In reading Easy folk crafts for third grade students"Klett" published a questionnaire that the Opra Serbia movement considers discriminatory towards the Roma minority.
The question reads: "The gypsy asked his mother: What is the longest day of the year?" The ones when you're waiting for dinner without lunch."
The Opre Roma movement announces that they will file a lawsuit against the Ministry of Education and the "Klett" publishing house with the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality because of this content.
The fact that the plan and program contains content that uses a derogatory name for Roma, according to Opre Roma, indicates that the education system of the Republic of Serbia is socially irresponsible towards the Roma community.
"This is tragic for Serbia for several reasons. First of all, disrespect for the rights of the national minority because the name Roma was adopted in 1971, and the Roma have been officially a national minority in Serbia since 2002. Why are we still called 'Gypsies' in textbooks? This encouragement of stereotypes and discrimination to children as young as nine is an indication of a much more serious problem. "Ethnic bias in textbooks and curricula against Roma is a systemic problem," the movement assesses.
They emphasize that "although the publishers claim to be multicultural and respect the diversity of all people, none of the textbooks research or teach about racism against the Roma in the history of Serbia", and add that the curricula often approach Roma topics in an incomplete and misleading way, usually encouraging a negative narrative and especially justifying the disenfranchisement of the Roma.
Dr. Ana Vukmanović, editor for Serbian language and literature at IC "Klet" explains in a written statement that "the Roma child is not mentioned in this questionnaire in a negative context. On the contrary, the word Gypsy is hypocoristic, a word of affection, which emphasizes a positive emotional attitude towards the one to whom the word refers.
"Also, the question draws attention to the important social problem of poverty, so students can be encouraged in the conversation to think about the difficult social position of the Roma - both in the past and today," explains Dr. Ana Vukmanović, and points out that in this book about the problem of poverty is also discussed in the next questionnaire, in which the main character is a Turkish bey, which speaks of the intention of "Klett" - and to enable students to think about this topic from different positions.
"Since we could not change the text of the questionnaire, the conclusion is that we should have left it out." We, on the contrary, think that it is important to talk about the problem of poverty and that this question in no way expresses a negative attitude towards the Roma, but rather draws attention to their difficult situation," the statement said.
Ana Vukmanović reminds that "in folk literature, the name Gypsy is common, since we are talking about texts written in earlier times. At the time of its creation, this name did not have a pejorative character, as evidenced by the use of the hypocoristic. Since typical characters often appear in folk literature, it is not unusual for a Roma to appear as a poor man, since this depicts the social reality of the time when the works of oral literature were created."
The statement emphasizes the regret "that the election hurt the feelings of the Roma community", as if "Klett" had no such intention.
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