The Ministry of Education of Russia said that the propaganda lessons “Talk about the Important” are mandatory to attend, since extracurricular activities are part of educational programs. It is reported by RIA Novosti.
At the end of August, the “Soft Power” movement and the “Alliance of Teachers” called on the parents of students, as well as teachers, to boycott patriotic classes. Many parents and teachers began to refuse these lessons. "Rotonda" wrote that the parents of St. Petersburg schoolchildren are threatened because of their refusal to attend "Conversations about the Important".
Threats to schoolchildren who refused to attend classes were also reported by Sota. According to the publication, in one of the Moscow schools, students were threatened with “talks with the administration at the Prevention Council”, parents were told that the elective was mandatory.
In Blagoveshchensk, the class teacher told the parents that she threatened the children to keep them in the cold in the winter until the end of the “talk about important things,” since “you can’t violate the ceremony with the anthem and the removal of the flag.”
It became known in June that teachers would be forced to conduct propaganda lessons. The Ministry of Education spent 22 million rubles on interactive materials. At the same time, teachers refused to pay extra for conducting the lessons themselves. Initially, it was planned to discuss the war in Ukraine with children during the lessons, but later the Ministry of Education hid the plans for electives for the coming months, and removed the rhetoric about the war from the available ones. Also, phrases about “protecting the Russian people” and “it’s not scary to die for the motherland” were removed from the manuals. The Teachers' Alliance said at the time that updating the manuals was the result of "huge internal resistance" from parents, teachers, schoolchildren and college students who were not silent.