With cold weather, the removal of the flag in schools will change the format: “It’s a pity for the kids”

The weather is getting worse, and it will be more and more difficult for Russian schools to carry out the innovation – the solemn raising of the flag. “We have this ceremony in the school yard, yesterday it was raining and windy, today my son woke up with snot. What will happen next? Where will the patriotic spirit come from if the teeth are chattering? one of the mothers complains. “MK” found out how they will raise the symbol of Russia closer to winter.

“Oh, this “burning” topic was already raised by the parents of my class on September 1,” sighs Irina, a primary school teacher from Moscow. “Almost all of them quarreled.

Some mothers believe that children need to be tempered, and that the ceremony must be held on the street – even in cold weather. They say that this is how schoolchildren will love their Motherland more strongly. Others took up arms against them and declare that already on September 1, all first-graders on the line froze to death. Personally, I think that our children are not pampered at all: look, high school students in the cold in miniskirts flaunt without hats.

“Our flagpole is located in the inner school yard, in the open air,” excellent student Daria, who was entrusted with the removal of the flag, told MK. – The weather is still tolerable, because we live in the central region – just the day before the teachers warn that we need to dress warmer. I don’t worry about myself, but if there is a strong wind or snowfall, what will happen to the flag? Will it get wet or even torn? He looks so thin … It will be a scandal!

But 10-grader Alina, who has already raised the flag on the flagpole, admits that she feels sorry for herself too:

– The hands are stiff. I wanted to put on warm gloves, but they told me that it was impossible, that it was disrespectful to the flag.

As MK found out, avoiding childhood colds and embarrassment with a spoiled symbol of the motherland (respect for the flag is reflected in the legislation of the Russian Federation, which means that if something happens to it, you will have to answer) is quite real. The fact is that according to the Standard for the ceremony of raising (lowering) the state flag, approved in June by the Ministry of Education and approved by the Heraldic Council under the President, schools can determine the venue for this patriotic ritual on their own. The document says that it can be “a platform in front of an educational organization, an assembly hall, a sports hall, a hall, etc..” And if “and others.” – means, in general, any room suitable for this. Moreover, it is allowed not only to raise the flag on the flagpole, but also simply to install it on the pole. At the same time, the Standard specifies that the place for hoisting the flag is determined, among other things, by climatic and latitudinal conditions.

In Norilsk, for example, where these days the temperature is around zero degrees and it snows from time to time, the flag is already being raised indoors.

“We also raised the flag in the assembly hall on the first of September, and it will continue to be so,” they said in secondary school No. 1. – How can it be on the street? It’s a pity for the kids… Yesterday was so shallow! And our winters, you know, are generally fierce.

In another Norilsk school, No. 29, on September 1, they did the same:

– Our flagpole is located in a small assembly hall, to the left of the stage. The flag is small, so there is just enough space there,” said a local teacher. – We do not raise it very high – purely symbolically.

In Yekaterinburg school No. 25 named after V.G. Feofanov, we were told that these days they also hold a ceremony in the assembly hall, but they do not raise the flag, but carry it out on a pole. The weather there is warm now, but it’s better to play it safe.

And the Ministry of Education, Science and Youth Policy of the Nizhny Novgorod Region – a region not with the most severe climate – has already given a recommendation to all local schools to raise the flag indoors in the fall. Apparently, this decision of officials was prompted by the fact that a lot of students in the region are now sick with SARS, and some schools have even introduced quarantine. Why make things worse?

– I think it makes no sense for schools to torture children and drive them out into the street. It is better to conduct everything in private – for example, in the history class, – the director of a small school from Primorye shared with MK. – True, the feeling of solemnity in this case goes away, and the ceremony becomes less pathetic. But maybe that’s for the best. After all, the Motherland for a child is not something abstract, not a formal pathos, but a “native land” – fellow villagers, classmates, a river, birch trees.