• Հայերեն
  • English
  • Français
  • Georgian
  • Русский
  • Español
  • Deutsch
  • فارسی
  • Türkçe
  • Italiano

Narek Sahakyan's letter to me and my answer to him

 Narek Sahakyan, one of our best graduates, has written an interesting letter to me. I am publishing his letter and my answer on our website. 

  Hello, Mr. Yura.

 

I hope you are doing well.

Today when I was looking for an interesting article to translate (I work as translator-editor at Pan Armenian Media Group, for BlogNews.am), I found this.

CNN has made an article about the schools of the future. Basically they are telling about a New York-based school, where they use the project-based learning.

So while CNN tells us about a school in New York that has only 19 students, we have our Mkhitar Sebastatsi educational complex in Armenia with way more students(couple of thousands, I guess), where project-based learning has been implemented since it was founded.

 

I just wanted to share this article with you. I probably will translate it into Armenian and publish on BlogNews, but before that have a look on the original version.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/27/health/future-schools/index.html

edition.cnn.com
A new type of school is gaining popularity, and it's ripping up the traditional school model in hopes of boosting creativity and critical thinking.

Here is my answer to Narek's letter.

Hello, dear Narek,
I read the article twice. They have written very interesting ideas which are so familiar to us. You are right. The world doesn't know anything about our school. I myself have translated into English a great number of articles on project based teaching-learning  written by our teachers. These articles are published in our pedagogical magazine Dpir, but who reads our Dpir?  William Saroyan once wrote such a thing about Armenians: "
I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia."

You should certainly translate this article into Armenian, but what I am concerned about is how we can disseminate our progressive pedagogy. It is really worth doing. During William Saroyan's lifetime there was no Internet, and it was really next to impossible (here I am using the expression from your target article) to have any contacts with foreign publishers. How can we breakthrough to them? That's the question I am so much concerned about. There is an American pedagogical journal called Education Week. A few months ago they published an article about merit pay for teachers  Merit Pay for Teachers Can Lead to Higher Test Scores for Students, a Study FindsEducation Week, April 11, 2017. After reading that article I wrote my article entitled   My reflections after reading Brenda Iasoveli’s article “Merit Pay for Teachers Can Lead to Higher Test Scores for Students, a Study Finds” published on April 11, 2017  . I sent this article to their editorial office. They answered that I had written an excellent article, but as far as my article criticized the article published in their journal, I had to address my article to their editor-in-chief. I readdressed my article to their editor-in-chief and I have had no answer so far. In my article I showed that the system of payment at our school is more progressive than they do in America. Many things we do better than in big countries. Nobody sees or hears us. 

 
 
Your former teacher
Yura Ganjalyan