"There are emotional maniacs and sadists among teachers."
Videos of teachers beating their students are constantly appearing online. A "civil war" is unfolding in the comments section of these posts: some demand the abusive teachers be fired, while others blame the students, claiming they "drove the teacher over the edge." Some even call for the cane to be reintroduced to schools. Clearly, the teacher-student relationship is changing. Old narratives no longer work, and new ones seem to have yet to emerge. What should modern educators do? What should they focus on when communicating with the TikTok generation, and how should they communicate with students in this new era? NeMoskva spoke about this with Kirill Kuritsyn, a 34-year-old history teacher from Ivanovo who left Russia and now blogs about school life.
Author: Ekaterina Milenkaya
Kirill, how do you react to the video of your colleagues slapping students? Among the videos that made headlines was a CCTV recording from a school in Primorsky Krai. In it, a teacher taped a student's mouth shut and then hit the child twice on the head with a chair.
"Yes, I watched that video. And I'll say right away that children should not be touched under any circumstances. There should absolutely be no physical or emotional violence. It's better not to touch them at all, so there's no reason to find fault. But school is a living organism, and there can be moments of informal communication like, 'Oh, you little brat!' If we're going to abandon the witch hunt, we should ask the students themselves: is this situation in the classroom normal for them, or are we simply unaware of some context? Maybe the teacher said, 'I'm going to hit you with a chair,' and the student jokingly replied, 'Well, let's try that.' So she lightly (as in the video) jokingly hit him twice with a chair, and everyone laughed."
"In the videos, the students are actually smiling. But there are other examples where slaps are delivered with force and aggression. The comments under these videos are full of people writing, 'If the teacher did this, then it must have been for good reason—they pushed him!'" Have you ever been pushed like this?
"Yes, I was driven to the brink of disaster quite often. I simply quit when I felt I couldn't continue teaching at that stage. But there were many reasons for that. Children in such stories are just the icing on the cake, the last straw. Was the teacher from Primorye driven to the brink of disaster? Yes, most likely. But it wasn't the students who drove her to the brink, but the system, the low salary, the bureaucratic burden."
— Was the physical education teacher who choked a student in the 2023 video also driven to his death by the system?
"The teacher who choked the student was reveling in his own power. And what do you think? There are emotional maniacs and sadists—both physical and emotional—among teachers! I was once the victim of such an emotional maniac myself: the teacher didn't touch us, but she insulted us. Relatively recently, a truly disgusting story came to light in my hometown of Ivanovo. There, a teacher threatened a student with gang rape. I won't say whether I knew this teacher; I may have even crossed paths with her and even quit because of her. But the threat was still hushed up. "The woman was simply driven to it," "she was tired." I don't know how you can push someone to the point of threatening a child with gang rape! We're all human; I've had cases where students behaved disgustingly. And yes, in my head, I may have even imagined someone getting into trouble. But had gang rape ever crossed my mind? The thought had never even crossed my mind.
— If you watch your videos on social media, sometimes it feels like there's no boundary between you and your students. You're more like a friend to them than a teacher. Is that just a facade?
— Absolutely. I was a friend to my students when I was 22 or 23. I think everyone goes through that. I was burned by familiarity at one point, too, so now, when I work with a class, I constantly analyze it: which students can I let down with, and which ones I can't. I set aside about five minutes of class time to get into the swing of things, for informal conversation: I ask how they're doing, and then we can have some fun. But everything is within those five minutes. And we don't have any familiarity. They don't call me by my patronymic, though, but that's the nature of our school. Students, when addressing me, call me by my first name, but always use the formal "you." That's important.
— What will you definitely not allow your students to do?
"I forbid anyone to touch me. Some kids like to hug, but I always say, 'No, thank you, guys.' It's my personal space. I don't bother you, and you don't bother me. Insults are not tolerated, either from them or from me. Once, a student threw a pillow at me for no reason, and I got offended, so to speak. I said, 'You have no right to do that, I didn't do anything to you.' So, if there are any hints of a violation of personal boundaries, either emotional or physical, it should, of course, be stopped. No yelling under any circumstances, just a serious face and a serious conversation without raising your voice. This is a great way to calm children down."
