Abstract
With regard to their cultural practices and attitudes towards schooling, the article examines the question of structural and genealogical memory cultures among the Central European Sinti, who have historically been reliant on oral rather than written memory traditions. Right up until the present day, the majority of Sinti view schooling primarily as a danger for their children, rather than a launch-pad to a better future. The analysis starts from the anthropological premise that no culture allows children just to discover the world; rather, children are taught about the world. The author then examines the history of official education policy for Roma and Sinti in Central Europe. In the third and final part of the article, the author’s aim is two-fold: firstly, to link the ‘illegitimacy of the present’, which European peoples attribute to Romany societies, with the Sinti ‘culture of silence’; and secondly, to compare this experience with that of the loss of the cultural subject among the Roma of Melfi. In both cases, Romanies pay a high price for this situation.