Pharmaceutical Language Issues in Armenian Education: 'Good Window' Concept Fails, Says PM Pashinyan

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has addressed the quality issues in the school construction sector, highlighting the difficulties in describing technical requirements accurately.

“I want to touch upon the window, the faucet, the shower. I am already convinced that we cannot describe them. We do not possess the capabilities to convey that this is the window we need. They say, 'what you want is not a window.' It is a window. Look, we installed it. But it drafts from the sides, its appearance is not right, the quality is not right, and this is where our problems lie. Are there experts in the world who can accurately describe the faucet that we need? Yes, there are those experts, but they need a salary of at least 1 million drams a month. Until we resolve this issue, we are heading in this manner,” he stated.

Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatryan also responded, noting that they have not yet found a good solution but are actively considering it: “This is an open issue, and it is not easily solvable. We have taken a step towards standardization.”

According to PM Pashinyan, there is an effort to describe technical parameters using their own vocabulary. “We want to describe whether the window is good or not. What makes it not good? It is a window. Let me add, when we press hard, they will go to court, saying, 'We brought it; it is a good window; it opens and closes.' However, this is where our problem lies. We say, 'Let’s write a technical specification.' They come and write, 'Good window.’ They write it in precious Mesropian Armenian. Everyone reads it, and we say, 'What a great technical assignment we have, it is written, “Good window.”' We need to write the technical task in such a way that no precious Mesropian Armenian words are included; there should be codes, numbers, such that if we read it, we don’t understand it, but the specialist will,” he explained.

He noted that there is a need for technical specialists who know this language. “Those specialists either do not exist or are very few among us. This is where the problem arises.” According to him, “We do not know how to build schools. Let’s acknowledge that we do not know; we are learning from scratch. But there also needs to be a learning plan on how we will learn.”