As part of my fieldwork, I spoke with fifty women and men who teach music in Czech public schools, mostly in grades one through nine. I also did some research on university pedagogical faculties. In the interviews I conducted and during classroom observation, I noted the content of the music classes and posed questions that would help me understand the teachers’ willingness to teach ethnic minority repertoires.

            When East Asian communities were discussed, the comments fit in with either the model minority myth or with the idea that these immigrants are culturally distant from Czechs. Sometimes both of these attitudes were hinted at, and on more than one occasion, the tone was at least slightly disrespectful. [Slide 2] T45 I quote one teacher: "[I was explaining] why the Chinese have slanty eyes. They get up in the morning [pulls one eyelid to a narrow position] and say, 'Ohh noo, not rice again!' And slanty eyes look like a grain of rice, so that's why. Then I also asked them who serves them Asian food, and they said the Vietnamese. 'And who else?' [They said] 'the Chinese.' So from this they should have remembered that Vietnam and China are found in Asia, since it's Asian food." Another teacher implied an ignorance of Vietnamese music bordering on rejection, saying T6:"[That student] was from Vietnam, but... [he didn't do anything special] other than singing for us once, so it was something unusual for us, but because I don't [laughs], like, incline toward that [netíhnu]...I mean, I just don't have the opportunity [to get to know that music]." Czech citizens with East Asian origins are usually considered quite exotic, with both their specific cultural attributes and their level of acculturation staying under the radar. White immigrants such as Russian speakers, on the other hand, are generally deemed culturally similar to Czechs, even if they are unwelcome. Russian art and folk music, too, is represented in the curriculum.

            The marginalized group that logically came up most often in conversation is the  largest visible ethnic minority in Europe – Roma. I did not usually volunteer information about my own ethnic background, but in cases when teachers knew I am Romani, it did not seem to inhibit my respondents significantly or inspire them to elicit my opinion. Teachers' comments on Roma and Romani musicianship for the most part echoed the current journalistic, and to a large extent, academic standards of the country. That is to say, they almost always operated on the assumption that Roma as a group are not part of the so-called normal population.

            European discourse has become saturated with the idea of the Romani problematic, which can be translated as the Romani question or simply the Romani problem. Note that in this framing, Roma are treated as objects rather than subjects. If we zoom in on academic writing, including much of so-called Romology and studies from other disciplines that contribute to Romani studies, we can see manifestations of the belief that Roma do not fit into society because they are essentially different, in terms of mental capacity and personality, from an unmarked norm. [SLIDE 3] I call this the special needs principle. The Romani population as a whole, sometimes with noted "exceptions," is most often described in terms of an undifferentiated "mentality," which is either supposedly innate or predetermined early on by so-called Romani culture. The effects of such a mentality would logically amount to special needs, or disabilities, in terms of behavior and learning. The terms used repeatedly in relation to the Romani mentality include unadaptable, sociopathological, irrational, sexually precocious, impulsive, and socially or academically weak. This last label should go without saying in a country wherein majority numbers of Romani children are placed in schools for children with mental retardation.

            This assumption of "special needs" is evident in the following examples from two academics. [SLIDE 4] The first is Jan Průcha, the leading Czech author on multicultural education. He finds Herrnstein and Murray's book The Bell Curve "a convincing argument regarding the dependence of the distribution of intelligence on race." While Průcha does not directly connect racially determined lower intelligence to Roma, he does mention educational needs or abilities based on "ethnicity or race" elsewhere in the same book (e.g. 50, 42). His premise is one of Romani failure – as something singled out from the rest of the population. [SLIDE 5] Quote: "It is clearly shown [in this research] that the only strongly negative attitudes harbored by Czech youth are against one group – the Roma – whereas [young people] are relatively tolerant toward other groups, regardless of nationality or race. As for the attitude toward Roma, this is undoubtedly caused by the social pathology of Roma, particularly the high criminality of this group..." Prucha does imply that the placement of Roma in special schools may be due in part to their problems with communication, but he does not criticize these placements as such. I quote, "In the Czech Republic, the problem of interracial communication arises only in the case of the Roma...[it is] one of the causes of their failure and placement into special schools (emphasis mine)."           

            [SLIDE 6] My other example is Veronika Ševčíková, the Czech expert on multicultural music education in relation to Roma. Her opinions of Roma, apparently gathered during very limited interactions with them, include the following sweeping essentialist generalizations. She imagines the (quote) "distrust of Roma toward any graphic systems (p. 155)", states that "Romani children progress very slowly when learning notation, and constant repetition is necessary (p. 142)," and notes their "...insufficient concentration, perseverance and will, which stem from the spatiotemporal specificities of the Romani mentality (a major problem in this case is the horizon of the long-term motivation of Romani children in the technical preparation for playing an instrument. (emphasis mine, p.143)."