— You've been studying since the mid-90s, and back then there were still (perhaps unspoken) ethical norms and rules in place, according to which the teacher was a reference point, their authority practically unquestionable, and they were always right...
"Yes, and I've always disliked this: 'In Soviet schools, teachers were respected beyond measure.' Why should teachers be respected beyond measure? Maybe people should be respected beyond measure? Maybe a student shouldn't insult a teacher not because of who they are, but because of who they are?
"One way or another, the Soviet school is a thing of the past. The world has changed: social media has emerged, and the collective has given way to the individual. Children have changed too—they're more aware of boundaries and can defend them. I'm sure not all teachers like this..."
— It also happens the other way around. I once had sixth- and seventh-grade students transferring from a private school to a public one. And when they were told that their freedom-loving outbursts wouldn't be tolerated, the children responded, "That's how it should be with us. We think: let the old people die, and the children will come, and everything will be as it was before." But that's not true. When they're yelled at, they feel like they're in school. When a teacher shows softness, many take it for weakness. And that's scary.
— What about the riot? The protest?
"It's also present, and there's a risk of other conflicts here. It's important to understand that most teachers in modern Russia are extremely submissive. For me, for example, I don't understand where this submissiveness comes from. It's even more unclear to students. And when even the slightest rebelliousness of adolescence collides with the resignation and obedience of an adult, of course, they won't respect such a person. They don't understand these compromises: why do you continue to tolerate low wages, bureaucracy, and so on?
— The old rules are outdated, but are there new ones? Something that teachers and students could use as a guide in the TikTok era?
"There's been no code lately, and the old narratives don't work. We could still be scared off by the idea of being a janitor if we didn't do well in school, but now kids see that success requires churning out content. We're in the most difficult, transitional time, and to get through it, we need to change. We need to move away from unsubstantiated dogmas like, 'Children should wear school uniforms because it leads to discipline.' Do you have any evidence? 'I won't prove anything to you.' That's all. You need to accept that some students might not be interested in your subject. You can't put on a show every day. So sometimes it's worth letting go. If a student is on their phone, you can see it. You can just have a serious, heart-to-heart talk with them, without insulting them. Say something like, 'Well, just be human, my dear, please bear with me for 40 minutes. I understand you're not really interested.'" Even if you start talking to him calmly like this, there's a good chance he'll either understand or just leave his phone so you'll finally leave him alone.
— You say that a teacher should try new things, but you must admit that trying new things in a country where it's so easy to get fined, or even imprisoned, for promoting something that's now banned is quite difficult?
— I agree. If I had stayed in Russia, I would, at the very least, not have run my blog and lessons the way I do while abroad. Thanks to a few jokes, I could easily have become a tasty morsel for some police officer. I understand perfectly well that I'm not an opposition leader, who needs me, but for fulfilling the plan, I'm an excellent statistical option. It's easy to go abroad and make funny videos about foreign agents, the government, the president in class, and then tell them "No!" If anything happens, they won't get me. I hope so. And yet, in Russia, there are still many competent teachers who stay in the profession simply for the sake of the children. I love the analogy with Harry Potter. When Voldemort seized power, Hogwarts was overrun by Death Eaters. But at the school, excuse me, Professor McGonagall and the other teachers remained, realizing that if they didn't stay, the school would collapse. And the teachers in Russia today who are trying to conduct parallel conversations at "Conversations on Important Things" to somehow protect children from propaganda—these are heroes, I think. They risk their lives, freedom, and moral health. Could I do that? I seriously doubt it. It hurts me when these people are forgotten. For expressing their position (regarding the war with Ukraine — editor's note) and tried to teach children humanism, many teachers in Russia today are imprisoned. It's disgusting! And I want people to remember this.
