Kremlin Adds Kalashnikovs, Patriotism and Respect for Soldiers to School Curriculum in Soviet-Era Throwback

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The new patriotism classes come as Russia prepares for what could be a long-term confrontation with the West​

From Today's WSJ.

And the US has Pols like Hissy Fit Murphy and Dementia Jow calling for an AWB in our country. Remember GUNZ are bad!

What's wrong with this picture? I am not advocating mindless Patriot classes but REAL History should be taught like why we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights and the sacrifices American citizens have made so students can make their decisions on facts, not childish feelings or revisionist history about what a horrible country America is.

I think we need to have Picton teach his students how to field strip, clean and reassemble an AR/M4 to qualify for graduation. Then instead of Physical Ed. classes they can head out to the football field for hand grenade 101.

"MOSCOW—The Kremlin is priming the next generation for what is shaping up to become a longer-term confrontation with the West over Russia’s place in the world.

Since the beginning of the school year, a new class, dubbed “Conversations About What Is Important,” has been taught in schools across the country every Monday, touching on topics such as the heroism of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine and why Crimea—a Ukrainian peninsula annexed in 2014 by Russia—is important to Russia.

The country’s Education and Defense Ministries have also signed off on a new basic military and naval training program to begin during the next school year for children from the age of 11. Students in the 10th and 11th grades, aged 16 and older, will receive more advanced instruction, including how to handle a Kalashnikov assault rifle and use hand grenades, Vladimir Pavlov, a State Duma deputy and one of the authors of the initiative, wrote on his Telegram channel earlier this month.
All Russian state schools now begin the week with new flag-raising ceremonies and a rendition of the national anthem at the order of the Kremlin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has put his weight behind the patriotism push, too, endorsing the revival of a Soviet-era youth movement. Artem Metelev, chairman of the State Duma Committee on youth policy and co-author of the law to create the new youth movement told colleagues in July that the aim was “to reach out to the vast majority of schoolchildren with the goal of helping millions of children find purpose in life.”

The effort to mold the views of the young, some only 7 years old, unsettles many parents and teachers. Some say they worry it is meant to drum up support for a long-running conflict, which already has seen fighting-age men mobilized and Moscow intermittently hinting that it could use nuclear weapons. Others question, albeit privately, the rationale of continuing a full-scale war—what the Kremlin calls its special military operation—in Ukraine.

Opinion polls suggest that support for the Ukraine campaign is weaker among younger Russians—a recent poll from the Levada Center, which says it is independent, indicated that three-quarters of over-40s support the war compared with 58% of those aged 18 to 24. And policy analysts and government critics say Mr. Putin is trying to instill a deeper measure of patriotism to fit his long-term policy goal: Restoring Russia to the status it had as a global power before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“It’s important for them that the whole society supports the war, so they’ve begun to explain, justify and try to make even the youngest ones love war,” said Daniil Ken referring to the Russian leadership. Mr. Ken is head of the Alliance of Teachers, an independent trade union supported by the Anti-Corruption Foundation of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The Kremlin didn’t respond directly to a request for comment on the objectives behind the new lesson plans, or on whether the goal was anything more than trying to foster a greater sense of national pride. The Kremlin press service, citing presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said that establishing “any school in any country suggests there is an ideology. Our school means our ideology.”

On Sept. 1, the start of the school year, Mr. Putin conducted an “open lesson” with students in Kaliningrad in western Russia, where he explained the Kremlin’s version of recent events in Ukraine. He said he was forced to send troops there to defend Russia and protect Russian-speakers from persecution—a claim the government in Kyiv denies. He also stressed the importance of history, telling the students that many children in eastern Ukraine never knew that Russia and Ukraine were once part of the same country, the U.S.S.R.

He told the young people that Russia’s success “will depend on you being successful in the future. And that begins to take shape at school, where your path begins,” he said.

Alexander Bugaev, Russia’s first deputy minister of education, lauded the new classes, telling Russian state television in July that it was important “to talk about our achievements—both past and present,” he said. “We have something to be proud of.”

Mr. Putin’s government has allocated nearly 1 billion rubles—around $16.4 million—to make sure all schools have suitable flags and whatever else is needed for the Monday-morning ritual.

“The national flag…serves to educate the younger generation in the values of patriotism, citizenship and responsibility for the future of the Motherland,” Mr. Putin said in a television address on Aug. 22, which is Russia’s national flag day.

The “important conversations” class, meanwhile, has become a fixture in Russian schools. The youngest pupils in grades one through four, or ages 7 to 10, are taught, among other things, about nature, the cosmos and their role in developing and supporting Russia.

