PAPER READ AT
THE FIRST EDUCATIONAL SEMINARY OF AGBU SCHOOLS
During our daily communication we
use words, usually without being conscious of their mental images and without
thinking about their content. But, when we hesitate in front of their multiple
meaning, the apparent simplicity becomes complicated and complex. The same
words, synchronously, may have different interpretation by different persons.
As well, they acquire new dimensions and volume, thus expressing the dynamic
evolution of a society. Sometimes, certain words are isolated from other
letters of the alphabet, they are metamorphosed, and they stay in our memory,
they become animated, forming sentences, thoughts, causing mental stress and
ending as subjects for discussion.
Two common words, that
needs close analysis, especially when we consider events of the last two years
as an important stage in our history. Our national cosmogony has started to
undergo qualitative changes. The national leadership should revise routine
objectives and methods of action that were experimented for years and accepted
as such. A broader vision, within the limits of practical possibilities, should
clarify the finality of our national identity, and a synthetic, comprehensive
national ideology should become the source of inspiration for all our
political, cultural, and religious interrogations, and their final judge.
Let us first, meditate
about the word Armenian, having in mind the ever-changing social conditions of
the Diaspora.
Several thousands have
graduated from our schools, teachers animated by the highest national values
have sacrificed their life, to prepare individuals believing in the serenity of
Armenian nation, and working to that effect. What have they accomplished? Where
are they? As an Armenian, why? Until when?
Who is the ideal
Armenian? Based on which criteria? From this generation, and the coming few
others, how many shall remember the roots of their national identity? Why?
At present, we can
divide the Diaspora into two main groups, of course with numerous
sub-divisions.
a. Active individuals,
intellectuals, teachers, political leaders, and as simple persons, proud of
their national identity, try with patience, to transmit the flame of our
national values, to the passive mass.
b. The passive majority,
giving the priority to his human anxieties, accepts the erosion of his national
values, silently, sometimes painfully and often with indifference.
With the current
attitude, the first group, is simply trying to prolong the agony of the
collective identity of the second group, and sometimes, unfortunately, being
affected by the epidemic of passports of the Western World, to be silent
witness of the transfer of their own offspring, to the expiring mass.
The essence of Armenian
attributes should include the belief in the spirit of our national history,
practical employment of energies now, and the vision of a hopefully bright
national future.
The spirit of the
History is not the chronology of our military victories and defeats. It is the
reflection of our crystallized collective pride in cultural achievements. Our
kidnapped Ararat with its Ark of Noah, our ancient gods, our pagan words, our
mythology, fables, and proverbs, our past and present misfit poets and their
songs, our millennial monuments and temples, our tapestry and the metallic
remnant of our patience, our church with its heroic struggle for freedom, the
international witness of its architecture, its antiquated ceremonies and their
mystical prayers and incantations, our manuscripts and the survival of their
unbelievable number, our khatchkars fixing the eternity in their intricacy, and
above all, the strife of the two hundred and fiftieth generation of the heroic
peasant of Artsakh, holding tight to his rugged mountains.
The practical employment
of energies have two branches:
The owner and the
inhabitant of the Armenian soil, decides alone the proper time and means to
defend it. Overcoming economic difficulties is subject to individual and
collective hard and continuous work, accepting the present hardship as a high
price to be paid to achieve the well being in the future.
The post-1991 Armenian
of the Diaspora, with its third generation has arrived to a dangerous turning
point. We as integrated citizens of the countries we live in, naturally, we are
influenced by the positive and negative multiple factors, social and
governmental constraints, and in spite of being inundated by new values and
habits, we can still consider "Armenianess" as our religion, quoting
Charles Aznavour. But, without a national credo.
With the existing
chaotic momentum, the yearly loss of Diaspora is probably, as important as the
number of victims of the 1989 earthquake. The implosion of the spirits require
as many precautions as the tragedy caused by natural calamities.
Education has three
stages: information, knowledge, and wisdom. Bulk information, passing through a
fine sieve, is transformed into knowledge. Pitiful is a nation that cannot
transform its knowledge into wisdom.
Confident vision of the
future requires revising out thoughts, sentimental images, instinctive fears
and with an objective approach, after analyzing our present, have the courage
to propose different objectives for the future with appropriate means for their
realization.
Is Diaspora a temporary station
or a final solution? If it is a station, we have to ask: where to? If it is a
final solution, we have to meditate about its ever-evolving role, trying to
turn it into communities having clear objectives and efficient methods of
action.
