By Adam LeBor

As a child, Peter Lazar was initially classified at school as mentally handicapped. He is a Roma, a Gypsy, and his teachers in eastern Hungary, like many educators across Eastern Europe, often confused the social and economic handicaps that hold Roma children back with learning disabilities.

The teachers are usually wrong; in Lazar's case, they were very wrong.

Peter Lazar and Dear House Children

Eastern Hungary is a world away from the Hapsburg tourist splendors of Budapest. Almost $20 billion in foreign investment has poured into Hungary since the collapse of Communism in 1989 according to the magazine Business Central Europe, one of the highest sums in the region, but eastern Hungary has received just a fraction of those funds and little has changed in the past 10 years for the Roma of Nyirtelek and its surroundings.

A Glimpse of the Third World

Towns are often divided in a kind of de facto apartheid, with Roma families gathered in settlements on the outskirts. Such racism, based on traditional prejudice against those of darker skin, deprives the Roma of work and education. Eastern Hungary also suffers from poor infrastructure – bad roads, inadequate public transport, insufficient social services like health and education – all combining to condemn many Roma families to live in near-Third World conditions. Families scavenge for food and clothes; some children eat meat perhaps once or twice a year.

Children at home (Lazar in background)

"I knew what these children needed from my own education," he says, "to have teachers with feelings, emotions, who took time to play with the children."

A Focus on Integration, Educationally and Socially

A soft-spoken man with a gentle manner, married with three children, it is easy to see that Lazar must be a good teacher who empathizes with his students. The more formal methods of instruction are less successful with Roma children. For them the rigid arrangement of a classical classroom, with children arranged in rows and the teacher at the front addressing the class, is more likely to inspire nervousness about being singled out for attention than a desire to learn. Instead, Lazar has adopted an unstructured approach, based on using the children's immediate environment, with which they are already familiar.

Lazar with children at Dear House

The essence of the Kedves Haz is that the school and the dormitory co-operate and interact to provide an integrated social and educational environment. The "Home Room" in the dormitory is the residential base, giving the children a sense of security and stability. The dormitory has facilities for sports, games, drama, trips and cultural events. One of the great successes of the Kedves Haz is that the teachers have recognized that cultural "otherness" – being Roma – is no barrier to educational success.

"This prevents feelings of being threatened or alienation in an unfamiliar place," Lazar says. "Time spent in the classroom is kept to a minimum. I teach in a different way to a normal school. We don't have many lessons in the school; instead we are outside a lot, we walk, look at the flowers and animals, and we are always talking about where we are going, what we see and how to describe it."

Life in the dormitory

It's a two-way process, with Lazar and the other teachers improving their educational skills, knowledge and understanding of the Roma children's home environments as well. "Each child tells me about their life and their family and I learn how they live."

Lazar and his colleagues, who have trained as social workers, often visit the Roma settlement on the edge of the village to visit his charges' parents. "I need to see the children's situation," he says, "how they live and what they know about life. Now the parents know that if their children come to school, they will have opportunities in life. Many of them left school when they were 10 years old. School was not a valuable experience for them because the teachers were prejudiced and basically ignored them. Now the parents want to catch up on those missing years."

The Costs of Prejudice

Roma society's different social mores also contribute to their marginalization and impede education. Lazar explains: "The family socialization is not the same as in the host society. A 12-year-old boy is seen as a man. He may smoke, or have a wife. If someone dies in the family, he could become its head. These can be intense pressures for a young male, especially in a society placing such strong emphasis on family solidarity as the Roma one does. In an often hostile or unhelpful world, the family assumes the role of support system, and its values will often triumph over those of the outside. This can lead to a degree of insularity and a lack of interest in the values of those seen as oppressors."

"The children's parents had negative experiences at school," Lazar continues, "so they think it is a waste of time. The teachers that they have tell Gypsy kids that they are bad, that they steal, that they have a special smell and always wear dirty clothes and have no ability to learn." On top of all that prejudice, for many Roma there seems little point in expending time and energy on obtaining an education when all that beckons is more poverty and unemployment.

But that cycle can be broken, as Lazar shows, both through his own personal history and through the many success stories of the Dear House. One of his favorite examples is that of Lajos Rakoczi, 17, and his sister Karolyn, 12.

Lajos was very withdrawn and inarticulate when Peter began to teach him in 1994. "He was very afraid and could not express himself. He always made mistakes in grammar and speaking, he would leave out letters from words he wanted to say," Lazar recalls.

"After three months of working with him, he quickly learned how to speak properly and clearly. He learned a lot, very quickly, and caught up on the education he had missed." Now he studies at a high school in the nearby city of Nyiregyhaza, and Karolyn has just won a laptop computer in a national competition.

Sadly, some children at the Kedves Haz drop out of the programme. "One 15-year-old girl has just had a baby. She wanted to learn, but she also wanted to be a mother and have a baby," says Peter.

Life in the dormitory

"One of the favourite books of the children, a story that we tell often," Lazar says, "is the Jungle Book, which the children love. They identify with the book's hero, Mowgli, because like him they left home to travel to a new place."

Spreading the Word

The Dear House project and its successes have aroused much interest, in the voluntary and charitable sectors and among educators. Its programs include new teaching methods to educate Roma children for primary teachers and students in their last year of college.

Lazar also helped set up the Co-operating Schools Network. The network links Hungarian educators, Roma and non-Roma, interested in the ideas and concepts behind the Kedves Haz, which aims to build positive approaches to teaching Roma children, set up partnerships between educational institutions and develop an information network. So far the network has six members, concentrated in eastern Hungary, although Lazar is in contact with Romania as well. The network also plans to set up Kedves Haz-style rooms in other childrens' homes and start training teachers in dealing with Roma children.

Life in the dormitory

A New Attitude Emerges

Slowly, thanks to the work of Roma educators, the voluntary sector and pressure from the West (partly because Western governments fear an influx of Roma refugees), the fog of racism and discrimination that hangs over the region is beginning to clear. At least that is what optimists like Lazar hope.

The attitudes of teachers and education professionals have changed now that they are coming to realize that Roma children are not retarded, just underprivileged. The issue is not one of assimilation but integration.

"We have to recognize Roma culture, its music, its customs and clothes," Lazar says, "and that there are some bad things as well, like the poor standard of living."

Such is the success of the Nyirtelek home that there are plans to build six more across eastern Hungary, and 30 other villages have asked for information about its work, including some in Romania, where conditions can be even worse for Gypsies.

Roma children at Dear House