Values Education, the Family, and Youth in Tajikistan: Building Docile Subjects

ABSTRACT

This article examines the relationship between youth, the family, and the authoritarian state in Tajikistan. We argue that the state works through both young people and the family in its attempts to produce loyal citizens through values education that focuses on patriotism, national identity, and allegiance to the state. We examine how the government frames this relationship through discourse analysis of 13 speeches by President Emomali Rahmon, an analysis of the content of laws on education and youth, a close reading of the official training program of the course “Family Education,” and an ethnographic study of a “Girls’ Competition.”

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Attwood (1990, 184–185) states that she could not verify whether the course was taught all over the Soviet Union or only in the northern republics, where the birth rates have been lower. During her travels to central Asia, she did not meet any person who had heard about the course but she was not able to consult school teachers on that matter. As far as we (the authors of the present study) know, the course was taught in middle schools of the Tajik SSR.

2. Etika i psikhologiya semeynoy jizni dlya 9 klassa. Moscow. Prosveshchenie. 1984. 256 pp. In Tajik schools, the Russian language textbook was used and translated into Tajik if the instruction language was Tajik.

3. The Soviet approach to education (vospitanie) had a spiritual dimension (dukhovnost) that comprised the idea that moral capacities and values of a person need not only be reinforced through practices of learning but also inspired through arts, literature, rituals, or political ideology. The main features of the moral education of the Soviet system included collectivism, discipline and appropriate conduct, a conscientious attitude toward labor, patriotism, and an opposition toward incompatible conduct. See Halstead 1994.

4. See Grebennikov, I. V., Dubrovina, I. V., Razumakhina, G. P., Etika i psikhologiya semeynoy jizni dlya 9 klassa. Moscow. Prosveshchenie. 1984. pp. 3–6.

5. In early 2016, officials suggested banning Russian names as well, replacing suffixes “ov, ” “ev, ” “ova,” and “eva” with Tajik endings such as “zoda, ” “zod, ” “on, ” “yon, ” “ien, ” “yor, ” “niyo” or “far. ” After Russian government opposition to this, they quickly backed down.

6. Статья 1, Закон Республики Таджикистан «О патриотическом воспитании граждан». URL: http://ncz.tj/system/files/Legislation/1920_ru.pdf

7. See Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Tajikistan. https://maorif.tj/asosi/kitoboi-dars

8. See Decree of the President of the Republic of Tajikistan №352 about declaration of the year 2015 in the country as the “Year of Family”: http://www.prezident.tj/ru/node/8210, last seen August 27, 2020. Apart from the “Year of the Family” Tajikistan annually celebrates the “Day of the Family” on May 15th. The celebration draws on the announcement of this day as the “International Day of the Family” by the UN in 1993. When and under which circumstances the celebrations were introduced are not known. The oldest entry about the “Day of the Family” on Radio Ozodi is from May 15, 2006.

9. The Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Tajikistan (MES RT) and the National School Curriculum for 2015–2020. Dushanbe. MES RT. 2015, pp. 6–9, issued on August 15, 2015, under the number №19/1. In addition to the course, an auxiliary subject Fundamentals of the Profession and Craft (Asoshoi kasbu hunar), which is taught separately to girls and to boys in Grade 9, was included into the curriculum of the general education system.

10. The authorities used these riots to justify the drafting of the Law on Parental Responsibility for the Education and Upbringing of Children, which was enacted in February 2011.

11. According to official statistics, over the past decade the percentage of divorces increased from 0.3 per 1,000 population in 2002 to 1.1 per 1,000 population in 2014. (Statistics for 1991–2013 taken from http://www.stat.tj/ru/database/socio-demographic-sector, last seen 04/15/2015. For 2014 data, see Tajstat 2015, p. 32.) However, the number of divorces is still below the 1991 figure (1.4 per 1,000 population) and the rate of divorce during the second half of the Soviet period, which was 1.5 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1978 and 1.6 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1983 (Kasymova 2007, 146; see also Hohmann, Roche, and Garenne 2010). Accordingly, there are no major differences between the divorce numbers at the end of the Soviet era and 25 years after independence.

12. Interview with K. I. Kulob, May 28, 2014. See also edlin et al. (1971), and Kirmse (2013).

13. The analysis draws on participant observation at the “2014 Girls’ Competition” that took place on March 3, 2014, in the city of Kulob, southern Tajikistan. The data that includes audio and visual material was collected by Swetlana Torno during ethnographic fieldwork in the Kulob region between November 2013 and September 2014.

14. Kulob is Tajikistan’s fourth biggest city, with a population of 99,700 by January 1, 2014. A short summary of the competitions in Khatlon province was published in the youth journal Javonovi Tojikiston, No. 11 (9333), March 13, 2014, p. 2. https://issuu.com/javonontj/docs/javonon____11_2014__2_, retrieved on September 3, 2020.

15. Farkhor and Muminobod are small towns administratively belonging to the broader Kulob region and located 80 km southwest and 40 km northeast of Kulob.

16. To be precise, the jury consisted of the chairwoman of the People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan of Kulob city the chairman of the Committee of Youth, Sports and Tourism of Khatlon province; the head of the Civil Registration Office of the Kulob region; and the leader of the Youth Committee of the Kulob region.