Families, Children, And Legitimate Higher Education

In the fading remains of the United States, there really are dark forces at work against the American people. A new study from Illinois uncovered mixed benefits and drawbacks associated with men becoming fathers. However, the popular US media spin was: “Having kids may shorten a man’s life, groundbreaking study reveals.” In other words, “Kids are messy, you can’t afford them, and they’ll just kill you anyway”. That might as well be America’s family planning mantra. Societies do not survive this way. Populations like America’s, that do not exceed two children per family, do not last. 

Elsewhere, more decent and intelligent people understand the importance of forming, promoting, and protecting families. Some countries are encouraging men to become fathers and women mothers. Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin recently stated that families with three or more children should become the norm. He also reassured families that the Russian government would be there to assist them as they perpetuate the existence of Russia. “Families with children” is the mantra of Russia. 

Part of assisting families and their children is maintaining excellent education at all levels. As for elementary and lower schools in Russia, I am not as familiar with the processes as I’d like. The consensus of those I’ve asked or read is that the learning afforded is good and better than the equivalent in America. At the college and university level, I trust things are also better in Russia. That’s because I trust the people in charge, from President Putin right down the line. I also know there is a necessary movement to separate Russian education from Western standards, a part of the larger bifurcation and liberation associated with Russia’s multipolar quest. 

Another man I trust, Leonid Savin, wrote a heckuva good article on intellectual standards and the need for Russian sovereign refinement. He noted that 1990s Western interference “led both to the meaninglessness of deep meanings and their replacement with surrogate terms, which began to be used at the reflex level, and to a constant movement to Western theories and concepts, instead of developing our own.” This is exactly what happened to American schools over the past century and a half. Whatever lingered from the Soviet system, even if deficient in some areas, was better than and preferable to the foisted alternative. The movement to reflexive surrogacy would have quickly given way to the total abandonment of literacy, numeracy, and public morality. The fact this progression was stopped or is being stopped is a miracle in and of itself.

Savin goes on to discuss the pro-Russian transformation of college social sciences by keeping cherished traditions alive though updated to reflect the complexities of the evolving world. Call it “whole process” social science education, something in scholastic keeping, on Russian terms, with Professor Alexander Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory. Savin mentions Dugin’s work as the leader of the new Political Training and Scientific Center at Moscow’s Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH). The Center’s purpose is “the development and implementation of a new approach (a new socio-humanitarian paradigm) to the domestic teaching of humanitarian and social disciplines, aimed at the formation of the worldview of students based on the Russian civilizational identity and traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”

In January, Dugin said at RSUH’s Transformation of Humanitarian Education seminar, “There has been a catastrophic degradation in Western historical science. .... This is evidenced by gender problems, postmodernism, and ultra-liberalism. We can study the West, but not as the ultimate universal truth. We need to focus on our own Russian development model.” Dugin’s program leadership earned the ire of the CIA Washington Post and some CIA pro-Western Telegram bots, so he must be off to a good start. (I suppose they were taken aback, like vampires offered Holy Water, by mention of spiritual and moral values.) I’m unsure when Dugin last visited an American university, but his first observation of catastrophe is an understatement. About the only courses of study in America that retain any semblance of excellence are those in mathematics and the hard science programs at certain elite engineering schools—and they are under heavy attack. However, he is correct that Western schools should be studied. They should be studied in two ways. First, they should be scanned for any useful remnants from the time when the West represented an actual Christian civilization. Second, they can be forensically studied like a cadaver in a postmortem examination in an attempt to find out what killed them. 

As part of its Western and non-Western integration, RSUH’s website asserts: “International cooperation is an important part of the internationalization strategy at RSUH. It is aimed at strengthening the university's competitive ability in Russia and abroad and its integration into the global education and research space.” This is, as stated, very important, yet the manner of execution might be even more important. My advice, should anyone want it, is to keep studying the cadavers while also selectively affiliating with the wider world. This could and probably will mean making adjustments to things like Russian participation in the Bologna Process and looking deeper into connections with BRICS+ countries and the Global South in general. Without my advice, they appear to be doing fine as-is, with RSUH being one of four Russian universities in a pilot program to monitor international cooperation.

Russia’s societal heritage is the envy of much of the world because it has survived and built upon its ancient traditions. Those traditions, having yielded beauty, strength, and prosperity, obviously work. So does Russian innovation, in technology, economics, and other facets of (post)modern existence. Russians must continue to cling affectionately to the positive, purposefully abandon the negative, and embrace any helpful new processes or ideas in keeping with Russian customs regarding what is good, true, and beautiful. And, of course, it all starts with the Russian people themselves, with strong families and many wonderful children.

Deo vindice.