Education without Discrimination - A Problem of the Whole Society In the past years there has been a lot of discussion about the role that intercultural education has in the formation of students’ personality. And rightly so. The values of education without discrimination are, almost entirely, moral values. And we cannot talk about education without…
Gender Equality and Education The right to education and the right to equality between women and men are fundamental rights of every human being. We have known it for a long time, even though it sometimes seems to be fresh information or an unlikely situation for the Romanian context. Equality implies rights, responsibilities, and the…
Sexuality Education in School. From Non-discrimination to Information and Diversity Sexuality Education is the subject of many discussions, of many taboos, of much information, often incorrect or incomplete and, at the same time, of many myths. For the purpose of this article, I will refer to it as Health Education, which is the official term…
A Parent's Experience in the Romanian Educational System Hello, dear people! I am the mother of an 11-year-old student and I thank Heaven for this. I feel the need to share with you a couple of thoughts regarding our “encounter” with the school. Our child had the great opportunity of attending an Anglo-Italian Montessori…
The system’s Failure = The Subtle Discrimination of the Children It is morning. I join the crowd of people walking rapidly to get to work or to take their children to school. Still sleepy or mopish, the children seem to hang off their parents’ hands, as if joining in a collective hanging. What always catches…
The True Education Since I promised that I will write a few lines for a project that made me more aware of my ignorance in relation to the manner in which the education beyond the school gate tells the world that lies on the other side, I am living somehow in a state of uncertainty.…
What Do We Need to Know about Rights? Today as I am writing these lines it is the 10th of December, the International Day for Human Rights. We remember the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first international regulation – established by the United Nations – from which any human being should benefit. Two days…
The Unseen Face of Discrimination in the Romanian Educational Context Discrimination is a widely spread phenomenon inside the Romanian educational system. We have an educational culture and context which favors maintaining and spreading this phenomenon. A great percentage of the teachers adopt a an obsolete teaching model which treats differences as attributes for stigmatization, while…
Dragon manicure I begin this article a little intimidated by the level of the other articles in this series, written by people I appreciate very much and above. What follows is a version with fewer words, but more autobiography, about subtle discrimination, the unconscious one, the one we don’t even detect most of the times…
Education and human rights: tools for inclusion, intercultural dialogue and democracy ”Human rights begin with breakfast”, René Cassin used to say. This quote, so synthetic, yet so clear, is a very useful starting point for understanding why the education for human rights is necessary in every person’s and every community’s life, in order to cohabit…
Education for Inclusion Starts with the Kid with Disabilities' Family I’ve spent the past eight years trying to figure out a way of leaving the house without the raging bull look. The rare moments of finding the way were always followed by a crushing wave of”whys” which inevitable converged into periods of depression. The variable…
Human Rights Education: a Reflection Through Three Question Marks The United Nations (UN) named the 1995-2004 decade the decade for human rights education. Since then, the UN agencies have dedicated resources for the development of action plans and recommendations to encourage states to develop educational programs, both textbooks and school programs and non-formal education projects,…
How does the act of discrimination made by others affect me, even if I do not discriminate against anyone After reading and analyzing press articles, scientific papers, interviews, some various points of view and interventions concerning rights or how are they taken from us, I have found (with a few exceptions) their “objective” character:…
I’m a lucky guy – False biography* Don’t think that everyday things happen to me that make you say: he had a stroke of luck. It’s more about the context. I’m a male, I live in the capital of a (relatively) civilized country in the European Union, I have blonde hair and blue eyes, which…
You can learn discrimination but you can also unlearn it, isn’t it? I dared formulating a title which incorporates rhetoric of consensus because I invite you to explore three common sense ideas: 1) The social space of scholar interaction implies lots of challenges (impossible or hard to control), but also affordable solutions (for example, project-based…
Where Is the State and What Is It Doing? The topic on [non] discrimination or the oppressive system is broadly debated, being put on the same level with the topic on equality. Equality understood as chance, option or possibility, as a wish or as a conceptual extract. However one might grasp it, Romania is a…
Re-humanizing education In late summer, I began to work on a lax plan for my teaching in the new school year. I reflected on the contemporary issues, domestic and foreign, that I find most relevant and urgent in our world today, and why. I weighed pros and cons of different approaches to these issues, including…
We must have gender education in school “He who doesn't know history is doomed to repeat it.” That’s how George Santayana (1863-1952) bluntly formulates one of the foundations for which students and teachers must study certain topics. In the same manner, for example, it was reasoned to enrich the American and Anglo-Saxon curriculum with a…
Least Restrictive Environment “Mrs. Thompson, the team is ready for you.” I stood up and made my way to the conference room filled with the eight experts that would determine my son’s educational program. As I entered and sat down in the parent chair, I realized that my knees were trembling. This was not my…
The Feelings of Romanians – from Love and Respect to Hate “It is not the young people´s fault that they never had a guide, albeit a spiritual one. Nor a coherent and correct educational system to teach them before anything else not to hurt their peers. We are all born with one chance, equally” I…
We read, we learn, we grow up equal “[it is] natural selection…only those with a calling – others will naturally get lost along the way because they come from an environment which lures them into dropping out.…’’ (School principal, from the documentary film ’’Our School’’[1]) I’ve been a French teacher for almost 15 years, and…
Roma Slavery: The Case for Reparations Originally published on April 22nd 2016 in Foreign Policy in Focus. Reparations for historical injustices are an increasingly urgent topic of public discussion. It's time to include Roma in the conversation. After years of neglect or outright dismissal, movements calling for reparations for historical injustices have resurfaced with renewed…
Minorities at School The school is a place of refuge, also one of knowledge and openness towards the world we learn about and we prepare to become a part of. But is it the same for every student? We’ve created the Minorities at school column to learn more about the different experiences in the Romanian…
School as an Island We all expect schools and parents to make sure that children’s right to education is met. Things seem clear, but only at the surface. At a closer look, we see that schools and kindergartens are far from having adequate resources and instruments to ensure that vulnerable children have the right to…
We Need Literature That Promotes Diversity and Children’s Rights On a beach in the land of Dr. Seuss’ stories live these curious creatures called Sneetches[1]. Rather they just live alongside one another because they are not actually living together. Why? Some of them have a star on their belly – a distinctive mark powerful enough…
School and Education about Rights In 1995, when I was an exchange student in the United States of America, “Night”, the book by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, was the first mandatory reading for the English class in the Sophomore Year. We also were guided to the library to search for other books…
#inhighschool: LGBT student in Romania, mission impossible? A year ago I started working on an almost impossible research, trying to find out how LGBT students live and learn in Romanian highschools. Many educational professionals told us that such students simply don’t exist; our youth are definitely heterosexuals, except maybe for those who are not sufficiently…
