Georgia: Tbilisi Introduces Civil Defense Class for Students

Students at Tbilisi's Tsiskari school get a civil defense lesson. (Photo: Georgian Ministry of Education and Science.)

When news first surfaced that Georgia would introduce a new civil defense program for schools, attention focused on the prospect of teachers with no military background scrambling to learn how to load and fire assault rifles. But two months into the program, educators and lawmakers describe a course that appears closer to Boy Scouts training than to the ROTC.

In January, President Mikheil Saakashvili indicated that the program would be part of a national effort to enhance the country’s defense capabilities. “Only 16,000, 20,000, or 30,000 of our soldiers will not able to defend a country with population of 5 million,” Saakashvili told teachers and schoolchildren in Batumi on January 12. “Defending a country with a population of 5 million is a matter of all these 5 million people, as well as of the Georgians living abroad.”

At the time, the statement revived recollections of Parliamentary Chair Davit Bakradze’s controversial call for Georgian civilians to push back against invading Russian forces in 2008 “with all means necessary.”

Today, educators and lawmakers stress that the program -- now known as a “civil defense and safety course” -- has more to do with knowledge of ordinary safety procedures and emergency preparedness than with turning schoolchildren into potential guerrillas.

The pilot program started in 15 public and private schools around the country in September. The precise course of instruction, though, remains a matter of discussion and few details are publicly available. Over the course of two months, Ministry of Education representatives did not respond to EurasiaNet.org requests for information about the program and public school principals declined to talk about the course without prior ministry approval.

Tamara Midelashvili, the vice-principal of one private Tbilisi school participating in the civil defense program, said that the school’s 12th graders are learning how to give first aid at the scene of an accident and what to do in case of an earthquake. Posters on gun safety and identifying unexploded ordinances are also part of the program, but no students are handling firearms, she said.

Khatuna Ochiauri -- the first deputy chair of parliament’s Education Committee, a state body that has been involved in the civil defense program’s formation -- asserts that the program is merely designed to raise good citizens. She points to the past 200 years of Georgia’s history, a time period when the country was mostly under Russian or Soviet rule, to explain the project’s motivation. “Today, when we say we should cultivate patriotism is schools, this should be understood as fostering citizenship, not nationalism,” said Ochiauri, an MP affiliated with the governing United National Movement.

Some analysts, however, believe that the project’s timing -- coming just two years after Georgia suffered a crushing military defeat at the hands of Russia -- suggests that the program has ambitions beyond simply encouraging responsible citizenship.

Archil Gegeshidze, a political analyst at Tbilisi’s Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, believes Georgian leaders are trying to send a political message to Russia that Tbilisi has not “kneeled down,” despite the August 2008 humiliation. “In Moscow, they said that he is a political corpse; that he is politically dead,” Gegeshidze, referring to Russia's treatment of Saakashvili. “And he is saying, ‘No, I am alive. I am teaching these children. I am attracting tourists. I am increasing my defense capabilities.”

Conceivably, the course could ensure that the Georgian public is better prepared for future conflicts by “making them kind of patriotic, nationalistic” and Russia-wary from a young age, claimed another political analyst, Koba Turmanidze, country director for the Caucasus Research Resource Centers. “How can you imagine [teaching] this subject without telling [students] a couple [of] bad words about Russia?” Turmanidze asked. “That you are learning this because you have to defend your country against a bad country.” [Editor’s Note: Koba Turmanidze is a former Open Society Institute International Policy Fellow. EurasiaNet.org operates under the auspices of OSI].

Education Ministry officials were not available to discuss whether or not the course curriculum targets Russia by name. Midelashvili, the vice-principal, did not mention such a focus.

Ochiauri conceded that the 2008 war had its impact on the program’s genesis, but maintained that instruction in such topics as gun safety and first aid focuses only on keeping the peace. “We are living in a war situation and, although hopefully it will not happen again, we need to be ready for any sort of aggression because we have an aggressive neighbor,” she said in reference to Russia.