President Saakashvili said on January 12, that Georgia should “definitely introduce military-patriotic education courses in schools.”

“We have hastily abolished it. Now we have enough staff to introduce it in schools,” he said at a live televised meeting with a group of pupils and school teachers in Batumi.

“It is necessary in order to help the children to at least understand many things about their country; and also as we have already seen, everything can happen, and Georgia and Georgians should be able to defend at least their village, their town or their district. This system is being created in Georgia that will enable us to involve each and every person in defending the country. Only 16,000, 20,000, or 30,000 of our soldiers will not able to defend a country with population of 5 million; defending of the country with population of 5 million is a matter of all these 5 million people, as well as of the Georgians living abroad,” he said.

Saakashvili was speaking about the education system in general saying that more reforms were needed to tackle falling level of education in the country.

In his speech Saakashvili also made references to Russia. 

“When the country, which has five times shorter history, is in dispute with us for our historical territories and tells us that these [territories] have never been part of Georgia, [it means] that the problem about this country is that today decision there are often taken by absolutely ignorant people, who frankly believe that Georgians have never been in Abkhazia – although this is the country [referring to Russia] of great culture and of great education,” Saakashvili said.

He also said that Georgians should outdo others by “being more clever” and not by number of arms, “which we already have minimum required”.

“So we’d better invest more money in the education system,” Saakashvili added.