Gypsy people and education: a challenge to the construction of spanish society in the twenty-first century

Abstract

Education of the gypsy people education has gone through a succession of stages over the course of more than five hundred years of coexistence in Spain. Beginning with the long period of exclusion of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and continuing with nineteenth century evangelical processes of Father Manjón, the post-war indoctrination of the Suburban Trust Schools, the segregation of the bridge schools in Spain during the government of Franco, the paternalism of democratic Spain’s compensatory education and, finally, the “inclusion” of the Organic Law of Education that was introduced at the beginning of the twenty-first century. However, these attempts have, in their application, failed to be successful. As a result, even today the levels of absenteeism and academic failure towards the end of Secondary and Upper Secondary education remain high amongst the gypsy population. This situation requires the proposal of a new educational paradigm in which the objectives, content and both methodological and technical resources are adapted entirely to the reality of the gypsy people.