Special military lessons – Newspaper Kommersant No. 169 (7370) of 09/14/2022

Pupils in grades 10-11 will take part in the history lessons of a special military operation in Ukraine. The Ministry of Education made such amendments to the Federal State Educational Standard (FSES). In addition, schoolchildren will be told about the revival of the country as a world power and about the direction of US and NATO policy in the 2000s-2020s. Also, high school students will be taught to “rebuff the falsifications of Russian history” and “defend historical truth in the course of discussions.” The teachers interviewed by Kommersant fear that the department wants to turn them into “political commissars.” They warn that historical events take several decades to comprehend, otherwise it may turn out that hastily prepared textbooks do not reflect reality.

The order of the Ministry of Education to change the Federal State Educational Standard of secondary general education was published on Monday evening on the official Internet portal legal information. Among the requirements for the results of mastering the basic course “History” were added: “Understanding (by a graduate of the school.— “b”) causes and consequences of the collapse of the USSR, the revival of the Russian Federation as a world power, the reunification of Crimea with Russia, a special military operation in Ukraine and other major events of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Note that the current GEF lists only general requirements for the knowledge of graduates. But in the new version, the Ministry of Education recorded specific historical moments and skills in more detail. In particular, high school students should know the names of the heroes of the First World War, the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War, as well as “historical figures who made a significant contribution to the socio-economic, political and cultural development of Russia in the 20th and early 21st centuries.” In addition, students should be able to search for historical information “in compliance with the rules of information security” in directories, the Internet and the media, “to assess the completeness and reliability in terms of its correspondence to historical reality.”

In addition, graduates should be able to “defend the historical truth, not allow the feat of the people to be diminished in the defense of the Fatherland”, and also be able to “repel the falsifications of Russian history.”

As part of the “History of Russia” course, teachers should talk about “reunification with the Crimea and Sevastopol” and “special military operation.” In addition, they will have to teach lessons about “the revival of the Russian Federation as a great power in the 21st century”, economic and social modernization, strengthening the defense capability and the country’s place in the modern world.

A block about the “geopolitical crisis of 2022 and its impact on the world system” was also added to the “General History”, despite the fact that 2022 has not even ended yet.

The advanced course in History will require the ability to “defend historical truth in discussions, as well as in the development and presentation of educational projects and research on recent history.” In addition, graduates should be able to “reasonably criticize and expose the falsifications of national history”, as well as “talk about the exploits of the people in defending the Fatherland.”

Although GEF has now become more specific, an indication of what exactly teachers should tell schoolchildren is contained in the sample work programs. A draft of such a document on the course “History” has already been published on the website of the Institute for Education Development Strategy of the Russian Academy of Education (subordinated to the Ministry of Education). It follows from it that high school students must explain the reasons and “provide evidence of the restoration of Russia’s leading position in international relations in the first decades of the 2000s.” They should also “reveal, based on facts and information maps”, the direction of US and NATO policy towards Russia in the 2000-2020s.

In addition, high school students should be able to use maps to talk about “Russia’s participation in peacekeeping missions (Transnistria, Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh)”.

In addition, students in grades 10–11 should be aware of the causes and forms of “humanitarian and military-political support” from Russia to the DPR and LPR, as well as “express assessments of the personality and activities of Vladimir Putin from Russian and foreign media, express and argue your attitude towards them.

Alexander Kondrashev, a teacher of history and social studies at the Moscow Intellectual school, calls the changes “unprecedented” and suggests that similar changes will affect other subjects of the humanitarian block. “The meaning of the History subject is to study the past,” he reminds. Now they are not there, but, apparently, the Ministry of Education wants history teachers to become them.”

Candidate of Historical Sciences, teacher of the Tyumen State University Alexander Fokin believes that 25–40 years must pass between a historical event and its introduction into the school curriculum for a consensus to form in society during this time. “On the one hand, there must be a distance so that you can comprehend the processes, study all the documents,” the historian argues. “But, on the other hand, we live in the era of social networks and the Internet, so it is important to react very quickly here. Only this can be presented not in history lessons, but, for example, in sociology or political science.”

Mr. Fokin adds that such changes in the Federal State Educational Standards cannot immediately reach schools.

At a minimum, the line of textbooks should be updated, and they must first be written and agreed upon. However, the history teacher of one of the capital’s schools recalls that the topic of Crimea’s annexation was quickly added to textbooks. “The problem is not even that the outcomes of the special military operation are not yet clear, but that we do not know what attitude to this will be in five years,” he says. “Then it may turn out that the causes and motives of these events were quite different. The author of a textbook cannot work instead of three research institutes. Otherwise, it will not be a textbook, but a political manual. In five years, they will read these textbooks and understand that they are written stupidity that does not fit with reality, and they will have to be thrown away.

“We live in a period of large-scale historical events. Of course, although they have not been completed yet, their roots are in the past,” Konstantin Mogilevsky, chairman of the board of the Russian Historical Society (RIO), disagrees. “The situation that has developed in the world has a large-scale historical character, so this approach is justified. And the inclusion of this topic in the course of history, and not in some other, is absolutely natural. Schoolchildren must understand what is happening and why, we must not tear them away from reality.” According to him, other historical events – for example, the change in the Constitution in 2020 – are already included in textbooks, although they happened quite recently: “As far as I am aware of the plans of the Ministry of Education, now no one is talking about withdrawing all history textbooks and replacing them to new ones that don’t exist yet. There is always a planned process of updating educational literature, which goes on for three years. But I would recommend doing it as soon as possible.” Mr. Mogilevsky also recalls that now there are several lines of textbooks that are included in the federal list. “Those authors and publishers that are in it can update textbooks in accordance with the standard and will be entitled to apply for a competition to be included in the federal list.”

The Ministry of Education was unable to promptly answer Kommersant. On Tuesday, Rosobrnadzor announced that after work programs and textbooks are changed, questions on the “special military operation” will be included in the Unified State Examination in History.

Anna Vasilyeva