Child soldiers

The new course includes a module called military training and basic military knowledge, which, according to the course outline, will have eighth graders study the structure of the Russian Armed Forces, receive an overview of weaponry and equipment, and learn how to put on protective body armour. Those in the 10th and 11th grades will be taught about combat manoeuvres, shooting, digging trenches, and the military use of drones. All pupils are to be drilled and taught the risks of ignoring military discipline. 

Reserve training, which used to only be held for those in the 10th grade, will now be held over three days for those in the eighth grade. However, not everyone is pleased with the hurried introduction of the additional requirements for the curriculum. 

“There’s a course but no textbook — it hasn't been published yet. When I ask how it’s taught, I’m told, ‘However we can. We take material off the internet, and try to cobble something together,’” State Duma Deputy Andrey Gurulyov complained in mid-September, while also bemoaning the wider lack of material resources experienced by many schools in Russia. 

Going through the motions

When basic military training was introduced to high schools two years ago, schools were given two options. The first included basic state defence, and basic military training, while in the second option the basic military training was amalgamated with another module and was far less detailed.

“It’s either the theoretical health and safety course or the hardcore option,” says Alexey*, a teacher at a private school. “It’s just assembling and taking weapons apart. All that rubbish. Each school was able to decide for itself and nearly all chose the lighter version for one reason: it required no technical equipment.”

Alexey admits that when he’s assigned to teach basic homeland security and defence lessons, he normally just teaches social studies, his principal subject, though he still does the required paperwork, and says that despite the name change, he still thinks of it as the old health and safety course.

“It’s like with Important Conversations classes. No one ever checked that shit,” Alexey explained, referring to the mandatory propaganda lessons introduced to Russian schools in 2022. “Pupils only attended class for the first two months. Nobody cared. It’s the same again now: it’s compulsory, but nobody checks.”

Alexey says schools didn’t fully understand what teaching the new subject would entail, and so didn’t order the equipment they needed. In addition to that, as there is no standardised textbook for the course yet, teachers are still being forced to use their old health and safety materials.

“A standardised textbook is due out in the new year, but whether that does in fact happen remains to be seen,” Alexey said, adding that even if in some cases schools had “a decommissioned Kalashnikov from the old days” available, overall “not a single school in the country is ready.”

The practical military section of the course involves assembling and disassembling an assault rifle, learning first aid for military situations and putting on a hazmat suit, Alexey says. 

While saying that some teachers “gushed about the heroes of the special military operation” despite there being no clear instructions for them to do so, Alexey said he noticed that attitudes to the war among pupils differed enormously, which he put down largely to the kind of family a child came from. “In regular schools, many children are pro-war, but in private schools, the majority are categorically against it.” 

Naturally cruel

Ivan*, who also has to teach classes in basic homeland security and defence, told Novaya Gazeta Europe that the declaration of partial mobilisation in September 2022 had made it easier to discuss the war at school, as many children had relatives who had suddenly been called up to serve in the military.

“Children don’t stop themselves saying what they think the way many adults do. They trust me, so we can discuss the subject. I might not be able to change anyone’s mind, but I can certainly get them to think,” he says.

Ivan says he doesn’t agree with what he says has been established as the “correct” attitude to have in schools towards the fighting in Ukraine, saying that there is nothing about it on the curriculum, which isn’t entirely true. 

The new standardised history textbook for grade 11 has a section on the “special military operation” in which it refers to Ukraine as an “ultranationalist state”, and claims that the war began to protect the Russian-speaking Donbas region in the country’s east.

As for the new subject itself, most schools were ready to teach it as there had already been a military component to health and safety classes, according to Ivan, who says that pupils still learn how to cope with real life dangers, and that this knowledge can save lives.

Some teachers simply aren’t interested or don’t know how to teach the subject, Ivan says, but suggested that the problem lay in a shortage of good teachers rather than an inherent problem with the subject itself.

“You basically have to teach a theoretical course and take the students to the forest, a training ground, a body of water or a shooting range once a term,” Ivan said, adding that without practicing what they’d learned, the children would quickly forget the theory side of things. 

While he says he doesn’t think children really needed to be taught how to shoot guns, Ivan rejects any suggestion that such a militaristic approach to education might make pupils more violent. “Children are cruel by nature. School devotes just one to two hours a year to shooting, but they play shooting games on their phones almost every day.”

* Names have been changed