Studies of the content of Russian school textbooks (2014-2022)
The Russian Federation (Russia) is aware of the idea of the importance of school education for society, but primarily not for learning, but for the formation of the worldview necessary for an authoritarian state, in the presence of which society is ready to fulfill the goals set by the state, even if they do not correspond to generally accepted human values. In such a process, the child becomes not a subject of education, but an object controlled by it.
Therefore, school education in the Russian Federation has long become one of the instruments of aggression against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, through which the predetermined narratives
promotes, the purpose of which is:
- consolidation of results of the occupation and annexation of part of the Ukrainian territory;
- complication and/or prevention of processes of de-occupation and re-integration of the mentioned Ukrainian territories;
- changes in the social consciousness of children on the occupied Ukrainian territories for forming the generation of the “Russian” society, which has a loyal attitude to the objectives of the RF and is ready to join their fulfillment.
Unfortunately, the Russian Federation has been implementing its own educational standards for a long time in the occupied Ukrainian territories – in Crimea and Donetsk, Luhansk regions. And since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 and the occupation of parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, Russia has begun to introduce its education, textbooks and narratives in the newly occupied territories.
Our organization in partnership with the Regional Center for Human Rights prepared a study “School education: a hidden weapon of the Russian Federation against Ukraine”.
The tasks of the research:
- analysis of the federal state educational standards, work programs, and teaching concepts for the school subjects defined below within elementary and secondary general education in the Russian Federation;
- analysis of a number of school study guides for 1-11 grades in the Russian Federation, approved in the federal list within elementary and secondary general education in the Russian Federation for the following mandatory subjects: “Fundamentals of Life Safety”, “Social Studies”, “Geography”, “The World Around Us”, “Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics”, as well as optional ones: “Fundamentals of Spiritual and Moral Culture of the Peoples of Russia”, “World Artistic Culture”.
- legal evaluation of the implementation of Russian education on the occupied territories of Ukraine within the identified narratives, in the mentioned standards, programs, and study guides from the point of view of its compliance with.
Also, our organization separately investigated the presentation of the history of Ukraine in Russian school literature with the aim of tracing the circumstances, reasons, and methods of introducing a distorted image of Ukraine through Russian school history education in Analytical review “History of Ukraine in Russian school history textbooks” (in Ukrainian only).
The study “School Education: Hidden Weapon of the Russian Federation against Ukraine” was prepared by the experts of the NGO “Regional Center for Human Rights” within the framework of the project of the NGO “Center for Civic Enlightenment “Almenda”, with the financial support of the Prague Civic Center. The content of this document is the sole responsibility of the NGO Center for Civic Enlightenment “Almenda” and does not necessarily reflect the position of the Prague Civic Society Center.
The analytical review "History of Ukraine in Russian school history textbooks" was prepared within the framework of the project of the NGO “Center for Civic Enlightenment “Almenda”, with the financial support of the Prague Civic Society Center. The content of this document is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the position of the Prague Civic Society Center.
