From next school year, Putin plans to “brainwash” the children in school with extreme patriotism. In fact, the plans have already begun; some students were forced to watch military movies as an alternative for computer class which might reveal the students to the “Western world.”
Ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian government’s attempts at instructing state principles to school students had been unsuccessful, a senior Kremlin bureaucrat, Sergei Novikov, recently told thousands of Russian teachers during a teachers’ meeting online.
It has been five months since the war in Ukraine began, and the extensive purposes of Putin’s plans for the home front are reaching their highpoint: After thirty years, Russian society ended its trading and wholesale exposure to the West.
The Kremlin already imprisoned or evicted all the activists expressing their opinions against the war; it illegalized what remained of Russia’s independent journalism; it has doubted the loyalties of academics, internet influencers, and even a hockey player.
The Russian education plans, which start this September, are part of the Russian government’s scramble to brainwash children with Mr. Putin’s militarized understanding of patriotism and the idea of anti-Western.
Starting in first grade, students in Russia will soon take weekly classes showing war movies and virtual trips through Crimea. They will receive a “good” amount of courses on subjects such as “the geopolitical situation” and “traditional values.” In addition to the traditional flag-raising ceremony, they will also be oriented to lectures honoring Russia’s 21st-century “rebirth” under President Vladimir Putin.
A ninth-grader, Irina, said that in her school in Moscow, a computer class got replaced by the viewing of a state television report on Ukrainians surrendering to Russian troops and a speech explaining that the only reliable information comes from authorized Russian sources.
Teachers are also witnessing the transformation. In the city of Pskov near the Estonian border, an English teacher, Irina Milyutina, said that the children at her school used to intensely argue about whether Russia was right to invade Ukraine, and sometimes even came to “crashes.”
But soon the disagreement just disappeared. The children scribbled Z’s and V’s — symbols of support for the war, everywhere in the school. During the lunch break, fifth and sixth graders pretended to be Russian soldiers, and they called the people they disliked “Ukrainians,” according to Milyutina.
In one class, the officials taught students about “Hybrid conflicts being carried out against Russia,” with a BBC report about Russian attacking Ukraine as examples of “Fakes” meant to implant conflict and friction in Russian society.
The Alliance of Teachers has provided legal guidance to dozens of teachers who have declined to teach the propaganda courses, stating that political uproar in schools is technically illegal under Russian law.
Ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian government’s attempts at instructing state principles to school students had been unsuccessful, a senior Kremlin bureaucrat, Sergei Novikov, recently told thousands of Russian teachers during a teachers’ meeting online.
It has been five months since the war in Ukraine began, and the extensive purposes of Putin’s plans for the home front are reaching their highpoint: After thirty years, Russian society ended its trading and wholesale exposure to the West.
The Kremlin already imprisoned or evicted all the activists expressing their opinions against the war; it illegalized what remained of Russia’s independent journalism; it has doubted the loyalties of academics, internet influencers, and even a hockey player.
The Russian education plans, which start this September, are part of the Russian government’s scramble to brainwash children with Mr. Putin’s militarized understanding of patriotism and the idea of anti-Western.
Starting in first grade, students in Russia will soon take weekly classes showing war movies and virtual trips through Crimea. They will receive a “good” amount of courses on subjects such as “the geopolitical situation” and “traditional values.” In addition to the traditional flag-raising ceremony, they will also be oriented to lectures honoring Russia’s 21st-century “rebirth” under President Vladimir Putin.
A ninth-grader, Irina, said that in her school in Moscow, a computer class got replaced by the viewing of a state television report on Ukrainians surrendering to Russian troops and a speech explaining that the only reliable information comes from authorized Russian sources.
Teachers are also witnessing the transformation. In the city of Pskov near the Estonian border, an English teacher, Irina Milyutina, said that the children at her school used to intensely argue about whether Russia was right to invade Ukraine, and sometimes even came to “crashes.”
But soon the disagreement just disappeared. The children scribbled Z’s and V’s — symbols of support for the war, everywhere in the school. During the lunch break, fifth and sixth graders pretended to be Russian soldiers, and they called the people they disliked “Ukrainians,” according to Milyutina.
In one class, the officials taught students about “Hybrid conflicts being carried out against Russia,” with a BBC report about Russian attacking Ukraine as examples of “Fakes” meant to implant conflict and friction in Russian society.
The Alliance of Teachers has provided legal guidance to dozens of teachers who have declined to teach the propaganda courses, stating that political uproar in schools is technically illegal under Russian law.