SOCIAL INCLUSION OF YOUNG PEOPLE (Bilbao)
- Details
- Created on Tuesday, 19 April 2016 10:29
- Written by basquecountry
Nahia Garcia
Botikazar High School
Social Inclusion of young people
April 2016
SOCIAL INCLUSION OF YOUNG PEOPLE
Some studies have shown that the role of education is of key importance to avoid social exclusion due to its importance to have access to good employment later in life and as a foundation for future social capital. Social exclusion may start very early in life when children are just kids so providing good quality education for all members of society is vital in order to avoid further social exclusion.
In the Basque Country there are not officially recognized “guettos” but the increasing number of immigrants has led the Parents Associations of Alava Schools to denounce the situation children are suffering nowadays because a small number of public schools are forced to accept a great number of immigrant children as students.
Just 11,21% of the primary schools in this area of Spain have to educate half of the total immigrant students,this means a great number of immigrant students in a few schools which makes the appearance of ghettos more likely to happen. Some remedies proposed by the Parents Associations to avoid this situation are:
1. Eliminating religion as a subject from the schools to make possible children from different cultural backgrounds to share a common classroom.
2. Forcing the private schools that receive public funds to accept students from different cultural backgrounds and face the issues related to immigrants students in order to share the burden in an equitative way. At the moment most of the Basque young students who apply to these schools do not share their classrooms with immigrants because those schools do not accept them .
3. Universalize the so called “ D model” which focusses on the use of the Basque language in the classroom.
In Alava,one of the three provinces of our autonomous community,whose capital city is Vitoria-Gasteiz , in four public schools eight out of ten students are immigrants while in twenty other schools immigrants occupy a ratio higher than the 30%. Most parents from state schools think that all schools that receive public money should accept immigrants .If parents want their children to belong to a special “elite” they should pay for a 100 % private school which does not receive any public funds .
Another important social issue to deal with in the Basque Country is the gypsy communities as they have their own language,traditions and customs . The gypsies came to Spain 500 years ago from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Nowadays there are over a million gypsies in Spain from which twenty thousand live in the Basque Country. According to the testimony of a member of the FSG (Gipsy Secretary Foundation) interviewed by a local newspaper the situation of this etnia is “getting better” in the Basque Country although prejudices related to the general belief of “ their specifically problematic behaviour” are still common . Sadly this statement is valid for the whole Spanish state not just the Basque Country. In 1989 a gypsy association called Kale Dor Kayiko (gypsies of the morning) was founded in Bilbao(capital city of one of the provinces of our autonomous region). Some of its goals are gender equality, integration of the etnia in the society, educate, spread awareness and debate about topics such as the social participation of the gypsies in the Basque Country. During 1995 and 1996 this association worked together with The Academy of Basque Language in a research about a linguistic phenomenon called “Erromintxela”. “Erromintxela” is the mixture of both Basque and the Romani( the native language of the gypsies). This investigation did not reach its end due to lack of interest by the local government,it is important to mention that a lot of Basque people are not aware of the gypsy community in our land and they are “invisible” to most native people.As one spokeperson of the association said “not finishing the project on erromintxela is a case of cultural terrorism against the cultural patrimony of the Basque and locally born Romani people”.
A good way to avoid the social exclusion of young people born in gypsy communities could be to start making this communities “visible” for all the people but not only as a source of social issues but as an ethnic group part of the whole Basque society .
In conclusion, diversity education plays a vital role at the time of avoiding the appearance of ghettos ,it would potentially promote tolerance of other cultures in a country in its long run and would also help the social inclusion of most members of the society.