Teacher’s Day was marked yesterday. Many good wishes were said opportunely. The teachers were praised and given flowers. Granted that they deserve the highest praise, also, of course, higher wages. But, as in any event, it has a significance of one day and cannot darken the fact that the teacher’s role has been changed nowadays, and the way they were teaching us is no more possible for my children and, especially, grandchildren. And this problem exists not only in Armenia but also in the whole world.
Everything comes from the prejudice that knowledge was a preserving that the teacher brings with him/her to the classroom every day and skillfully opens and treats the pupils. Any pupil or, better yet, a student has the opportunity to use this “preserving” via Internet, and often he/she can do it faster than his/her teacher. If we view it a little allegory, it can be said that the teacher is not for telling the class how much is two times two but for prompting what multiplying means, how it is done and why it is necessary. There are many inspiring videos on the Youtube about, for example, how children are learning the rules of the physics not by the formulas written on a piece of paper, but, let’s say, by assembling a bicycle. Unfortunately, no school in the world has made this approach common.
The water formula and the summary of the “Vardanank” novel are available on the internet, the pupil no longer has the problem to memorize them and learn by heart. The Internet lacks the “taste and smell” of knowledge, given subject or specific artistic work, the “pleasure of learning” and the pleasure of human contacts. Likewise, in the music, not so much the original sounds but the energy is important that connects them together, so as the atmosphere that the teacher creates together with the pupils is important while learning. And today, when finding a “preserving” knowledge is no longer a problem, the role of the individual and the person is doubled and multiplied. The pupils need not so much “what”, even “how” but a more fundamental question: why and for what.
The man having the answer to this question is himself, eventually becoming his own teacher and his own pupil at the same time for a lifetime. The very eternal aspiration should be taught at school or maybe even in the kindergarten. Normally, the society consists of people who constantly have an internal stimulus to be changed and improved. This does not mean that there should not be one who can prompt something. But the “prompter” should not be in the role of a judge, prosecutor, criticizing or punishing. In other words, he/she should not be the teacher who was teaching 40 years ago. The kind, which, unfortunately, prevails up to now.
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Aram ABRAHAMYAN
