Kremlin pushes patriotism in class. Teachers and parents push back.

Every Monday morning at 9 o’clock, Russian students of all grades have been required to attend a new course: Conversations About Important Things.

Announced over the summer, the course is intended to instill deeper patriotic feelings among students, and the Kremlin regards the task as so urgent that President Vladimir Putin himself offered an example of the opening lesson. Its supporters see it as a nondoctrinaire way to redress the lack of patriotic education in Russian schools since the Soviet collapse.

But its detractors view it as another giant step on the road back to totalitarianism. The announcement of the new classes led to considerable pushback from parents’ groups and human rights organizations which argued that propaganda has no place in the school and, at the very least, students should be permitted