            The special-needs principle – which denies agency to the people it references, since Roma are almost never asked for their own analysis – is voiced by health care professionals, social workers, orphanage workers and even many foster parents as well. What about the music teachers? I encountered a handful who were favorably disposed toward Roma and to multicultural education, although essentialist viewpoints abounded even among them. I treat these rare positive examples in other parts of my dissertation, but here I'm going to focus on the majority of my interviews, which were nowhere near as positive. A fair proportion of teachers noted the "innate" Romani talent for melody and rhythm. Some opposed this to academic ability and/or referenced the Romani mentality in accordance with the special needs principle I have outlined. One teacher spoke of the difficulties he had with the organization of a Romani ensemble, citing it as an example of a different mentality and concluding that such an endeavor is not worth the effort. He said this despite the fact that thousands of Romani children across the country are organized into successful ensembles. Another teacher said she can hear the inborn laziness of Roma in their music. (Incidentally, I heard the term "different mentality" used to describe some other groups, too, including Black people.)

            Several teachers used the word systematic as a quality that is absent among Roma, with the implication that the same can be expected of their music and music-making. For example, (quote) T17: "But they don't distinguish anything at all [from anything else]. They don't see any system in it, they just feel it." [SLIDE 7] The head of one university music education department, who is (thus) charged with imparting to new teachers what they should do in the classroom, told me his operating beliefs about the special learning and behavioral needs of Roma as follows: "The problem there is that this ethnic group does, after all, have different predispositions, I would say even psychological [ones], as far as I've come across their opinions when they're learning something. ... A Romani child is much more emotional, in [his/her] behavior as well as in musical expression ... a Czech child is more rational, and more reserved in music. ... Also, when we argue, we don't take knives out on each other. They are explosive ... we have more of the rational thinking in us, and maybe that's why we can't turn ourselves loose in music like they can." Even if this professor supported the training of future teachers to cover Romani music (which he does not), one wonders how "systematic" or accurate his curriculum would be.

             "The Romani problematic" in Europe is an ingrained "common sense" idea that informs most Czech schoolteachers as well as, arguably, most scholars on Roma, even though nearly all the scholars also acknowledge the roles played by non-Roma in the problem at hand. [SLIDE 8] Before I had ever read my first text under the umbrella heading of "Whiteness studies," I concluded that the white European framing of the "Romani problematic," as the discursive substitue for what is really an interethnic problem, is so pervasive and so insufficiently examined that the only vocal way to counter it would be to propose, along with Romology, or Gypsy studies, a sister discipline. I call this new subfield "Gadjology," from the Romani word Gadje, meaning non-Roma. Its aim is to study non-Roma, particularly those with strong white identities. [SLIDE 9] In the introduction to their book Off White, Michelle Fine and her colleagues write that "whiteness has come to be more than itself; it embodies objectivity, normality, truth, knowledge, merit, motivation, achievement, and trustworthiness... Rarely, however, is it acknowledged that whiteness demands and constitues hierarchy, exclusion, and deprivation." They go on to say, "Indeed, both conservatives and liberals within psychology and education have so fetishized 'people of color' as the 'problem to be understood' that whiteness, in all its glistening privilege, has evaporated beyond study. One of the ironies of white power is the ability to escape social and intellectual surveillance."

            People often become uncomfortable when I apply, to groups of non-Roma, the terminology that they themselves, or authors on whom they draw, regularly use with respect to Roma as a group. That in itself, I believe, says something about the power dynamics between the two populations. Unlike the practical ideas for intercultural education that I analyze and propose elsewhere in the dissertation, my work in Gadjology may not have a peacemaking effect, but reversing the ethnographic gaze in the spirit of Whiteness studies is necessary to my analysis of the European situation. In the rest of this paper, I will show what could happen if the special needs principle were applied to many of the music teachers and authors I studied.

            Since one of the main complaints regarding the "special behavioral needs" of minorities such as Roma or even Vietnamese immigrants is their supposed unwillingless to follow Czech laws, let us consider from a legal persective the compliance of music teachers with their own government's directives requiring the inclusion of ethnic minority materials in lesson plans. I chose this "law" because following it could actually alleviate the pathological intercultural situation I have just described, and because the erasure of minority styles and experiences is related to what George Lipsitz calls "the possessive investment in whiteness." Even though music teachers in Czech public schools are required to comply with state curricular guidelines, most of the ones I interviewed correctly pointed out that this is impossible, especially since the ministry of education expects an unreasonable amount of music literacy even from elementary pupils. Nevertheless, it would hardly occur to a teacher to leave out one of the major themes in the textbooks, namely European art composers with a heavy emphasis on the Czech ones, Czech and Slovak folk songs, jazz with at least some focus on Czech interpreters, and the popular genres of mostly White male musicians. Conversely, however, one gets the sense that it would hardly occur to most music teachers that Romani and Vietnamese music, at the very least, should be included regularly in the lessons. Whereas almost all of the teachers make an honest attempt at covering the basics of Western music literacy, the majority of teachers I interviewed and observed seem to have a certain "mentality" that makes it difficult for them to follow the letter and/or spirit of the law when it comes to multicultural education.  The following typology categorizes their responses to my questions on the subject. [SLIDE 10]

