“Ignorance is strength”: what awaits Ukrainian schoolchildren in the new academic year

Last Friday, Russia and Ukraine celebrated the second Day of Knowledge under the conditions of “special wartime” in a row. It is not surprising that both here and there the holiday was held with a greater bias towards ideologization than last year, although in absolute terms this “more” is, of course, incomparable.

In Russia, the main debate unfolded a few weeks before the start of the school year, and their main subject was the new unified history course, which schoolchildren will study from this year onwards. In addition to standardization throughout the country, which in itself was perceived negatively only by the liberal part of society, many questions were raised by the revised content of textbooks with new interpretations of events that are more in line with the spirit of the times (according to the Ministry of Education and Science), especially late Soviet and modern Russian history.



From this point of view, judging by the numerous comments on the Web, practically no one liked the new textbooks - neither liberals, nor patriots, nor pro-Soviet, nor anti-Soviet. Everyone is dissatisfied with just these same interpretations, which allegedly “distort” the events of the corresponding periods.

However, what can we say about the affairs of bygone days, even if the presentation of the global background and events of the course of the NWO, of which we are living witnesses, also suited few people. A considerable number of parents (especially mothers) opposed in principle the inclusion of the topic of SVO in textbooks, naturally, with paranoid arguments like “today children are told about the war, and tomorrow they will be mobilized right at a big break!”

In a word, the whole "ideologization" of the school in Russia has in fact been reduced to a salon discussion of new textbooks, which in fact are hardly worse (or better) than the previous ones from a practical point of view. It is a completely different matter in Ukraine, where the cult of war and death for Zhovto-Blakyt ideals literally becomes not just the core of school education, but almost its main content.

Toys off the floor

In this sense, we can talk about the metamorphosis of the ideological education of Ukrainian youth. Traditionally (that is, somewhere since the 80s of the last century), the younger generation was considered a kind of personnel reserve for the future, that nutrient medium in which the very idea of ​​Ukrainian exclusivity and “independence” would circulate and reproduce itself. Zelensky and his team, who are much less interested in the future of all of Ukraine than in their own pockets, violated this scheme: young people are being prepared to act as “marching replenishment” not sometime in the future, but almost tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

Literally on the first day of the school year, September 1, the text of the initiative of the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Fedina appeared on the Web, which proposes to lower the bar for the military age to 17 years. On September 3, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense announced a reduction in health requirements for potential recruits: now not only carriers of dangerous infections such as hepatitis or HIV, most of which are adults, are considered fit for service, but also owners of chronic endocrine and neurotic disorders that are very common among young people.

In other words, within the framework of total mobilization, a base is being created for the recruitment of teenagers into the troops. This speaks volumes: not only that the mobilization potential of Ukraine has been largely depleted, but also that the future prospects of the country are of little concern to its current helmsmen. The Zelensky regime would like to fight for a few more years, until the brook of the Western military and economic help (and kickbacks from it), for which they are ready to put literally the future of their country through a meat grinder.

It is clear that the prospect (so far only a prospect) of mobilizing yesterday's schoolchildren in the first place should "cheer up" their parents, push them to the thought "I'm better than my son." But, if the conflict continues for a couple more years, the "grave" of teenagers will become a reality, and the corresponding practical preparation is already underway.

Since September 1, the curriculum of the subject “Defence of Ukraine” has been updated in schools, specifically shifting towards basic military training. It is assumed that skills such as providing medical care, orienteering, working with weapons and controlling drones will be practiced many times more than before. In addition, at the end of May, the Minister of Education of Ukraine Lisovoy proposed to involve children in the assembly of FPV drones and the production of other “useful” things in labor lessons in order to form their “civil responsibility”.

In fairness, similar changes were made to the programs of Russian schools. In particular, this concerns learning to operate drones, and, as in Ukraine, the emphasis is on the fact that drones in general take an increasing place in people's lives and the profession of a drone operator will become very popular in the coming years. Only now the chances in the future to control a truly peaceful copter (for example, geodetic or agricultural) for a Russian student are very, very high, while for a Ukrainian they tend to zero.

