At the All-Russian Patriotic Forum “Your Hero” they discussed what values ​​to instill in young people

At the All-Russian Patriotic Forum “Your Hero” on Tuesday, a panel discussion “The Place and Role of Patriotic Education in the Strategy for the Implementation of Youth Policy for the Period until 2030” was held. Representatives of universities, the Ministry of Education and Science and the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh) agreed that youth policy should not only create opportunities for self-realization of young people, but also instill patriotism in them. Although the speakers approached the very concept of patriotism pragmatically: in their opinion, serving the country and the state does not at all imply a mandatory rejection of material values, it is simply desirable that young people do not get hung up on them.

The development of a strategy for the development of youth policy on behalf of the president is carried out by the government with the assistance of a profile commission of the State Council. Participants in the panel discussion of the patriotic forum made it clear that the document will focus not only on creating an effective environment for the self-realization of young people and on the level of their salaries (which the president also drew attention to), but also on some ideological aspects.

Thus, the State Council Commission on Youth Policy collects initiatives from various organizations, including patriotic ones, said Andrey Platonov, chairman of the Council of Vice-Rectors for Youth Policy and Educational Activities under the Ministry of Education and Science. “The block of patriotic education, the block of spiritual and moral values, which are one of the foundations of the work, it is taken into account here … Presidential Decree No. 809 describes in detail the values ​​​​and threats to our traditional values. One of the main tasks is to tell (to a young man.— “b”) about values, so that he correlates himself with them. To educate a person who will love his homeland, increase its well-being and will defend it,” Mr. Platonov explained.

And Vasily Teterin, acting head of the youth projects and programs department of Rosmolodezh, added that the strategy should comply with “the goals and objectives set in the National Security Strategy, a number of federal laws, the Constitution and presidential decrees on the preservation of traditional values.”

“The fact that a number of values ​​that a normal person shares has been defined is very important,” Andrei Platonov noted. “Last week, an axiological forum was held at the RSSU, where more than 50 values ​​and a dozen anti-values ​​were identified. And visualization, how we can see the manifestation of these values ​​… He (young man.— “b”) either separates them, or moves towards anti-values, but then this is a deviation, where both we and specialists in youth policy and specialists of a different profile need to work. True, Mr. Platonov did not announce the list of “anti-values”, but promised to present them to the forum directorate later.

At the same time, the very understanding of patriotism, which, according to the presidential decree, certainly belongs to Russian traditional values, in the opinion of the participants in the discussion, also needs to be clarified.

“It is important for us to move on to really active patriotism. And to understand that patriotism is not only to know state symbols, not only to say “I love my country” in general, but rather to be useful to it in the good sense of the word, ”explained Dmitry Pokrovsky. With this approach, those who “raise specific sectors of the economy, develop technologies, and are ready to move the country forward with the understanding that this is patriotism” can register themselves as patriots. According to Mr. Pokrovsky, it will be possible to adjust public perception in this way if “patriotism is instilled in specific areas of a person’s professional training”: law students, for example, can be offered to “beat, live” the Nuremberg or Tokyo trials.

Vasily Teterin supported his colleague, stating that “patriots are not only those who go to ceremonial events with flags and study in military-patriotic clubs”, but also those who “for some reason did not go to this club, but found themselves in sports, science or anywhere else.” “Our task is precisely to let a young person understand that his whole life in his native school, university, at his workplace is service to his cause, to those principles that form you into a responsible person, a patriot of your small homeland, your country,” the official said.

The objection from the audience that such an approach is possibly lacking integrity and gives rise to a contradiction between “self-realization and earnings” on the one hand and selfless service to the Fatherland on the other, was rejected by the speakers.

To substantiate their position, Messrs. Pokrovsky and Teterin referred to the fact that the qualitative results of labor in themselves are a “marker of patriotism”, and one can pay attention to socially significant, but unpaid projects in their free time.

“I can be a businessman who produces stools: I have a workshop, I have employees, and we produce stools,” thought Dmitry Pokrovsky. “And we sell these stools. Like any businessman, my main goal is to make money. But I, as a patriot of my country, want these stools to be sold all over the world and be the best stools in the world, but at the same time they will say “Made in Russia”. This is also an element of patriotism.

However, ideally, such a patriot from business should find time for volunteering, Mr. Pokrovsky added. “I can work, I earn money, but when I have time to relax in the evening, I don’t lie on the sofa with a bottle of beer, but I go and help someone who needs it,” the representative of the Ministry of Education and Science developed his idea. The desired “active patriotism”, in his opinion, lies precisely in the ability of a citizen to “keep a balance” between work and social activities, without focusing on income and profit.

Grigory Leiba