Long hair, beards and tattoos may be all very well in the West but better is expected of Turkmenistan's youth, as President Saparmurat Niyazov makes clear in his latest 500-page tome landing on teachers' desks round about now.
The Spiritual Guide or Rukhnama part 2 is a sequel to an earlier 2001 volume that blends Niyazov's autobiography with Turkmen history and folklore.
That pink-and-lime coloured book has supplanted Marx and Lenin to become compulsory reading for every school and university student in this desert former Soviet republic and is also studied by adults in the workplace.
So central is the book to Turkmen life that in 2002 Niyazov decreed that the month of September would henceforth be known as Rukhnama. Last month knowledge of the Rukhnama became part of the national driving test.
The second, even more multi-coloured volume is set to take up an equally prominent position.
"I wrote this above all with our young people in mind, thinking about how important it is for them to find the right course - let the Rukhnama stand as reliable and trustworthy advice," Niyazov said following its publication earlier this month.
There was great rejoicing at a launch ceremony in the country's rubber-stamp parliament building.
"This isn't simply a book, it's a meditation on the past and present of the Turkmen people which has won the hearts of readers the world over," parliament speaker Ovezgeldy Ataye said, kissing and holding aloft the new volume.
Niyazov was Turkmenistan's last Soviet-era leader and has clung on ever since, being declared president-for-life and Turkmenbashi (father of all Turkmen) in 1999 and stamping out all opposition.
While the volumes focus on Niyazov and his parents - depicted in gold statues and portraits across the country - critics also say they are aimed at ensuring conformity and containing Islam in a country that developed apart from mainstream Islam in the Soviet era.
A new mosque being built outside the capital Asghabat by the French company Bouygues is to be engraved with excerpts from the Rukhnama as well as the Koran, planning officials have said. The focus on young people is particularly strong in the second volume.
"As science develops at an unbelievable rate, life becomes harder - so fathers should bring up worthy heirs and teachers must ensure that pupils leave school with a superior scientific knowledge," the preface reads.
Niyazov has banned smoking and the playing of loud music while driving, all cinemas have been closed down and Western-style night-spots have been ordered to close at 11:00 pm.
Female school students have been told to ditch sexually alluring Western fashions in favour of long embroidered dresses and traditional headscarves wrapped around the back of the head.
But critics - mostly outside Turkmenistan due to Niyazov's crushing of dissent - say there is little to support the president's declarations that the 21st century will be a golden one.
They point to growing joblessness and drug abuse in this country of around five million people, whose economy rests mainly on natural gas exports to Russia and soon to Western Europe.
None the less, as in Soviet times, vestiges of a counter-culture can still be found.
"Not many would agree, but I think it's important to be an individual," said Karim, 17, who persists in singing and playing rock and blues guitar in the courtyard of his apartment block with friends.
"I'm already too old to be re-educated," he told AFP.