Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: “Dear parents, teachers, and graduates. I would like to address you on the occasion of the academic year ending. I think you know very well that education in Belarus has always been a field for experiments and novelties.
For example, parents of today’s schoolchildren used to attend “zero” grade because the government replaced the 12-year system with the 11-year one that had existed before. Students used to take college entrance exams before they were replaced with centralized testing. Now they have to take the centralized exam and the nationwide review work on the history of Belarus. However, it fails to mention Stalinist repressions and mass executions but suffices “ideologically correct” stories.
A father of a lyceum student wrote to me the other day. He told me that the administration actively encourages children with majors in Physics and Mathematics to join “patriotic” classes instead. They are lured there by more physical education, a free swimming pool, promises of preferential treatment during university admission, and told how wonderful it is to be a patriot. But their notion of patriotism replaces the concept of a Homeland with Lukashenka. And with no intervention from parents, the regime will make our children future propagandists and policemen.
Is there an alternative? Of course, there is. We have our common sense and can make an informed choice. No one but us can protect our children. Parents can keep their children away from ideological lessons, trips, and activities, especially on weekends. And teachers can refuse to hold such events or tacitly sabotage them.
Our children should study in a school free of propaganda. We want our children to study in the best universities in Belarus and Europe, not military schools. It lies in our power to resist because our children's fate depends on us.”
