Recently, a voluntary certification of teachers was held in Armenia, which allows some of them to receive higher salaries. Nine hundred out of 37,000 teachers working in our country participated, 53% of whom did not pass the certification threshold. Theoretically, it is right to differentiate between teachers, but we need to understand what this particular attestation was and what questions the proposed tests addressed.
I will quote from a very well-written article by history teacher Vahram Tokmajyan. To find out how good of a teacher you are, it is suggested to answer the following question: where is this quote from? “Arrows were falling from the city, like rain from the clouds, the stones of the sling were like drops of rain. They were whistling from the walls all year round. The days passed, the months lengthened․․․ ” If you know what battle this is about, then you will get a salary of 30 or 50 thousand AMD higher than those who do not know the source of that quote.
But the whole problem is that even if a person does not know such a thing, knowing it is a matter of two minutes. Copy that quote, then paste it into Google and find the answer to the question. Therefore, there is no point in overburdening teachers and students with that information. I guess the test takers are younger than me, but they probably trust the Soviet school of the ’70s more than I do. It was a system (of course, with its pros) based on learning, not on acquiring applicable skills. What is important is not the quote about the Sumerian wars, but the logic of the relations between states and people, the sequence of events and patterns.
Let me give you an example from my profession. Children should learn classical music not to play Mozart at family parties (although, if they can, it would be great). The main meaning is to understand: “this is before this,” “this is after this,” “this is repeated,” “this is not repeated,” “these passages are equal,” and “these are not equal.” It is a huge and very important work for the brain, most of which is done, of course, subconsciously, but some of it must be brought to a conscious level, and in that case, to help understand the “rhythm” of events, it is already the job of a skilled teacher. It is no coincidence that since Plato’s academy, music and mathematics have been taught in parallel, and this tradition has been passed on to medieval universities (including Armenia).
I generally envision the future school as a unity of “subjects” when there is history, literature, psychology and law in a historical event or an artistic image. When, conventionally speaking, a bicycle contains mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. Even the current curricula and standards do not particularly hinder teachers from teaching in that spirit. You just need time (higher salary for fewer hours) and a creative approach.
This is what teachers need to be encouraged to do, and what to focus their salaries on now, instead of the answers to irrelevant tests.
Aram Abrahamyan
