"The letters can wait": in Russia, kindergartens have decided to load children more heavily with "traditional values"
Kyiv • UNN
Russian kindergartens are strengthening spiritual and moral education instead of focusing on letters and numbers. Children aged 3 and older will be told that Crimea is part of the Russian Federation.
Russian kindergartens plan to place greater emphasis on “spiritual and moral education,” which Russia’s Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov called more important than learning letters and numbers. The new approaches are to be enshrined in the federal preschool education program, The Moscow Times reports, as cited by UNN.
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Familiarity with one’s native culture, literature, customs, and moral guidelines is more important in kindergarten than memorizing letters and numbers
According to him, kindergarten should primarily remain a place for education and upbringing, rather than merely preparation for school.
Russian kindergartens have already launched the “Orlyata-doshkolyata” and “Good Games” programs, which are intended to instill in children the so-called “traditional spiritual and moral values.”
About Crimea—from the age of 3
According to the methodological materials for the “Good Games,” educators are encouraged to tell children as young as 3 about occupied Crimea as a “region of Russia.” Russia’s Education Ministry expects such lessons to foster “patriotic feelings and pride in their country” among preschoolers.
The program has become a preschool equivalent of the propagandistic “Conversations About Important Things,” which appeared in Russian schools after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Earlier, Putin stated that Russian “basic values” should be instilled in children from preschool age.
A separate “Orlyata-doshkolyata” project is intended to prepare children for the “Orlyata of Russia” school program. Induction into it is accompanied by the performance of the Russian anthem, the raising of the flag, and the presentation of badges and blue neckerchiefs.