Minsk Teachers Learn Their First Ideology Lesson :: Charter'97 :: News

On Thursday Minsk hosted the meeting of the heads of the city’s education department, at which there gathered all of the capital’s pedagogical elite. Before the start of the meeting, the hall of the Palace of the Republic, where the forum was held, looked more as a huge school corridor, where the children loudly discussed their summer vacations, the new academic year and new subjects. However, now instead of schoolchildren the hall was crammed with adults: teachers and directors. The event was even attended by the Minsk mayor and Minister of education. Soon there rang the bell and the lesson got started. The theme was written on huge screens: “Contemporary ideology for capital’s education”.

The chairman of the Committee for education of the Minsk city hall Mikhail Titenkov numerously reiterated that the teenagers must be helped to make a proper moral choice and stressed that by paying lots of attention to the knowledge, the teachers oftentimes forgive good students their wrong ideological upbringing. “There should be nothing like that anymore!”, he said.

One of the director pointed out that “young specialists cannot properly teach ideology lessons as far as they hadn’t been taught how to do it in universities”.

Afterwards there came the speech, delivered by the Minsk mayor Mikhail Pavlov: “In schools everything should be clean and neat, starting from the adjacent territories… One should pay particular attention to the patriotic upbringing of youth. A pupil must learn how to love his district, hometown and Belarus”. The mayor obliged the administration of all schools to teach the children about the anthem, flag and coat of arms of Minsk.