Russia has been at war for the past three years against neighbouring Ukraine which it seeks to denazify, demilitarise and prevent from joining NATO a western alliance that the Kremlin considers a threat to Russia’s existence.
Advice from a Teacher on how to raise Russia’s children under current war situation…..
I will voice an unpleasant and even hopeless point of view. You are betting a lot on children. On their natural curiosity, teenage rebellious spirit, on the information from the free world leaking through the Internet.
The authorities will be able to cut off our remaining access to the global information space. Or they will complicate it so much that it will require an inordinate amount of effort, knowledge, complex manipulations, possession of some IT skills… And people are taking the path of least resistance.
YouTube has disappeared from TVs at home – the child has started watching Russian television. Cartoons, endless monotonous Russian “humorous” series… It is simpler, accessible at the touch of a button, but for the sake of YouTube you need to change the phone settings and strain your eyes at the small screen.
In the same way, by means of stupid prohibitions and restrictions on “free” content, a generation will be raised that has never known about other points of view, other versions of what is happening, other values, etc.
After all, not all of today’s children and parents have a broad outlook and are resistant to Z-propaganda. And even in our rather free-thinking family, the older children-teenagers have managed to grow up with a fig in their pocket, have more or less learned to balance in the dull, deceitful, sometimes aggressive school realities, without drawing fire on themselves, but also not completely submitting… and the youngest is having a very hard time in elementary school. Very hard!
Even with the most loyal and somewhat indifferent teacher. Doublethink is given to the child with great difficulty. Constant headaches and nervous tics.
The child has a huge desire – “for everything to be good”, which is basically impossible to realize. One of the ways is to stop resisting and accept all this Z-rhetoric and value system.
After all, everything will immediately become unambiguous, simple and understandable! Even in seemingly non-political issues, relief immediately comes: everything is primitive, black and white, those who are against us are enemies, they can not be considered people, including this paradigm significantly simplifies (at the moment) relationships with peers.
There is no need to understand their motives, take their point of view, learn to understand, forgive, conduct constructive dialogues, describe in words complex feelings, emotions and other multifaceted realities.
But how much easier it is to divide everyone into black and white, friends and traitors, to discard all attempts to understand others… and even to understand yourself is not easy and it is very tempting to succumb to the authority of elders who know how it should be, who will quickly label everyone with a confident assessment, including explaining to you how you should think and feel, “so that everything will be good.”
The bans on certain content and the imposition of some crude slogans are not as scary as the consistent primitivization of thinking, simplification, and reduction of the world to a black-and-white picture.
People who have lived for some years in such a society (who knows how many will be critical for each of today’s children?) will then find it excruciatingly difficult, and perhaps even impossible, to perceive modern human values, the multifaceted nature of the world, rights and freedoms – their own and others’, to recognize the diversity of opinions, feelings, relationships…
How many more talents will be lost, stifled and trampled… considering the significant number of smart people who have left, it is scary to imagine what kind of society we will live in a few years… I repeat, no one yet knows and cannot accurately predict how many years our children will be able to hold out with a fig in their pocket, in a state of doublethink and protest driven inward, before quantity turns into quality, and society is irreversibly crippled.”
It’s very scary for the children. In fact, teenagers already understand a lot, but it’s the most difficult for younger schoolchildren. They want to be good schoolchildren, to receive the approval of teachers – and this is normal, not all ordinary children strive to be nonconformists and even leaders of the Red Indians. And this is normal for their age.
And, probably,You shouldn’t expect heroism and a desire to resist propaganda at all costs from little kids – they don’t have such strength or experience, it’s not even David versus Goliath, but a kitten versus a tank division.