On the proposal of Zoltán Balog, Minister of Human Resources in Hungary the institution maintenance center laid off the teacher from Konyár who, in a meeting held in Érpatak, Szabocs-Szatmár-Bereg county, Hungary, while expressing his extremist views, spoke in public in an excluding and pejorative way about his pupils of Roma origin.

The video of the teacher speaking up for corporal punishment and radical educational principles, urged generally by the extreme right, exclusively at the expense of Roma children, was made public on YouTube at the end of January 2013. As the result of the efficient co-operation of the school, the educational district, and the maintenance center, the teacher was laid off with immediate effect after a duly completed investigation procedure, two weeks after the video’s appearance, by the president of the Klebelsberg Institution Maintenance Center acting as employer.

With this provision, it has been made obvious that in Hungary the extremists cannot have a place in education.

While it is important to speak openly both in front of the public and the children about the conflicts occurring between Roma and non-Roma Hungarians, we cannot allow this talk to harm the dignity of anybody. Especially a teacher has to take special care of this.

The case of the young man teaching history and Roma ethnography is a good example of finding solution to problems considered to be unmanageable in previous years. The state has not just the right, but also the obligation to proceed against those who became unworthy to further practice their profession as pedagogues. It is indeed the right of the state, as the relation between the school, the educational district and the maintenance center is ensured by law. It is also the obligation of the state, for in Hungary no one can be discriminated on grounds of his or her origin, and especially a teacher cannot harm the dignity of his or her pupils.

Source: Roma Buzz Monitor
Date: 02.04.2013