Slovakia really is eager to integrate the future generations of gipsies, who represent up to 10% of the population, into the European society. This is the reason why the Prime Minister Robert Fico announced that they want to send children of Roma families to boarding schools. He said that these children have to be taken from their impoverished settlements and put into boarding schools to speed up the integration in the European Union.

The cause of this change was the negative report of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navy Pillay. During her annual visit, she criticised that the situation of the unemployed and poor gipsies in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. She pointed out the worsening treatment of this minority.

By putting the children in a boarding school, the government wants to separate them from the life in their settlements. The Prime Minister marked there is no other option because today, many of the children are sent to schools for mentally disabled and suffer from racism. According to him, the schools are the only way to break the cycle of racism.

But what about the ethnicity of these children? When they lose contact with their homes, they lose contact with their parents and their culture. Is it OK for us to try and change everyone and thereby kill other cultures? I think that everyone who wants to go to boarding school should be able to go and the other way around. What do you think? Please respond on the boarding school blog.