Although many may think that the Day of Knowledge has always been celebrated in this country, even as flowers have always been presented to teachers on September 1, this is not quite so. This holiday was instituted in “another country” and has turned 30 only now. The children who entered the first grade on September 1, 1984, when this tradition was instituted, left school when the world and social landscape in their homeland had drastically changed.

Those who were new first-grader on September 1, 1994, witnessed less dramatic changes but nonetheless very serious changes. The “dashing 1990s” were replaced by the decade of rapidly growing national prosperity, along with Russia’s strengthening sovereignty and the accumulation of private wealth.

There is a huge gap between Russia-2004 and Russia-2014. Those who entered school for the first time this year will complete it in 2024. Rethinking the role of our nation in the world and the role of the Russian world in the future world order that commenced particularly in connection with the dramatic events in Ukraine, a turbulent decade full of large-scale transformations may lie ahead of us, and we cannot even imagine the entire depth and long-term consequences of these shifts. Already now there is a sense of the awesome challenge faced by our nation (and our Russian civilization in a broader sense), which will probably be one of the most overwhelming in its entire history.  

And the children who will go to school this year will be our main pillar within a historically short period. The realization that our education, above all public school education, must be adequate to the challenges of our time exists in our society and is being formed at the political level. And when the matter concerns such particulars as reforming the Unified State Exam, creating integrated textbooks on history and literature, the return of GTO fitness norms or political information to school, in fact a lot more is at stake. First of all, those 13.4 million kids who sit their desks this academic year in about 53,500 Russian schools must not be the lost generation, when they graduate but rather the generation driving the breakthrough of our nation into the future. This is a situation in which we realize today that tomorrow may already be too late, giving us the right impulse for action. The bell has rung!