The course will also include military drills, salutes and weapons training. AFP
Moscow: Russia will start training school students how to handle assault rifles and hand grenades from September this year under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education’s new curriculum, claims the UK Ministry of Defence.
The ministry has made basic military training mandatory for all secondary school children due to the rise of the Russian offensive in Ukraine. The course, called “The Basics of Life Safety”, has connections with the Soviet era.
The course will also include military drills, salutes and weapons training.
Curriculum currently under screening
Russian Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov said last year that the considered course will be tested in January 2023. “It will be introduced in schools starting from the next academic year. Now it is being drafted and after January 1, it will begin to be tested,” he told the Russian news agency TASS.
The Education Ministry earlier said that preparations were underway to develop a course for “basic military training in schools and colleges within the instruction time reserved for the basics of civil defence.”
‘Curriculum highlights militarised atmosphere’
In its ‘latest defence intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine’, a routine Twitter post by UK’s Defence Ministry, officials said, “In recent weeks, the Russian Ministry of Education has provided more detail on the rollout of the previously announced plan to include basic military training in Russia’s secondary school curriculum.”
In addition, the ministry said that the introduction of the course “highlights the increasingly militarised atmosphere in wartime Russia, as well as being a (likely deliberate) evocation of the Soviet Union: similar training was mandatory in schools up to 1993.”
Schools ordered to take ‘patriotic’ classes
Last year in June, schools in Russia were ordered to conduct ‘patriotic’ classes in an effort to mould children “loyal militarised nationalists”, according to The Washington Post.
Teachers who refused were fired.
Furthermore, Russian school textbooks were modified to remove all references to Ukraine and its capital Kyiv.
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