The video with the attack of a schoolboy on a teacher that outraged the Russians turned out to be a “shifter”

A wave of violence swept over Russian schools. Every day, a new scandal. In the case, which, as they wrote on social networks, occurred the other day in the Smolensk region, it was not the teacher, but the student who acted as the aggressor. A rude teenager with the words: “Go yourself out of here. Go! We kicked you out,” pushed the teacher out of the classroom to the approving hooting of the students. But it turned out that the video was two years old, filmed in another region, and the teenager repented a long time ago.

What he saw outraged the public so much that it became a new argument in the dispute about the responsibility of minors before the law and the legal status of teachers. And the governor of the Smolensk region, Alexei Orlov, instructed law enforcement agencies to find where it all happened. The local departments of education also checked all schools in the municipalities of the region.

But in the end it turned out that the published video was a “button accordion” from two years ago. And it was not at all in Smolensk, but in Samara. At that time, 13-year-old Mikhail (his name has been changed) reacted in such a boorish way to the insistent demands from the teacher to take off his hood. Now both he and his mother are in a panic that the video has surfaced. In 2020, the scandal was hushed up and no one has remembered it since.

“At that time, he had such a period of “one against all,” his mother tries to justify her son. Like, even then Misha was ashamed of what he had done, and, after talking with the school administration, the conflict was settled. The teacher, “very good, kind and responsive,” also admitted then that she lost her nerve …

Now the main character of the video, Misha, is recovering from a serious accident in which he got. The doctors did not even believe that he would walk … He studies at home and prepares for the exam. The publication of a long-standing scandal affected him “very negatively”.

In the last year alone, there have been several high-profile attacks on teachers in the country. In the suburbs, a student beat a physics teacher, the teacher had a broken arm and nose, he was taken away in an ambulance. In Moscow, a teenager attacked a chemistry teacher at a lesson, he was also hospitalized. In Krasnoyarsk, an aggressive third-grader first hit a teacher, then pinched her fingers with a door. As a result, the teacher quit the school. And just a few days ago, in Kamchatka, a 1st grade student (!) attacked a teacher and fellow students with a sharp piece of glass at the ready.

Talk about the fact that a teacher at school is not protected from violence and encroachment on the part of aggressive students and parents has been going on for a long time at all levels, including in the Federation Council and the State Duma. “A teacher should live with dignity,” believes Academician, Honored Teacher of Russia Yevgeny Yamburg. “Teachers work for themselves and for that guy, and they don’t even get paid for themselves,” said Oleg Smolin, deputy of the State Duma, deputy chairman of the relevant Duma committee. But the problem of the low prestige of teaching work lies not only in the economy.

2023 has been declared the Year of the Teacher and Mentor in Russia. “We … are discussing with the deputies of the State Duma the issue of securing a possible special status for teachers,” says the head of the Ministry of Education, Sergei Kravtsov. “This will give him protection from various misconduct, which often happens in relation to a teacher.”

“Laws are for those who are awake,” there is a Roman saying, says lawyer Stanislav Popov. – This means that if some problem is ripe, the law must see it. If 30 years ago a student’s attack on a teacher was unthinkable, an asocial phenomenon, today it is not so. Society has changed, the political system has changed, social inequality has grown … There is a lot of talk about the fact that teachers in schools are legally vulnerable to teachers and parents. Indeed, it is. All situations like this video are, in fact, not punishable by anything for a child under 16 years old (in case of severe bodily beatings, 14 years old). And the school can only apply to the PDN and guardianship authorities.

It seems to me that even taking into account the fact that in any normal society the interests of children should be protected more firmly than those of adult able-bodied citizens, there is a bias in schools.

And all advice to teachers in conflicts with children and parents boils down to acting collegially, not to sort things out in the blind areas of the school without video cameras, etc. Therefore, undoubtedly, the legal status of teachers needs to be raised. The bill exists, it has been talked about for three years. There we are talking about fines for parents, that is, about administrative responsibility for attacking or insulting a teacher. As well as a possible reduction in the bar for community service sentences to 12 years. I hope that this year the bill will be submitted for discussion.