advertising and audio-visual based strategies, such as the campaign on the Spanish dictionary entry "I am not a swindler" in 2015, or the campaign on certain television formats in which the Roma community is caricatured with the campaign "Trash TV is not reality", in 2016 (see more).

For 2017, the awareness campaign launched on 8th April mainly aims to promote the social recognition of Roma people through the inclusion of Roma history and culture in the education curriculum.

A legitimate claim

The campaign´s objective is to focus attention on the absence of Roma culture and history from the national curriculum; make society aware of the need for the inclusion of a minimum content on the Roma community in order to change negative perceptions, as early as in childhood, and eradicate stereotypes and prejudices that stigmatise and lead to their discrimination and ask the relevant public authorities to incorporate Roma history and culture content into the national curricula.

We understand that the inclusion of Roma culture and history into the statutory primary national curriculum will help to improve awareness and promote a more diverse and plural image of the Roma community and will help to overcome many negative stereotypes and prejudices among pupils and society at large.  

Lack of knowledge about the Roma community has systematically contributed to making Roma people invisible or generating a negative image, associated with stereotypes that damage personal dignity and trigger discrimination which creates obstacles to the exercise of their basic rights.

The Roma Community will be reflected in textbooks and their history and culture will be recognised.  They will feel part of the shared narrative (akin to other people and communities of the Spanish state), thus favouring social inclusion and the exercise of full citizenship.  This will help to bring families and Roma pupils closer to the education system.  Let us not forget that 750,000 Roma people live in Spain, and that it is a very young population (one third is below the age of 16, therefore of school age).

We strongly believe that schools that can make a significant contribution to equality, which help to make citizens more educated, but also more critical and humanitarian. We want schools where cultural diversity is perceived as an asset and not a problem, and where there is respect for such cultural differences. Schools where learning materials are also a reflection of cultural pluralism teach citizens to have a better understanding of their surroundings.  This is why we propose that elements of Roma history and culture be incorporated across all curriculum content.  Doing so would require historical and social interest guarantees, etc.

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