ARMENIAN-GEORGIAN INTERSCHOOL TIES WITH ASSISTANCE OF RA MINISTRY OF DIASPORA

Noyan Tapan
July 29, 2009

YEREVAN, JULY 29, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. Yerevan School N20
after John Kirakosian responded the proposal of establishing friendly
ties with Tbilisi N131 Russian-Armenian Secondary School presented
by the RA Ministry of Diaspora. Manana Karapetian, the teacher of the
History of Armenian Church of Tbilisi N131 Russian-Armenian Secondary
School and the editor-in-chief of the Zrutsakits (interlocuter)
school newspaper informed the Noyan Tapan correspondent about it.

In her words, the administration of the mentioned school of Tbilisi
addressed to the RA Ministry of Diaspora to get assistance in the issue
of establishing ties with one of schools of Armenia. It is envisaged
that non-Armenian pupils of Tbilisi School N131 will aslo participate
for 10 days in classes of Yerevan School N20, and the later’s pupils
will visit the mentioned school in Tbilisi. Joint cultural programs
are also envisaged.

Touching upon the problems of the Armenian schools in Georgia,
M. Karapetian considered appropriate that exact sciences and natural
sciences are taught in those schools not translated from Georgian into
Armenian, but by Armenian language text-books used in Armenia as there
are mistakes and faults in the Georgian text-books on the mentioned
subjects which are also repeated in their Armenian translations.

She affirmed that there is need of text-books on the Armenian Fiction,
on the History of Armenian People and Art and, especially, on the
Oratory. The circumstance that Georgian Armenian pupils compose
their ideas at the all-Armenian olympiads on the Armenian language
and literature worse than, for example, Iranian and Syrian Armenian
pupils, is conditioned by absence of the text-books on the Oratory.

The Georgian Armenian teacher also stated that the mentioned school in
Tbilisi is in the region of the city populated by Armenians, and 350
from 460 pupils of the school are Armenians, but only 64 pupils studied
at Armenian classes during the 2008/2009 school year. He conditioned
such a situation with the circumstance that Armenian parents prefer to
give their child to a Russian or Georgian school, considering that it
is not advantageous for a child to leave an Armenian school from the
point of view of entering an institution of higher education in Georgia
and possibilities of finding a job. That is the reason that Armenian
classes of the mentioned school occupy 45-person classrooms for a class
of 4-5 pupils, and the Russian classes are overloaded what influences
on the education quality. For this reason a small flow of pupils from
Russian classes to Armenian ones has already been noticed during
the recent years. Manana Karapetian mentioned that teaching of the
Georgian language is also on a high level at the Armenian department
of the school, owing to what 4 from 5 school leavers of 2008 of the
Armenian department entered Georgian institutions of higher education.

She also added that if there were 34 Armenian schools in Tbilisi in
the middle of 1970s, there are only 6 ones at present.