The Golden Age Era Rebirth of Armenian Education

The title of this material, unfortunately, doesn’t have anything to do with modern Armenia. It relates to the golden age of the Armenian history, which falls in the era of Mesrop Mashtots’ and Sahak Partev’s activity.

Back in the days, Mashtots realized the importance of knowledge and education from the standpoint of both the education itself and the preservation of the national identity. In particular, Mashtots undertook the establishment of schools to spread knowledge. As for Sahak Partev, he helped Mashtots in the creation of the Armenian alphabet, as well as hugely contributed to the Armenian translation of the Bible.

Thanks to those efforts, even after falling to Persia in the 5th century, Armenia preserved its national identity. The main contributor to the maintaining of the unity of Armenians as a nation was the accessibility of the educational system produced by Mashtots. The whole state system back in the day was based on the Armenian alphabet in particular.

And what do we have today? Education in modern Armenia is quite expensive for most of the people yet rather moderate. That wouldn’t be too big of a problem if the mean income of the Armenians was sufficient, but that isn’t the case. Apart from that, many Armenian students leave Armenia to receive education in Europe or North America. Quite a bit of Armenia’s scientific potential leaves the country to never return because of social and political issues in Armenia. This happened especially in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

And as it is proposed at the end of the video, the Armenian diaspora and Armenia should create cooperative research centers in order to exchange knowledge and experience. However, will it ever happen? And on the other hand, the educational system has to be improved itself for the Armenian students to be able to receive good education, which will play the same role as before: maintaining the Armenian identity.

Հայոց դպրության վերածնունդը. Ոսկեդարի գործիչները