Abstract

The retrospective analysis of various educational trajectories for the Roma children during the socialist period in Czechoslovakia sheds light on organisational approaches to teaching the Roma in the institutions of special education and its impact on the segregation of the Roma. The article aims to trace the twofold role of special educators in the socialist period, as a driving force and as an object affected by other driving forces, socioeconomic changes and political interests. We connect the exploration of organisational approaches to teaching the Roma and the recognition of arguments put forward by professionals in favour of segregation. Leading the education for the Roma children to placing them into residential care institutions prescribed the stigma of mental retardation, which remains an intractable framework beyond the current attempts to reform the education for the Roma towards inclusion.