'Readiness For Service': Russia's Schools Continue Marching Toward Militarization

[Celerity]

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-schools-militarization-service-war-ukraine-putin/32500453.html



As Moscow’s war against Ukraine rages on, children at schools across Russia can expect to see significant changes to the academic curriculum starting in September -- alterations with a militaristic bent. At a discussion in the lower house of parliament late last month, State Duma Deputy Andrei Kartapolov lamented what he said was the unpreparedness of young volunteers and conscripts joining the Russian military. “They are infantile youths,” said Kartapolov, a member of the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party who chairs the Duma Defense Committee, “who in many respects are not prepared for real life.”

The remedy? Over the next two years, Russian schools will address this purported issue by scrapping its long-standing program called Fundamentals Of Safe Living and replacing it with a block of lectures with the working title Fundamentals Of Safety And Defense Of The Homeland. It is the latest intensification of the thread of “patriotic education” that has run through Russia in Vladimir Putin’s more than two decades as president or prime minister -- and that many critics say prioritizes the goals of the government over the interests of children.

Basic Training

Beginning with the new school year in September, students in 10th grade will be taught the “elements of basic military preparedness.” In addition to drills and instruction in basic military skills, it will also include lectures on the “career prospects” of military service, according to textbooks and teacher’s manuals that have been officially posted online. In 11th grade, such lessons will continue with “the formation of Russian civic identity, patriotism, and a sense of responsibility toward one’s homeland,” as well as the development of “conviction and readiness for service and defense of the Fatherland and a sense of responsibility about its fate.” Other lecture topics to be covered include “the danger of being lured into illegal and antisocial activity” and “the use of young people as a tool for destabilization.”



Students will also be warned about what the documents call the danger of “fakes as an element of information warfare.” Instructors will tell students that “it is illegal to violate norms about the distribution of information about the role of the U.S.S.R. during World War II or to commit public acts aimed at discrediting the armed forces of the Russian Federation.” In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the government hastily adopted a series of laws criminalizing the knowing distribution of “false information” about Russian military operations and “discrediting” the Russian armed forces. In February, 18-year-old Maksim Lypkan was sentenced to two months in jail for repeated anti-war statements and actions, becoming the youngest Russian convicted under the new laws.

Two Types Of Hand Grenades.........

snip

[Kid Berwyn]

1. "The use of young people as a tool for destabilization."

Weaponizing everything and everybody these days.

[Renew Deal]

2. Planting the seeds for WW4

[Igel]

3. Gotta just say, "WTF?"

One thing I miss looking at was WWII-era Soviet textbooks.

Mostly because they were printed on high-acid paper and, well, in the early '80s I had books from the '60s that had yellowed pages that broke when you turned them. Why invest in high-quality paper when the textbooks will have revised historical truth in them in a few years. Do that and you'll do what teachers did to some textbooks in the '30s--they'd get a stack of reprinted pages for textbooks and have to spend the weekend gluing them over the pre-existing text. (I imagine school kids peeling the reprinted pages off--told "don't do this," at a certain age the immediate neurological impulse is to do exactly that--and then getting in serious trouble as a result and being wailed on by good Soviets 3 generations away from serfdom.)