2 Mária Székelyi, György Csepeli, and Antal Örkény: Ambitious Education Introduction The essential conclusion of the literature on minority perception is that information concerned with a minority has a special significance and salience for the majority (Hamilton and Gifford, 1976). For reasons that lie perhaps in the nature of the construction of cultural difference, everything in a minority group’s behaviour which relates to deviance, the violation of norms, and the world beyond self-evident assumptions are also a special focus of attention for the majority. It is a feature of the image constructed by a majority about a minority that the image of the minority, which derives from increased attention to these three sources of data, implies a false relationship for members of the majority to the minority, such that the difference represented by the minority category becomes at once the sign that it is a carrier of deviance and a violator of norms. When developing minority-related mass media, in truly functioning civil societies, editors should strive to ensure that for negatively marked stories, which inevitably occur frequently in newscasts due to the nature of news, there will be no minority connotations. Similarly, editors of fiction programs in mass media ought to ensure that there are minority-member characters who occupy positions and perform acts which are positively evaluated by the majority. Such practices are not applicable to minority-related social science texts; if such a principle were rigidly applied this would mean the restriction of researcher’s academic freedom. However, it should be also noted that scientific communications do not appear in an empty space but constitute a part of social discourse on the given topic. Therefore social science communications on minorities inevitably become a part of the struggle in the arena of identity policies (Stewart, 2001). Mária Székelyi, György Csepeli, and Antal Örkény Institute of Sociology of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest Ambitious E ducation The Role of Family, School and Friends in the Development of Successful Romany Life Courses