The Ministry of Education and Science Does Not Know What It Is Managing: Gevorg Emin-Teryan

There has been excessive discussion about the content of the criteria, with numerous well-founded analyses and criticisms. For this reason, and the claim that the criteria have led to a substantive transformation, discussing the actual content of the text is currently pointless. This was stated by the spokesperson of Yerevan State University, Gevorg Emin-Teryan, on his Facebook page.

He particularly noted: “However, there are several issues that I want to draw the attention of my friends, colleagues, and the public to:

1. It is evident that the group writing the criteria has competency issues. Firstly, it is quite absurd that four female teachers and one writer-literary critic consider themselves such specialists in Armenian language, Armenian classical literature, contemporary Armenian literature, and world literature that they can essentially develop concepts for these four fields. The result of this is that, if you have noticed, the lists of literature were taken from the 'Granush' website, the Facebook pages of writers, and the 90s 'World Literature' textbook. I am confident that the competition organized by the Ministry of Education and Science did not involve substantive evaluation because there is no one in the ministry who could verify knowledge; at best, political views were checked, and more likely, this is another operation involving relatives, acquaintances, and lovers of the Ministry of Education and Science. Therefore, we are dealing with specialists with extremely superficial knowledge.

Dear authors, if what I’ve written incites protest within you, I propose a public and reciprocal verification of knowledge.

2. As long as there is no philosophy of Armenian literature and no research basis, it is impossible to make comprehensive transformations to educational programs and textbooks. Especially the members of this commission cannot justify why these works by these authors exist and why so many class hours should be allocated to them. This means that at best, cosmetic changes can be made, and secondly, we are entering a prolonged phase of chaos because those implementing the changes will be unable to substantiate anything.

3. One of the group members wrote that for a year of work, they received around 400,000 AMD. This means that the Republic of Armenia is essentially ready to pay 2 million AMD for the general concept of four fields (1.5 million salary + 1.5 million bonuses). In such cases, it is said: as is the salary, so are the bananas.

4. For such a serious initiative, it is, to put it mildly, ridiculous to post a competition announcement on the Ministry of Education and Science's website. This indicates that it was predetermined who should be included in that group. For this kind of initiative, the competition is already absurd because there are very few people capable of doing such things in Armenia.

5. It is very puzzling to me why such an important initiative did not receive 'presentations' and 'lives.' I think the reason is that the organizers knew they had not done something very good.

6. My other puzzlement is that the leadership of the Ministry of Education and Science does not know what it is managing. For the criteria of Armenian literature alone, the Ministry should have organized inter-agency discussions with the Institute of Literature, Yerevan State University, and the departments of Pedagogical and Vanadzor Universities; however, this not only did not happen, but the discussion was explicitly prohibited for those developing the criteria for the subject of World History at the relevant department of Yerevan State University. This, in turn, means that this entire process is doomed to fail because there is no mutual trust.

7. Lastly, this latest disgrace of the Ministry of Education and Science is truly a betrayal of all the specialists who want reforms.

P.S. - Dear Grig, do not destroy yourself because you have taken on a task from which you cannot emerge. Either write a story, or send an anonymous letter to Lucy Kocharyan.