Teacher education programs in Russia need to be redesigned to be suitable for the changes that have occurred in Russian society, and also to equip teachers to help students connect with their local cultures and ethnicities.

Russia at the beginning of the twenty-first century has turned into a country of paradoxes. For example, even though society is increasingly dependent on education and science, it is spending less and less on them. Despite all the talk about how intelligence goes where the pay is better, higher and secondary education, evidently, is an exception.…