Training 7.
Presentation:
Presentation TC7-eng
Subject: Defining the needs of minorities.
Estimated time: 4 hours
Materials: markers, notebooks, blackboard / chalk, photocopies of relevant legal acts for a given country from previous classes.
Aim: defining the most important potions of training participants as representatives of minorities and assessing the state as a guarantor of the security of minorities and institutions that meet its needs; making participants aware that what they consider important may be less important to others.
Goals and learning outcomes implemented / achieved through the Training:
| OBJECTIVES | EDUCATIONAL EFFECTS | ||
| General | 5 | In terms of knowledge | 1, 5 |
| Specific | 5 | In terms of skills | 3, 4 |
| In terms of attitudes | 1, 3, 4 |
Course:
Pre-test solution (5 minutes, Training / Test No. 7).
The trainer should discuss the conversation and explain the purpose of the exercise and the way in which the participants will work. We ask that each participant chooses and systematizes hierarchically (from the most important to the least important) needs from the list of needs and rights that are important to him as a representative of the national / ethnic / language minority in a given country. We can arrange a list of such items in advance with the group or suggest it. For example:
– freedom to use a minority language in private life;
– the need to recognize a minority language as an official language in the place of residence / office / geographical name;
– the right to learn a minority language in schools attended by minority children and young people;
– the right to establish schools for minorities;
– the right to organize and associate (for example, establishing cultural and educational societies, choirs, etc.);
– the right to produce their own radio and elevation programs, with financial help from the state, if necessary, broadcast in a minority language and / or addressed specifically to minorities;
– freedom of worship and maintenance of religious facilities and institutions;
– financing or co-financing by the state of the maintenance of clergy and those responsible for religious services;
– maintaining by the state places of religious worship, monuments related to a given minority, cemeteries, etc.
– physical protection of objects of worship and institutions of religious life;
– ensuring physical security for the assembly of minority representatives;
– criminalization of persons and institutions that deny the rights of minorities, call for discrimination or violence against minorities, raise chauvinistic and racist slogans that strike the minority;
– ensuring the participation of minority representatives in local government in regional, which are a clear component of the population (regardless of choice);
– ensuring permanent representation of representatives of minorities in the government and the parliament (regardless of the general electoral law);
Then each participant presents his classification and explains why he chose these and no other needs. When a person presents over, we ask the group who has made a similar choice, or that the repeated elements in the first three places, and that the last.
We ask more people in the group to share their choice and ask again if someone in the room chose similar needs. The number of rounds depends on the situation in the group and the willingness of the participants to cooperate. Next, we determine which needs / rights appeared most often in the first places, after which we start a discussion on whether these laws are respected in a given country and what needs are met and to what extent. We refer to the legislation that the participants learned during previous classes, and confront them with official practice, colloquial knowledge, information taken from various sources, or their own experiences. On this basis, we make a diagnosis about the needs of national minorities and the role of the state in their satisfaction.
Then we ask the group what it means autonomy, cultural autonomy, legal autonomy, territorial autonomy, secession (we can give the training participants an article such as Michael Tkacik with excerpts from the relevant definitions – see Bibliography) with a request to familiarize yourself with its content, and then we are considering to whether any of the reported demands / expectations / needs can be regarded as going that beyond the framework outlined by the State according to the following chart (variable dependent illustrates the extreme demands of minorities ) 1 / Inside the country: affirmative action, and as demand further-reaching cultural autonomy (Affirmative Action and Cultural autonomy), or of the demands go beyond the framework set by the state territorial autonomy and secession / irredenta (Territorial autonomy /Secession /Irredentism) .
Fig. Variable to the extreme demands of ethnic minorities.
Source: E. K. Jenne, Ethnic Bargaining. The Paradox of Minority Empowerment, Ithaca – London 2007, p. 40.
We are also trying to point to examples of the above activities from the history of our country / Europe / the world. For example: creation of the Institute of Judaic Studies in Warsaw in 1925. As an example of affirmative action under the state (Affirmative Action), demands cultural autonomy for living in Poland Jews raised by some Jewish political parties (Bund) in the interwar period (Cultural autonomy), demands raised by the territorial autonomy Sudeten in the period between Czechoslovakia (Territorial autonomy at the junction of recognition of belonging to the state and its negation), secession and the creation of its own state by the Slovaks located in the minority in the interwar Czechoslovakia ( Secession / Irredentism ) . We can of course also look at examples from the recent history of a given country.
Duration: 150 minutes.
Questions and discussion:
– Why do people perceive needs differently?
– Which of the discussed / listed needs are fundamental to every human being?
– In what way (on the basis of what premises, experiences, etc.) did you make a choice?
– Where did your differences in perception and needs assessment come from?
– Does your (or – according to you – the representatives of the minority) list of needs look to different five years ago?
– Do you predict how such a list in a given country may look like in five years?
Test solution and discussion of its results (5 -10 minutes).
Duration: 45 minutes.
Summary: Duration: 15 minutes.
Comments:
The facilitator should control the course of the discussion and react if the group discussion on the importance of the needs turns into their assessment. It must be remembered that and make the participants aware that every choice is individual and its right is not subject to discussion.
Bibliography:
Jenne, Ethnic Bargaining. The Paradox of Minority Empowerment, Ithaca – London 2007
Tkacik, Characteristics of Forms of Autonomy, “International Journal on Minority and Group Rights” 15 (2008), p. 369–401.
Selected legal acts applicable to each country (constitution, decree, statute, etc.)
Elaboration within the framework of the Erasmus + project ‘ Non-dominant languages and religions in Europe basing on the example of Jewish communities’