Letter of Complaint

Lusine Khachatryan

130 Andranik st, apt. 3

Yerevan, 0064

April 20, 2019

Arayik Harutyunyan

Minister of Education and Science

5 V. Sargsyan st,

Yerevan, 0010

Dear Mr Harutyunyan,

From the very start of my academic journey (which still continues), I was very much concerned with the textbooks that schools use to educate their pupils. They are hard to comprehend, use way too much technical lexicon and give very limited knowledge about certain topics. The problem is not only with one subject taught in school but rather all textbooks share this issue.

Armenian Literature textbooks cover only classic writers, excluding contemporary ones. While concentrating only on biographical knowledge and certain small parts of writers’ works, they exclude the analytical part of the compositions. If a textbook covers the “Wounds of Armenia” by Khachatur Abovyan, for example, then there must be provided the analysis of the work for developing students’ ability to think critically.

Quantitative Sciences like physics, chemistry and anatomy are written in such a hard-technical jargon, that many students who showed interest in such subject, experience difficulties during their study. Physics textbooks are way too much concentrated on compressing a theory into a single definition, rather than explaining the theory in a couple of paragraphs. When I was in seventh grade, I had recorded rather high results in chemistry and physics but due to the textbook I’ve lost the passion and ability to study those subjects properly.

As textbooks are being renewed after 5-year term, then there has to be some methods while writing new ones. Firstly, humanitarian subjects must develop analytical sections, while quantitative ones must concentrate more on practical use of knowledge. If we take as an example of the home-schooling system in U.S., then we’ll see that the structure of the information that textbooks needs to cover is designed in a way so that students will not experience difficulties while studying a certain subject. I acknowledge the fact that finding qualified authors for the textbooks is a hard thing to do, but I also believe that children are future of this country, hence their education must be considered as the most crucial aspect of our society.