As a Lebanese Armenian,
inoculated by the horror of the war, used to economic difficulties of all
sorts, did we ever in moments of despair, as an Armenian entity, include
All our communities in
Diaspora are in need of huge investments. For whom? If Armenian school shall
remain an aim and not a means to realize definable national ideals, it is
better to reduce the waste of time and accept the final defeat.
Fortunately, the new
independent
When the national
ideology becomes a credo, then only it is possible to clarify the essential
roles of
Armenian Diaspora has reached its climax. Freed from
the psychology of the refugee of the first generation, and the overcoming of
economic difficulties of the second generation, today, the third generation,
alongside with the satisfaction of human wants and sometimes desires, is still
animated, more or less, by Ethnic feelings. Probably, in terms of national
identity, the next generation shall be the one of fast assimilation in the
melting pot of host countries, unless, the joint leaderships of both Armenia
and Diaspora, with a renewed dynamism gather momentum and with a single
pan-Armenian credo, mobilize the totality of the private and collective
potential powers of Armenia and Diaspora.
In this respect, our
educational institutions should play an essential role. Guided by the national
ideology, to educate individuals, believing in the national credo, and having
the necessary will power and practical means to make it productive, with the
uncompromising satisfaction of human wants and desires, and the additional
satisfaction acquired through the sense of unique identity and belonging.
An educational
institution becomes efficient if the program is based on clear objectives, the
teaching staff is motivated and has the sense of sacrifice, students aim to
excellence, and if the physical plant has the necessary functional setup.
Usually, objectives of
an educational program include, the intellectual and practical means to
safeguard, to enrich, and to diffuse the values of a community. Every country
has its own educational program, and political, economic and cultural factors
affect its evolution. In Diaspora, our educational institutions have a double
and simultaneous role: to mold the human being as such and infuse in him the
spirit of Armenian identity. Of course, after defining the image of the ideal
human being and the ideal Armenian of Diaspora.
The sacrifice of the
teachers may be anticipated, if the source of faith is credible, and the result
fruitful. Besides, sacrifice has in return, its own expectations of decent
moral and material appreciation and compensation.
The drive for excellence
is one of the indicators of human dynamism. To excel, aiming at the Good,
respecting the right of the others. To struggle to improve the "self"
enlarging its scope to include all the individuals of a collective identity, to
win the full confidence of the "other" without opportunistic
considerations, honestly, continuously, to excel without vanity.
The functional setups of
the physical facilities include:
a. The
architectural construction, with its environment, equipment, library,
workshops, laboratories, playground, etc.
b. The
textbooks, their subject matter being composed of the most up-to-date
information and at the same time serving the national objectives, through a
clear and attractive method and form. It is essential, to revise our present
criteria for the valorization of our national history, considering the
synthetic knowledge of our cultural heritage, as the most important source of
national pride, and accordingly to prepare, a new series of integrated
textbooks of Armenian language and history.
c. The
school administration, conceiving and planning useful and clear educational
programs, and implementing them in an efficient and consistent manner.
Until 1991, the core of
the Armenian education, was the Big Dream, the recovery of the lands of Greater
Armenia, and with a static vegetative existence, we tried to preserve the
values of our historic heritage, in order to be able to say,
"present" at the proper moment. After the unbelievable implosion of
the Soviet Empire,
The collateral
cooperation between
a. To
organize summer trips to
b. To
organize, two way transfers, between teachers, artists, artisans, and
specialists in liberal professions, with the intention of transferring our
collective experience in cultural and economic fields, wherever they are
needed, the economic development of Armenia being of prime importance, for the
proposal of credible answers to our national essential queries.
Belief gets stronger
through immediate practical results. Dreams are realized through daily tasks
and their accompanying range of satisfaction.
Presently, we need new
translators in one hundred and forty languages, international political
activists, editors in the audio-visual media, responsible volunteer
letter-writers, political lobbyist, artists, scientist, capitalist of
international caliber, Armenian banks and bank managers in multinational
banking corporations, Saroyans expressing their identity in all the languages
of the world, and new evangelists to diffuse our cultural heritage.
Union becomes a force,
when individuals forming a nation, with a centripetal vision, after climbing
the peaks, they stretch their hands, to help others to follow their example,
and they believe in the necessity of a long term moral and material development
of their country, through perseverance in work. The glory of
Armenian education
succeeds in its role, when after a rebirth, Diaspora turns into a dense power,
and the number of Armenians and non-Armenians having faith in the perennial
presence of
Architect Meguerditch L. Bouldoukian
20.05.93