Paradox in the Armenian Education Debate

Last night my wife mentioned that a girl had committed suicide after finding out that she flunked her Armenian language exam, which she needed to pass in order to be accepted into university. I asked her if she could determine the news source, and she found two articles on A1+. I tried to find other articles written about this tragedy but I wasn’t able to.

The girl’s name was Gohar Martirosyan, only 17 years old. She apparently threw herself out of the window of her family’s apartment, located on the sixth floor in a Shengavit neighborhood. The incident occurred on June 4.

A press conference was held on June 7 sponsored by a group of “honored” teachers and literary critics called Mirror. They complained that the entrance exam was designed so that students would fail. The exam apparently contains complicated, intense words that are no longer used in modern Armenian or cannot be practically applied to university-level courses. Although Gohar’s grade wasn’t specified, it was inferred from a quote from one of the group’s members, Davit Gasparyan, that she received a 7 out of a possible 20 points, and she had been recognized as being a good student. He also mentioned that the top score being earned by students on this exam who do study hard is only 15. Mirror finds the exam as it exists to be totally unacceptable, and students should not be permitted to struggle though such a difficult entrance process. Students should simply be tested on the Armenian they had been learning during their primary education as part of the curriculum. The test incidentally was designed by the Assessment and Testing Centre.

So you have children who have gone to Armenian schools their entire lives failing entrance exams on which they are doomed to do poorly. In the meantime, politicians, journalists and other blowhards are protesting vehemently in front of the National Assembly against the proposed bill that if passed would permit the opening of private foreign-language schools. Their argument is that primary education must be taught in the Armenian language exclusively.

But it seems that no matter how hard you study, you’re going to be denied entry into the state university if you don’t know classical Armenian or obsolete words. So the public educational system is clearly flawed. If anything, the opening of private schools would essentially compel the Ministry of Science and Education to raise the bar of the state educational system. They can start by punishing teachers who demand bribes and ensuring that all students have the proper books they need to learn.

No one from the opposition to the proposals for opening private schools seems to be commenting on the suicide other than Mirror. There apparently isn’t public concern about what’s happening during the entrance exams, that students are failing a vital, make-or-break test given in their own mother tongue, the same they studied their whole lives. People are dying as a result. But, they argue, all subjects must continue to be taught in Armenian at all costs, private schools or public, otherwise the nation’s statehood is in jeopardy, that in 20 years no one in power will know Armenian had they benefitted from schooling conducted in a foreign-language. Two political parties are behind this ridiculous sentiment and are rallying citizens behind them, exploiting it to the hilt. But to what end?

The hypocrisy being demonstrated here is astounding. Students continue to suffer from poor education while expected to meet high standards they are never permitted to achieve in the first place because of a crippled, dysfunctional system in which the amount of cash defines the level of knowledge. It’s clearly not Gohar who is at fault—she is a victim of a corrupt, unjust structure that she would never have been able to beat on her own. All she wanted to do was go to university.

Now a new question must enter the debate—will she be the last victim?