Education and Gypsies/Travellers: ‘contradictions and significant silences’¹

1. Thrupp and Tomlinson (2005) refer to ‘contradictions’ and ‘significant silences’.

Abstract

For centuries there have been strong tensions between Gypsy/Traveller communities and their nation states. Today, discrimination against Gypsies/Travellers in the UK is still so widespread that it has been described as the last ‘respectable’ form of racism. The paper argues that the experiences of Gypsies/Travellers, as they come into contact with the structures of education, reveal a continuing discrimination against one of the most disadvantaged minority ethnic groups in the UK; a discrimination that, at the same time, points to continuing ‘contradictions and significant silences’ within the UK government, and Scottish Executive, policy drive to reduce social exclusion.

Notes

1. Thrupp and Tomlinson (2005) refer to ‘contradictions’ and ‘significant silences’.

2. The CRE uses the term ‘Gypsies and Travellers’. However, the present paper uses the term ‘Gypsies/Travellers’ to refer particularly to those groups that have shared common cultural features distinctive from much of settled society. The wider term ‘Gypsies and Travellers’ is now more often used to include mobile communities such as Occupational, e.g. circus or showground, Travellers and ‘New Travellers’, who do not see themselves as minority ethnic groups.