"Important Stories" studied manuals for Russian teachers, who from the new academic year will be required to conduct special classes "Talk about the important." At them, children will be told about patriotism and traditional values. Officials gathered to instill love for the motherland, including with the help of the sounds of Russian nature and images of Russian landscapes.
Such lessons will appear in every school from September 5. Sergei Novikov, head of the president's department for public projects, said that during class hours, children would have to learn about "the values of Russian society." This is not an abstract thing, but enshrined in the national security strategy.
As planned by the Methodists, for grades 1-2, love for the motherland should begin with love for nature. Children will be shown photographs of landscapes, include the sounds of Russian nature and patriotic songs – for example, the Soviet "Where the Motherland Begins." All this supposedly will help seven-year-olds to realize "their civic identity."
Further, the degree of patriotism will be increased: in grades 3-4, they plan to explain to the child that love for the motherland also means “the determination to stand up for its defense in a dangerous time.” In grades 5-7, teachers will be forced to talk about a “special military operation”, about “bullying of the inhabitants of Donbass by the Kyiv regime” and about NATO bases. All this should lead the children to the conclusion that Russian people live in the "DNR" and "LNR", "therefore, their return to Russia is important." And the Russian military are "heroes."
In grades 8–11, children will be told that it is impossible to simply declare love for the motherland, and “truly patriotic people are ready to defend it with weapons in their hands.”
The teachers themselves say that these manuals "cause rejection at the physical level." “I believe that these “Conversations about the Important” were introduced only in order to form in children a positive attitude towards the actions of the authorities and the Russian army as a whole. And all the other topics <…> – caring for one's neighbor, science, the day of the elderly – I consider a cover for one big goal.
The publication notes that the Ministry of Education has already spent 22 million rubles on such “interactive materials”.
In July, The New York Times wrote that the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, was involved in the creation of "Conversations about the Important". He became a guest of the course, as did Patriarch Kirill, who supported the war in Ukraine.