“They praised the Russian God”: media “exposes” a school at UOC monastery

The school at the UOC’s Holosiivo Monastery. Photo: screenshot from the Slidstvo.Info YouTube channel

Journalists from Slidstvo.Info published an “investigation” titled “Children Learn Russian and Sing the Russian Anthem: How an Underground School at a Monastery Operates in Kyiv,” focusing on a Kyiv school functioning at the UOC’s Holosiivo Monastery.

According to the “investigators,” the school “teaches children not only to glorify the Russian God, but also to speak Russian. And all of this happens with the protection of licensed Ukrainian schools.”

It should be noted that the program’s headline contains an outright lie, because nowhere in the video do the journalists provide facts that anyone at the school “sings the Russian Federation’s anthem.”

The journalists accuse the school’s leadership of using Soviet-era textbooks in the learning process, “cramming Yesenin’s poems by heart,” studying the Russian language (it is also used as the language of instruction for certain subjects alongside Ukrainian), as well as watching Soviet films and singing Soviet songs.

According to Slidstvo.Info, all of this is unacceptable “in the fourth year of the full-scale war with Russia.”

The journalists were outraged that the school operated in the format of a “Parents’ Club,” because using a different status would not have allowed the staff to use the curriculum the director and teachers considered appropriate. As a result, the elementary program was shortened from four years (as in today’s Ukrainian school) to three. “For us, first grade is already at the level of the second grade in the modern school. We divided the entire learning process into three years,” the teachers say.

To produce their “investigation,” the journalists allegedly posed as people seeking to enroll children in the school and filmed parents, as well as the director and teachers, without their consent.

During the filming, they showed a woman who said that instead of listening to an anthem, it would be better for children to spend the time in prayer, and she also complained that at a general-education school her child was taught hatred.

To condemn the school’s activities, the “investigators” recorded comments from so-called experts. They approached MP Volodymyr Viatrovych, a former head of the Institute of National Memory, as well as Ivanna Kobernyk, the founder of the public organization Smart Osvita.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that a state TV channel provided fake recommendations regarding “transfers” to the OCU.

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