The curriculum includes passages on why love for country and patriotism are among the defining qualities of a good citizen, and how Russian soldiers embody the attributes of courage, heroism and self-sacrifice.

Students in the fifth grade and above learn about the selflessness of soldiers deployed to the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, the site of some of the fiercest fighting. “At the call of their hearts, they rose to defend Russia and Donbas,” one lesson reads.

 

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"All students are taught about Russia’s long-term goal of reuniting Crimea with Russia. Mr. Putin has called the territory, home to the country’s Black Sea fleet, an inseparable part of Russia. The international community hasn’t recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to retake the territory.

Not everyone is on board with the new classes. Mr. Ken of the teachers’ alliance, who now lives in Armenia, said his group had received many letters from anxious parents. “Some ask for advice on how to free their children from these lessons,” he said.

The easiest way is to keep children from attending the patriotism class, though Mr. Ken said some schools have threatened to report parents whose children are regularly absent, or even to expel their children.

Math teacher Tatyana Chervenko said she has refused to teach the new patriotism class at Moscow School No. 1747, instead substituting them with math lessons, saying that the lessons contained “quite a lot of propaganda.”

She said she had twice been reprimanded with a written warning, both for switching lessons and giving an interview to a now-banned independent television station. The school didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether Ms. Chervenko had been reprimanded or why.

Svetlana Gladkova said she was relieved that her 11-year-old son David’s autism exempted him from classes on patriotism at his school in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.

“I don’t think patriotism or love for one’s country can be taught in this manner,” Ms. Gladkova said. “A child is not taught patriotism. They are taught to love their country by watching their parents’ example of love for their country, when they are exposed to regular life [and] are told about their family history,” she added.

Ms. Gladkova said she loved her country, but was thankful that she would be able to control what her son was exposed to and how it was taught.

Still, some teachers and parents are comfortable with the new lessons.

Daria, 43, a college instructor in the city of Ulan-Ude, and mother to a daughter in the 11th grade and son in the second grade, said she generally has “a positive attitude” toward them.

She said her son’s teacher, for example, tries to talk to the students about “what is good and what is bad,” she said. “That it’s important to love your homeland…to respect each other, honor your ancestors.”

Svetlana Golushkova, director of the Lopaty village school in the Makaryev district of Russia’s western Kostroma region, said the material provided for the conversations classes was “excellent and high quality.”

“Is talking to children about common social topics so bad?” Ms. Golushkova said.

History teacher Raushan Valiullin, however, left Russia for Kyrgyzstan with his wife and three young children shortly after the start of the school year, in part because of the new curriculum and Mr. Putin’s September mobilization of troops. He had been in a long-running dispute with the administration at his old school in Naberezhniye Chelny, a city in Tatarstan some 600 miles east of Moscow, largely over his political activism. Among other things, he publicly protested Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and supported Mr. Navalny, the jailed opposition leader.

Mr. Valiullin said he criticized authorities for ignoring laws against teaching what he called a coercive ideology aimed at brainwashing children, during a teachers’ meeting about the new patriotism lesson. He said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he had had no intention of teaching the class and that he was subsequently fired.

He said he filed a court case against the school, challenging his dismissal but didn’t wait around for the verdict.

Mr. Valiullin’s former school didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether or why he was dismissed or about the lawsuit. Mr. Valiullin said that he was relieved to have left Russia.

“I am very happy for my [own] children,” he said. “I am very glad that all this will pass them by and their young minds won’t be clogged up with this ideological rubbish.”

Write to Ann M. Simmons at [email protected]

 

[Dennis in MA]

I was listening to the Cautionary Tales podcast. Back in the late 30's, these restorers restored this church in Germany. There were blank areas that they SAID they could recreate. The artist painted. . . . turkeys. The church was completed in 1219 or something. (Well before 1492.)

The lead art restorer was a buddy of Goerring. Within a couple of years, it was widely touted that the German people sailed to the New World a full 200 years prior to that dirty jew Spaniard, Christopher Columbusberg (honestly - that's what they said!) and even HAD TEXT BOOKS MADE OF THE CHURCH DEPICTIONS TO SHOW SCHOOL CHILDREN HOW GREAT THE GERMAN PEOPLE WERE!

 

[Marty McFly]

At least it was a short article

 

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At least it was a short article

Too much reading for you?

 

[Marty McFly]

Too much reading for you?

Well no. I used my letters to sound it all out. I mostly just like to bitch

 

[SFC13557]

Well no. I used my letters to sound it all out. I mostly just like to bitch

HA! HA!
I'd like to email the article to Hissy Fit Murphy and ask him to please contact Vladimar and remind him that AK's are BAD!
I wonder if they're using 47's or 74's for demonstration purposes.