Freedom of Speech

The day of our "Translational Review" is approaching and I wanted to prepare Hovhannes Aleqyan's speech for his presentation. I wanted to dictate some ideas which I thought would be important to say, but he didn't want me to dictate anything. He said that he would express his own ideas. I wondered what his ideas would be and he began speaking. He began speaking and I was pleasantly surprised at listening to him. He said exactly what I wanted to dictate to him, and I was convinced once again of the fact that the education our students are getting at our high school is really different from the standardized education being organized at other schools. Nearly all the students at other high schools usually get ready for the future entrance exams. With their mouths shut and with their eyes wide open they are doing their tests on three subjects. They are not given any chance to create something, to express their own ideas. They are only supposed to do their tests. Sometimes I wonder why they go to school. They can only take private lessons and achieve their basic aim. I can't say that all our students are striving for knowledge but at least they are given a chance. Of course, we have a lot of students who are just wasting their time, the time which is allocated to them for their education. This time is passing and it will never return to them. On the other hand there a certain number of students who do not miss any opportunity to learn something new which isn't written in their text-books, and there are also teachers who are doing their best to satisfy the the students' hunger for knowledge. Two of such teachers are Vahram Toqmajyan and Artak Zargaryan. Today they were taking part in the semi-final stage of debates organized among the teachers of the Educomplex. The subject of the debate was "Should the Armenian Genocide policy be given a priority in the foreign policy of our country?" Artak Zargaryan was speaking in favour of this policy, whereas Vahram Toqmajyan was expressing an opposite point of view. They were speaking and a big group of our high school students and teachers were listening to them. The students were listening to their speeches with great interest. So were we, the teachers. That was a very good example of informal education.