There can be nothing in Armenia’s schools that falls outside the ideology of “Real Armenia,” Nikol Pashinyan declares, adding that if there is, the state must take measures.
One would have to assume that a culture of “reporting” on teachers will be encouraged among students, as a kind of guarantee of the continued existence of “Real Armenia.” If, for example, a teacher allows themselves to say or do something during a lesson that falls outside Nikol Pashinyan’s conception of “Real Armenia,” the student will submit a report about it that evening. Or perhaps they will not even wait until the evening, but report it right there in the classroom.
Alternatively, classrooms could be equipped with audio and video recording devices — a kind of “bugging” system — to record how many centimeters or millimeters a teacher has strayed beyond the 29,743-square-kilometer boundary, or how many times they have “renounced” the Alma-Ata Declaration before the bell rings.
Would you consider all of this unimaginable? Then how, in your view, will the so-called ideology of “Real Armenia” be kept “sacrosanct” within the general education system? If the issue of monitoring and responsibility, including punishment, is being raised — and Nikol Pashinyan is, in fact, articulating that issue quite explicitly — then implementing such a system would be impossible without resorting to the “mechanisms” described above.
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What is more, the curriculum could even include a subject called “Real Armenia,” with Nikol Pashinyan himself, for example, serving as the author of its textbook — perhaps “just to spite” Gagik Tsarukyan.
It could even be stipulated that students who receive an excellent grade on the end-of-year “Real Armenia” exam would be exempt from taking an exam in another subject.
HAKOB BADALYAN
