Some schools in Russia prepare fake schemes to avoid their efforts to avoid patriotic educational lessons. Some parents have their children at home. Others try to help young people navigate a school system in which they say that propaganda is omnipresent.
Faced with what they say is an ever -growing flood of wrong information about the war in Ukraine in Russian schools, parents and teachers who resist the conflict that they are fighting a desperate struggle for the spirits of their children.
“You have to constantly play cat-and-mouse with the school: new things keep coming up like rounds of rifle fire,” said Varvara, 42, a mother of four from St. Petersburg. Like other people in Russia, Varvara asked Varvara that her last name was not used in this article to prevent retaliation from the authorities.
She mentioned activities that she saw as the strengthening of the war effort: a music teacher who held a competition to perform Russian military songs; Her teenage son’s school outing to hear a pro war interview by a veteran of the invasion of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; The lessons that Russia portray as a victim and the West as an enemy.
When President Vladimir V. Putin from Russia introduced ‘patriotic education’ at schools near the start of the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many critics saw it as a marginal company that would only work in economically depressive regions, where schools were already bad.
Three years later, the efforts of the Kremlin to indoctrinate children have deep roots in most schools in Russia, parents and analysts say.
“This is of the utmost importance for the Kremlin,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Erazia Center. “Putin is planning to be in the neighborhood for a long time, so he needs a younger generation to raise in the spirit of patriotism, fear or at least conformity with what is going on.”
The Propaganda -Drive inclusive ‘Important conversations’, an hour -long lesson every week in which the Russian flag is lifted while the national anthem is played, and discussions about topics ranging from family values to the military glory of Russia.
Most Russians seem to accept the lessons inevitably, just as they resigned from the war.
But according to conversations with parents and teachers, a considerable number they can do to avoid them.
Many schools have tried to sabotage the ‘important conversations’ lesson, with the help of the hour before revision or homework. And some school managers have largely climbed a crush for children who skip “important conversations” classes say the parents and teachers.
Irina, a 39-year-old mother of two from a suburb of Moscow, said her 11-year-old son misses the lessons because she has registered him for extra math.
But she said that she also helps him to avoid a diligent teacher who thinks of Crowd-Funds for the army and sometimes with extracurricular activities related to the war, such as writing letters to soldiers at the front, whether they make gifts.
Other anti -war parents at school had adopted the same tactics, Irina said, “Keep a low profile because of the obvious risks.”
In a case that tore anti -war parents, a father was in 2022 condemned of “discredit the Russian forces” and lost custody of his teenage daughter after she had pulled a Ukrainian flag into an art lesson.
Some parents have used to home education to prevent what they described as a poisonous atmosphere in schools. Home-schooling is permitted under the Russian law, as long as students pass the state sponsored every year.
Vera, a 43-year-old single mother, pulled her 16-year-old daughter out of school after the director started to insist on the presence for “important conversations” at the start of the current academic year.
“I want to protect my child: I want her to grow up in an atmosphere of peace and acceptance, not in the atmosphere of double thinking and militarization,” said Vera. She said that recent initiatives at the school include a lecture by a veteran of the war in Ukraine and the correcting of children in paramilitary activities.
Some anti -war teachers say they have responded to the propaganda drive with calm resistance.
Many schools in Moscow are working on ‘creative accounting’, Olga, a 47-year-old history teacher from Moscow, said: an official timetable has been drawn up for the eyes of the authorities, and a second, without propaganda lessons that the school follows. Parents have been supportive, she said.
Likewise, Olga does not pay much attention to the New history book personal approved By Mr Putin to teach the Kremlin’s version of the most recent history in all schools in Russia.
She said she helps students learn things such as the data from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, which appear on standardized national tests. Unlike that, she gives her own tailor -made history courses, she said.
While the first months of the invasion saw an unusually high number of teachers leave their jobsOlga does not see herself dumping her profession of almost 30 years.
“I just can’t go and leave the children,” she said. “They are not brainwashed. They understand much more than you think.”
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