Education Minister wants students to clean and engage in gardening on school premises

Russia's new Minister of Education Olga Vasilyeva suggested that school reintroduce obligatory gardening and cleaning of school premises for students at a meeting of the Federation Council Committee for Science, Education, and Culture. She also said that it was important to reestablish "rural brigades" at rural schools.

According to Vasileva, students can be asked to clean school in those instances when such activities pose no threat to the lives or the health of the students.

"First and foremost we must restore the little man's responsibility for a place in which he spends eleven years [of his life]," said Vasilyeva.

Industrial and rural brigades appeared in the Soviet Union as part of collective farms. With the collapse of the USSR, they practically disappeared, although, in some areas, they still exist in one form or another.