The influence of cadet classes and military sports training on the formation of patriotic motivation and disciplinary culture of adolescents in the general education system

Abstract

The article examines cadet education in a comprehensive school as a specific socio-cultural environment capable of influencing the formation of civic identity, patriotic motivation, and disciplinary culture among adolescents amid the erosion of value orientations and the limitations of the traditional classroom-lesson model in terms of activity-based assimilation of norms. The cadet routine is interpreted not as external drill, but as a system of rituals, traditions, subordination, and collective practices that translate the categories of honor, duty, and responsibility into regulators of everyday behavior and are supported by military-sports training developing volitional self-regulation. The results of a two-year comparative observation of adolescents aged 13-15 from cadet classes (n=248) and general education classes (n=238) in four schools of a regional center with different departmental profiles are presented. The diagnostics included questionnaires on value orientations and civic identity, analysis of documentation on disciplinary violations, expert assessments, participant observation, scales of volitional self-control, aggression tests, and sociometry; Student's t-test, Wilcoxon test, and Pearson correlations were applied. It is shown that initial intergroup differences were minimal, whereas by the end of the period, cadets exhibited a shift from declarative to activity-based patriotism: cognitive, emotional-value, and activity components reached 78,42; 82,19; 74,56 points versus 64,15; 69,33; 51,28 in the control with high statistical significance, and the civic responsibility index was 76,84 versus 58,91. The frequency of tardiness, absences, and conflicts among cadets was substantially lower (e.g., tardiness 14,35 versus 48,92 cases per 100 students per year), and volitional regulation was more pronounced (self-control 7,56 versus 4,89 on a 10-point scale). Correlation analysis clarifies the mechanisms of influence: military-historical training is more closely associated with patriotism (r=0.784), drill with disciplinedness (r=0.823), sports load inversely correlates with aggressiveness (r=-0.544); simultaneously, an optimal load effect and the risk of emotional burnout when exceeded are revealed, justifying the need for a balance between regulation and humanitarian semantic content to prevent formalism and militarization.