Students returning to Russian schools this week will discover a change to their civics courses that puts military training at the heart of the lessons, as Bloomberg reports (paywalled).
The mandatory classes for teenagers include learning about the main types of armaments including machine guns, anti-tank weapons and hand grenades, as well as emergency field medicine and general military discipline. While some of the skills were previously taught in limited high school modules, the new version escalates this training for children as young as 13.
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Although some of these skills were previously taught as part of limited modules in upper grades, the new version of the program expands this training to children aged 13 and older.
“The updated curriculum, approved by the Ministry of Education, requires half of the weekly classes within the course “Fundamentals of the Security and Defense of the Homeland” to be devoted to basic military training,” Bloomberg says.
“This is part of the gradual militarization of Russian schools, aimed at shaping a new generation of conscripts, while the Kremlin continues its war in Ukraine, which has already been ongoing for the fifth year.”
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In addition to training in weapons handling and combat tactics, basic military training includes lessons on Russia’s national security doctrine and the structure of the armed forces. Students will also study mines and explosive hazards, first aid for combat injuries, chemical and radiation exposure and acute stress, as well as survival skills and procedures for operating in conflict zones.
The education reform effectively contributes to creating a flow of potential conscripts from schools into the army. This is reinforced by the involvement of combat veterans from the war in Ukraine in schools and kindergartens, where they speak with children, urging them to support Putin’s decision to launch the full-scale invasion in 2022.
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“The romanticization of war and violence, combined with a constant fear of external enemies, instills in young people the idea that human life holds no value and that dying for the regime and the president is normal,” says Pavel Talankin, an exiled Russian teacher who co-directed the Oscar-winning documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin that focused on rising war propaganda in his school, according to Bloomberg.“If necessary, one must die for the motherland, taking up the flag and marching into the line of fire without asking questions.”
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Russia [also] continues to scale up practices of militarizing children in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, turning teenagers into a mobilization resource for future wars.
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They run impressment gangs? Grabbing guys off the street to force into the military.
They must not want to use their youth for public relations reasons as they have compulsory military service as I recall. They probably see it as thinning out whom they consider undesirables.
But anyway, I wonder if it’s like a bounty system of free enterprise running an impressment gang, kidnapping men for military service.
Britain used to do that all the time for it’s navy. Outside taverns and such. Royal Navy service was said to be worse than their prisons.
Current losses are so high, that if they did that more then half of the 18year old men would be casualties(dead or wounded) of the war in Ukraine. Add to that parents sending their boys abroad, so they do not have to fight in the first place. It is a pretty good way to kill the country in the long term.
From what I understand it’s mainly the cops. If you have a confrontation with the police, you can count on ending up on the front. There have been reports of people claiming they left them the choice of being framed on drug charges or volunteer for service
That is the natural progression of any large country without Jury Trials.
I don’t see what this has to do with jury trials. A jury will eat up planted evidence as well as a judge or lay judges. It comes down to tight control of policework, which is a fantasy anyway.
The larger a country is, the less you can trust their judges and court.
Politicians that choose judges does not lead to real justice. maybe we don’t see the harms because everyone is ground under the heel of oppression.
Jury trials are the ideal. We should all want them. Hail the magna carta!
That’s complete nonsense, though. While it’s true that our largest countries have broken justice systems, it’s not like there is any tendency to get better systems in smaller countries.
Whether politicians choose the judges or not has nothing to do with whether you have a jury system or not. GB has a jury system and the judges of the highest court are chosen by politicians.
No, they are not the ideal. Juries tend to be wooed by the flashiest presentation and tend to prefer a well told story over the actual law. Ever heard of the CSI-effect? In theory this is much better addressed in a lay judge system, but this also has its downsides. That you see this system as an ideal and “hail” the Magna Carta, just goes to show that you haven’t looked at other justice traditions.