After the Revolution

Call it giving up — or just plain practical.

Labor officials in Kyrgyzstan are encouraging vocational schools to teach students the skills they need to do manual labor abroad, according to an article from the Institute for War & Peace Reporting.

Despite the recent spate of hate crimes in Russia against these kinds of migrant workers [see previous post], the Kyrgyz people understand their fate.

Why go to med school if you’re going to end up laying bricks in Istanbul?

At least these vocational skills recognize some of the dangers of working abroad.

Knowing that many of these students will wind up in Russia, they teach classes on Russian language, law and custom. Many students in the capital, Bishkek, already speak Russian well, but this is not true of most residents of the countryside, especially in the south.

The government is so eager to export its youths because it simply cannot handle the number of unemployed Kyrgyz already in the country.

Workers abroad sending remittances back home prop up the Kyrgyz economy.

Officially, about 350,000 Kyrgyz are working in Russia and Kazakstan, but the unofficial count is closer to two million. Others find jobs in Turkey, China, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea.

Some proponents of the policy of preparing students for jobs abroad claim that working in other countries will give them skills to bring home later.

But how will working as electricians in Kazakstan help the youths of today become the leaders of tomorrow? And who knows if they will even come back?