Education expert: “If country smells bad, everybody’s noses should not be cut off”
Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan at Government session held on December 8, instructed Levon Mkrtchyan, Minister of Education and Science, to submit within three weeks the complex events schedule aimed at ensuring financial and economic education in the secondary schools with a mandatory condition starting the project from the new academic year. Education expert Serob Khachatryan, considers that including the financial and economic education in the academic plan of Social Science, Mathematics, Me and Surrounding World to be a positive step. “It is a good approach, as today we already don’t have a chance and a place to include new subjects, besides we should understand that children do not always perceive well all those things, which are served them directly,” Serob Khachatryan told “A1+”. According to the expert, some problems may occur at the primary schools connected with the teachers’ training for that subject, though he is not against the idea of teaching citizens financial knowledge in an integrated way. “International study was carried out and they tried to understand in which countries the financial knowledge of schoolchildren and students is in high level, and the study showed that in the countries, where it is taught as a separate subject, the results aren’t good, but, for example, in the countries, where fundamental mathematics is stressed, the results are better,” noted the expert. Expert Serob Khachatryan also touched upon the Minister of Education and Science Levon Mkrtchyan’s project of reforms, according to which 12th grade high school students will have an opportunity to pass their final examinations in December to have time to get ready for entrance exams during the second term. “We all know that 12th grade students do not attend classes in a normal way. Directors of the schools, headmasters were asking them to come from time to tome or to immediately come, when there were inspectors in the schools; the Minister’s decision simply legalizes this situation,” noted education expert. As for the Minister’s statement to eliminate state exams’ rule in the universities, Serob Khachatryan does not agree with it. “Taking into account also the fact that today we have a problem in universities of Armenia that the students mainly don’t want to study well, that rule must be maintained in order to sum up at the end the important questions of the profession. The nature of the questions should be reviewed,” said Serob Khachatryan. The expert thinks that the existence of corruption in this sphere does not mean that exams must be eliminated. “There is a well-known story, when the king is told that the country smells bad and the king orders to cut off the noses of the citizens. If there is corruption in the education sphere, we must fight against corruption,” education expert Serob Khachatryan told “A1+”. To remind, Minister of Education and Science presented the draft law on “Higher education” on December 2 and now it is being amended.