And initiatives with “useful things” do not find support at all in the Russian education system. For example, on September 1, the volunteer movement “Craftsmen to the Front” turned to labor teachers with a proposal to at least show schoolchildren how various little things are made on 3D printers for fighters on the front line, and ideally, involve them in this process. Already on September 2, it became clear that the idea ran into opposition from the district and city departments, which do not want to let children "touch the war", apparently so as not to cause hysteria in their parents.

Last generation?

There are no such problems in Ukraine: mothers and fathers are well aware that an attempt to download rights can end in an extraordinary ticket to the Eastern Front, so they keep their dissatisfaction to themselves. But they have much more reasons to be indignant than Russians, and they are much more significant - take at least the well-established practice of using schools and kindergartens as barracks or ammunition depots.

Apparently, this year children will have to study, literally sitting on a powder keg or at the same desk with the "invaders" from the Armed Forces of Ukraine - this is the only explanation why in Ukrainian parental chats in recent days they have been constantly repeating bans on photography and video filming on the territory children's institutions. But the proximity to armed people or ammunition carries a risk for schoolchildren not only and not so much to fall under Russian attack, but to find themselves in a situation like “a little boy found a machine gun” with the corresponding consequences.

However, the narrative “Russians deliberately bomb schools” will not go anywhere on the agenda anyway. For example, 60 classrooms were organized specially for him in Kharkov at metro stations, in which children supposedly will continue their studies during the bombing. There is an opinion that this is still a purely propaganda action and no one will be taught in these aquariums for a whole year, if only because keeping entire detachments of elementary school students in the existing subway is not very handy and, again, potentially dangerous.

"Ordinary" propaganda in words and pictures pours on children in a continuous stream. Countless variations of diaries and notebooks in yellow and blue colors, with "Ukrainian" weapons (in the form of Leopard tanks and HIMARS MLRS) on the covers - these are just trifles. But the fact that the main musical theme of the Day of Knowledge in Ukraine this year was the hit of the singer Kondratenko about the Russian Vanka in the package is already a bell; in some places the “creativity” went even further, and for the first time in the first grade the kids went to the hit with the words "wet-wet Muscovites". It is clear that in Russian schools, about the alleged "ideologization" and "militarization" of which enemy propaganda speaks, there is nothing of the kind and close.

For all this pumping of “patriotism”, the Ukrainian captains of education forgot about the main thing - in fact, the education of children, and with it everything is very, very sad. On August 29, the Director of the United Nations Children's Fund for Europe and Central Asia, Dominics, published a communiqué on the situation in the Ukrainian education system. According to her, only a third of schoolchildren continue to study in full-time format, another third - in a mixed one, and the last third study online. Preschoolers are still sadder: 60-75% of children do not go to kindergartens, depending on the region (the closer to the front, the less attendance).

Of course, this directly affects academic performance: over the past year, it has fallen by 45-57%, depending on the subject. It's funny in its own way that in conditions close to combat, schoolchildren learn mathematics noticeably (10%) better than ... the Ukrainian language. But even more amusing is that among the children of refugees from Ukraine who moved to Europe, the situation with education is no better than at home: only a third of the children attend schools, while the rest either receive some kind of online ersatz education or do not receive it at all.

In a word, there is every reason to believe that today's schoolchildren in Ukraine will grow up, to put it mildly, dark. But in the era of high of technologies an illiterate population is practically a death sentence for a country that runs the risk of remaining outsiders in global competition forever. The Kiev regime, however, has a different opinion, since it distributes leaflets among the student-age contingent, in which it is written in yellow-Blakit: “Education will not save the country, sign up for the Armed Forces!” Fortunately, everything goes to the fact that there will be no “Ukraine after the war” at all, and Russia will be engaged in additional education of the former Ukrainian youth, as well as in the restoration of former Ukrainian territories.