            Number one: Some teachers said with honesty that they are simply not interested in ethnic minority musics. One teacher stated , T3: "I don't exactly care for it" with regard to Romani music. Another one replied, T31: "Well, to tell you the truth, not really," when asked if she is interested in Asian or African musics. These and other educators made no apologies for not teaching minority musical styles.

            Number two: Instructors pointed out that they have insufficient materials to cover multicultural topics. This, with a few exceptions, is objectively true given the content of the textbooks and widely distributed songbooks, but many teachers now use the internet, among their outside resources, for other themes. Some said they are not willing to go out and look for "extras," and one teacher stated that she would have to buy such a thing with her own money. Another music teacher at the same school, however, informed me that their library has plenty of funds to purchase new materials for music education. Several teachers indicated that they would include more ethnic minority styles if given the materials, but then did not name these styles in their lists of what's missing from their present materials.

            Number three: A few educators answered the question of minority musics with the observation that Romani, East Asian, or other non-white styles would be too difficult for the instructor or students to play, sing or understand. The university professor I quoted earlier was not the only one to doubt that Romani music could be meaningfully attempted by a non-Romani class, given the interethnic "differences" in psychological makeup. Some teachers, too, seemed to forget that one need not sing a piece in order to listen to a recording of it, even though all music classes use recordings.

            Number four: Some teachers say they leave out minority musics in deference to student tastes and distates. When asked about teaching Romani music, one woman thought that "this would be forcing something on the children, when we only have one Rom here." Virtually every other educator, however, informed me that much, if not most of the music curriculum entails forcing unpopular styles of music on students anyway, and that those in the higher grades have trouble cooperating as a result.

            Number five: A major theme in the interviews was the idea that the inclusion of minority musics should be dependent on the number and kind of ethnically non-Czech students in the class. If there are no Vietnamese students, for example, there is no reason to present any East Asian music. Many of the teachers put the onus of presenting non-white styles on minority students. One man seemed surprised by my question and said, T5: "Uh ... Gypsy, Gypsy music as such, uh, we have a couple of Gypsies here, yes, but they themselves don't have much initiative to familiarize [others with Romani music]." This statement, of course, fits in with many others about the lack of motivation among Roma in school and work.

            Number six: A few teachers replied, for example, that they cover Romani music, but this turned out to be limited to the same tokenistic example in a single grade level, taken from the standard textbook.

            Number seven: Some teachers did not, so to speak, get the memo. One instructor mistook the word "multicultural" for a term meaning interdisciplinary. Another teacher answered the question solely by describing the singing of songs in different dialects of Czech. In general, the Czech government guidelines for multicultural education were not significantly reflected in music curriculum planning, despite the fact some schools were seen actively working on implementing the newest state curricular reforms.

            In short, if I were to apply a paradigm similar to the special-needs principle used to classify Roma and sometimes other ethnic or religious minorities, I would have to conclude that my sample of music teachers, on the whole, exhibits certain learning difficulties. Most definitions of a learning disability involve average or above-average intelligence and a problem with processing or organizing information. Many of the educators I encountered in person or in print not only demonstrate areas of special concern with regard to motivation, but also with regard to the visual and auditory processing of concepts such as "multicultural" as well as information about Roma and some other groups of people. Ševčíková, for example, cites a staggering number of Romani "specificities," such as children not listening to classical music on their own or being bored by music theory lectures – so-called specificities that are in fact readily found to the same extent within the white Czech population. If, as she writes, [show longer quotes] Roma "take positions bordering on the schizophrenic when evaluating the majority group (44)" and do not distinguish between dreams and wishes as opposed to reality (48), then some of the attitudes of Czech educators could, and perhaps should, be pathologized as well.

             The dogma of difference, which generalizes minorities in Central and Eastern Europe into much more "exotic" people than most actually are, is necessary to the careers of people who will not get a paycheck for saying that White people are fundamentally the same on the inside as "the others." As for the music curriculum, it may continue to stand on nationalism, essentialism or the erasure of minorities, and on the same songs sung over and over again, rather than making room for a range of culturally and socially relevant lessons. But this   will only lead to further special needs on the part of everyone involved. Thank you.

 Petra Gelbart, SEM 2008 Paper