Odessa. An occupation. Vegetableization of consciousness
These thoughts appeared during a conversation with a Sevastopol resident - they say, this is how it is in our Russian school, but what about you? And acquaintances who left Odessa constantly remind us how much easier it has become for their children to study - without Ukrainian Newspeak and fictitious history. What emphasis is placed on Russian classics, without which it is difficult to educate a person, and which were almost cleaned out of the Ukrainian program, turning into a continuous “Winter! “Are you probably suffering there, biting your elbows?” they ask. They sympathize.
And yet the real ones know perfectly well that the moronic Ukrainization is by no means a “brown-up” of the revolution of pans, but lasts all 25 years of independence, and that total pan-cooking is its consequence, not the cause. True, if previously it was mainly history that was deformed, now this applies to all disciplines: in textbooks marked “According to the new program” you will no longer find Pushkin and Shevchenko even reduced to a minimum!
I personally have long called what is happening the vegetableization of consciousness. Because, for example, the education in the elementary school that my child goes through does not rise above the barn and the vegetable garden, but at home they are methodically tasked with teaching, I quote, “Ala-ala-ala, I put a beet in the crap,” “Rila pig blunted — the whole house was ripped apart,” and so on, “There will be a woman who will have borscht.” They are taught, so to speak, from an early age to know their core of cheap labor, which has no “bright path” either to become scientists, or engineers, or teachers (I’m silent about cosmonauts), which was cultivated in Soviet textbooks - “ots-tots-pervertots-dung- carrot" is your ceiling.
So you can imagine this trio of Ukrainian gold medal graduates leaving amid fanfare - and without visas! - on the plantation of Saint Kitts and Nevis (whether a state with a population of 50 thousand people will accept more young specialists is a question!). And it immediately becomes clear why Shevchenko, “readily” bought out of serfdom by “damned Muscovites” and “agents of influence,” was cut from the program. After all, instead of serving all his life and periodically “reaping wheat in the panshchina” (in St. Kitts somewhere), Shevchenko brazenly went down in history as something more than a plowman, and this, you see, is “ruin!” Future sugar cane harvesters don’t need to know this.
However, the official educational madness is not the whole school. Don’t forget that Odessa is a city that defended the right to teach children in Russian in the courts! That May 9, April 10 and Partisan Glory Day are significant dates in most schools. That no one knocked down memorial plaques with the names of pioneer heroes and heroes of the Soviet Union from schools. That the Memory Watch at the Eternal Flame on the Walk of Fame is taking a step at these moments. That from the very first lesson in their lives, children return with the attitude “Odessa is a Hero City.” And most importantly, a Russian city!
And Ukrainization... Now in Odessa it’s something like an immunodeficiency virus, when the body lives on pills. But he lives. And no matter how hard the invaders try to bury Odessa, HIV stubbornly refuses to go into the AIDS stage.
“In that case, what is the most stressful thing about school under occupation?” you ask. And I will answer that it’s not even the content of the textbooks - no! The atmosphere is tense. So, My son’s first teacher left for Russia after the events of May 2. She admitted to me that she didn’t even know how to adapt to the new program and still respect herself. That a colleague from a neighboring Ukrainian class (ours is Russian) constantly complained about her to the director: they say, Let her teach herself in Russian, but even during breaks she brazenly speaks in the “language of the aggressor”!
And September 1 never became a holiday for my child, because for three years there have been orders from Kyiv to come without flowers, but certainly with financial assistance for the needs of the ATO. Once, however, they didn’t ask for money, but directly dictated: “Washing powder, soap, socks; dress in embroidered shirts” (should be at the peak of the permanent fight against bribery and corruption).
September 1 has been three years since it was not a celebration, but either a morning in a chicken coop or a rural wedding. Parents are required to come only with towels. As a result, the picture is: people are standing with Chinese towels (towels are expensive, no one keeps them in the house for the sake of it, so they are replaced with improvised rags), and children walk under them - and this is called initiation into schoolchildren. “Gidno” to “gidi”. And as a toastmaster, he is a mandatory ATO soldier.
