The world is getting smaller for Russian students. Whole sections taken out of a third-grade manual
Students who take the Russian flag to a school in Russia. Photo: Russian Look Ltd. / Alamy / Alamy / Profimedia
Students in Russia will talk less about the countries of Europe and their cultural heritage, while the accent in school textbooks will move to “friendly” states such as Belarus, North Korea and China.
According to the Verstka publication, in the latest edition of the manual “The surrounding world. The third class”, written by Andrei Pleșakov, were completely eliminated the chapters dedicated to European states, notes The Moscow Times.
Thus, in the 2024 edition the chapters “in northern Europe” are missing, “what is Benelux”, “in central Europe”, “through France and the United Kingdom” and “in southern Europe”.
The chapter “Neighboring countries of Russia” still retain short mentions about Finland and Norway, with which Russia borders in the northwest.
But nothing is said about the other European neighbors: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. If in the 2021 edition the students learned about the attractions in Helsinki, “a city that impresses mainly by cleaning”, about Munich, called the “city of museums”, or about Paris, with his bridge dedicated to a Russian Tsar, they are now proposed an imaginary trip to the capital of Belarus, Minsk.
There, “the Belarus people keep the memory of the great war for the defense of the homeland alive, to which one of the largest and most important museums – the Museum of the Great War for the defense of the homeland in Minsk is dedicated,” writes in the new version.
The manual also moves attention to the east, to the countries considered close to the Kremlin. China is presented as a civilization with a “huge contribution to the development of all mankind”, and about North Korea students find out that it is the country with which Russia has the “shortest border”. Instead, the passage about the “amazing neighborhood” with the United States has disappeared completely.
The manual signed by Pleșakov is published by the “Prosveșcenie” Publishing House and drafted according to the educational standards imposed by the state. It is not the first ideological intervention on this series: previously, several references to Kiev had been eliminated from the 4th grade manual.
According to Mediazona, the “Prosveșcenie” Publishing House was ordered to eliminate from all school textbooks any “inappropriate” mentions about Ukraine and Kiev.
