The founder of the Novosibirsk private “Novokolledzh” Sergei Chernyshov recorded a video message and announced that his project will stop working after the end of this academic year. The Groza publication drew attention to the video.
According to Chernyshov, he sees only two options for Novokolledzh. The first is to turn it into “a typical Russian college with propaganda and kowtowing to officials.” The second is to admit that “it is impossible to run a normal college in an abnormal country.” Therefore, “Novokolledzh”, “Novoshkola” and “School of Foreign Languages” will stop working from July 2024.
«"New College" it was difficult from the very beginning precisely because he was ahead of his time. We didn’t give bribes to anyone, didn’t sit in the waiting rooms of big bosses with ingratiating eyes, didn’t treat employees like trash, respected students, told parents not what they wanted to hear, but the truth, and talked openly about our mistakes. In a word, they created a modern college,” says Chernyshov.
He emphasizes that with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the college took an open anti-war position. According to Chernyshov, teachers who conduct “Conversations about Important Things” and invite Russian military personnel to lessons are to blame for the normalization of war.
“It was the duty of any person who considers himself an educator: to say that war is terrible, and the people who support it deserve exclusively our contempt. Because the education that doesn’t notice how people are being killed in the neighbor’s apartment is worthless, continuing to talk about some kind of innovative educational technologies. We, as teachers, had to show students how a person should act in conditions of moral choice,” continues the founder of Novocollege.
At the same time, Chernyshov emphasized that students and teachers of the NovoCollege department in Tomsk and the correspondence department expressed their readiness to continue working. He promised to help them.
At the end of May 2023, the Ministry of Justice declared Sergei Chernyshov a “foreign agent.” He left administrative positions at the institution. Soon Novokolledzh was fined under the article on organizing the educational process without special permission (Part 1 of Article 19.20 of the Administrative Code). According to Chernyshov, the real reason for administrative prosecution is the refusal to hold “Conversations about important things” at NovoCollege.