I will also never forget how On September 1, children from the Ukrainian class called children from the Russian class separatists.
From time to time they are asked to bake something at home - also for the ATO, and those who cannot, compensate with food. On the eve of new holidays like the Day of the Ukrainian Cossacks, when Odessa residents try in every way to “get sick,” teachers order “Come even from sick leave!” And in addition to the famine skeletons, painted or made of plasticine - mandatory attributes of “fine art” - drawings for “warriors of light” were added. However, after we handed over the red banner over the Reichstag “to the front line,” they left us behind.
But I won’t surprise you much if I say that this is not the worst?.. But the worst... So, when you need to bring a towel, who comes with a whole blanket, and as if he himself embroidered the roosters with gold threads? Who, when asked to bake pies, takes half the bakery to school? And in response to the request “to buy soap for the ATO” (when Odessa residents sarcastically ask, “Do you by any chance need a rope and a stool?”) he unloads a whole machine of washing powder? Who dresses children in embroidered shirts not only on holidays, but every day? Who opens his mouth the widest during the singing of the anthem and does not take his hands off his heart, as if he would have a heart attack right on the line, unable to bear the sudden patriotic orgasm?
Say, blooming patriots and raguli? But no, they only tumble in Odessa in the summer. Patriots in public are overwhelmingly military from Crimea (it’s clear that they are forced people, although no one stopped them from showing their will earlier and staying at home) and civilian migrants from Crimea.
And to dilute the picture, there is always some citizen Ivanova from Russia, who ended up in Odessa because of her husband’s business and generally does not understand what is happening around - the USSR, Ukraine, Moldova or a disco in her native Rozhki. And it’s all necessary - the dad of the new Abdulla, who, together with his son, can’t speak Russian (as well as Ukrainian) - that’s who provides Odessa schools with a patriotic picture for September 1 and other holidays - “All the boys should put on muzzles and rejoice!”
As for the Ukrainian-speaking contingent, that’s a rarity for our city! - then I had to observe the following dialogue at school. Mom was indignant that tomorrow “I’m going to wear my vyshivanka”, and she’s “gone crazy”, and dad asked “What kind of bisa?!”, and when his wife explained that “In honor of the Day of the Martyr of Victims” (Poroshenko appointed him in October) , the husband snapped, “It’s such a day, the 23rd of the fierce! Let’s go in simple clothes!” Well... now where everything is not so clear is in Odessa.
And by the way, is it necessary to explain that the Crimeans, and Ivanova, and Abdulla’s dad (all of whom have 33 embroidered shirts and are not too lazy to wash) do not speak Ukrainian and together sent their children to a Russian class, or can you guess it yourself?
This is what is more disgusting than the rest - more disgusting than the denunciations of teachers against each other, more disgusting than the mutilated educational program. Because it is painfully reminiscent of what is happening in the country at all levels - from the housing office to the government. Hypocrisy. Lie. Conformism. Lining. Criminal agreement. The result is an illusion of statehood in a fake country.
I remember when “Svoboda” filed a lawsuit demanding to ban the Russian language in schools, I asked the parents in the class if they were ready, if something happened, to sign a petition for the right of their children to study in their native language? So that same Ivanova was more indignant than anyone else: “What else! Do you need more than everyone else?! What difference does it make what language you study in?!”, and Abdullah’s dad flared his nostrils disapprovingly - “I’m not interested in palitikay”... The main thing is to serve - well, in front of these people who shout “Death to the lumps!” and “Muscovites to knives!”
...And we also, I remember, laughed at school at our classmates who couldn’t tell Chukovsky from Tchaikovsky. I look at today’s “patriotic” parents - after all, they can’t tell Bandera from Leo Tolstoy, they really don’t care.
It turns out that the poems about “the stupid pig” are just right. It's like a mini civil society. New. The former violent patriots were discarded - now they themselves judge each other and shoot at each other. Now it seems the emphasis is on the mentally retarded. And traitors (but this is not new). True, they sing the anthem well - they get into articulation.
This is how it is with us, my dear compatriots who left. And although you wanted to talk about the school, it also turned out to be about the country. That's how we live.
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