Can Christians in Belarus do something other than send their kids to the regime’s school?
Belarusian kids are expected to be happy with the Lukashenko regime. photo AFP, Viktor Drachev
Christian Life
Like all autocrats, Belarussian President Lukashenko is using the school as an instrument for this regime. Zmicier Chviedaruk explains that this is a real challenge for Christians.
It is hard to believe, but I went to school in Minsk for the first time almost 30 years ago. It was an exciting moment.
High school students gave us books about Winnie the Pooh and the history of Belarus, and we gave bouquets of flowers prepared by our parents in return. Teachers sprinkled us with rice and gave us speeches that we would become educated people and one day benefit the family and the country that recently regained its lost independence.
Years later, I am a father myself. Our son Tadevush is two years old, and we are expecting the birth of a daughter any day now. However, the thought of schooling causes not just solemn excitement but also anxiety and even fear in our family.
The festive assemblies for first-graders now closely resemble an ideological meeting from the days of early communism in the USSR, with a sea of state communist symbols and warnings about the dangers of extremist activity and the horrors of Western propaganda.
The videos and stories of our friends who were sending their children to first grade shocked us. We wonder how Christian parents should educate their children and treat school education now.
On the eve of the new school year, Lukashenko even gathered teachers in Minsk and pointed out that the school should be the state’s main helper, i.e., the political regime. Besides, this year, the best educational lyceum in Minsk was renamed in honour of the first head of the NKVD (proto-KGB), Felix Dzerzhinsky.
Christian contribution
Historically, the Christian church has made a great contribution to education and writing in our country. The first monuments to writing are connected with Christian missionaries. The early rulers of the Polotsk (in the north of Belarus) principality from the 9th century, as a result of Christianisation, opened schools and taught children to read and write.
In the 16th century, during the Reformation, schools, gymnasiums and printing houses were opened at numerous Calvinist churches. This time is often called the golden age and the flowering of writing and culture.
These facts indicate that the Christian faith has always accompanied the seriousness of life and death, education and ignorance, wisdom and foolishness. The school was designed to help man gain knowledge of the Lord and serve him in his social life and duties.
Acute
Unfortunately for modern evangelicals in our country, this issue is not as acute as it was for our predecessors.
A good example is the village of Olshany, famous for its farming throughout the country. Its wealth is the envy of many towns in Belarus. About ten years ago, they even wanted to build their own airfield to export cucumbers and tomatoes to Russia. About 8,000 people live in Olshany; it is the only village with a positive demographic situation.
More than 80 per cent of the population belongs to an evangelical church. Guess how many believing teachers there are in the local school? Only two, and that’s from new believers. The Olshans are great at growing vegetables and building houses, but they ignore education.
Terrible instrument
In modern Belarus, the school has lost its function since the Reformation. It will be hard for you to believe. Still, our state is establishing an exchange of experience with North Korea in the sphere of children’s education.
No, you read it correctly. Not with South Korea but with North Korea. Let me remind you that virtually all private schools in the country were closed and banned last year. Children are mandatorily assigned to public schools. Children can be taken away from their families for refusal of compulsory education.
Consequently, Christians in Belarus are faced with the dilemma of what to do with school. First of all, because of the low quality of education, parents still have to invest a lot of time in the academic process. Second, because of the ideology in school, including the danger of presenting an opinion that is not the state’s, parents may be visited by the secret police. Thirdly, children cannot be sent to a private school or left to be home-schooled.
Family’s duty
In fact, the Old and New Testaments devote special space to thinking about the place of education in life. Beginning with the book of Genesis. We see God assigning responsibility in instructing and training children to the family and later to the covenant community. We see genealogical chains indicating the importance of education in faith, the fear of the Lord, and wisdom.
For example, in Deuteronomy 4, God calls all people to “listen carefully to the decrees and laws of the Lord” and, therefore, to pass on and instruct their children so they will not conform to the rarefied culture of their day.
Proverbs 20 and 22 echo: “Seek wisdom as treasure and call upon reason,” and “Train up a child in the right way, that he may not stray from it in his old age.” The New Testament stresses the cry to comprehend the world in the light of divine revelation, “to be renewed in mind and to put on the new man made in the image of God.”
Moreover, this warning is coupled with the challenging circumstances of the representatives of God’s people, both in times of oppression and exodus and in times of the flourishing and decline of the kingdom of Israel. The same command is used at all times and in all cultural contexts.
Devote
Thus, today’s Christian parents in Belarus have another difficult challenge in raising their children and protecting them from the horrors of the ideologised educational system.
We should not give the initiative and leading role in education and upbringing to the state. God provides this honourable role for us, parents, even amid grim realities like the fall of 2024. This situation challenges us to devote more time and energy to knowing the Lord, including in our families.
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