TOUGH LESSONS: TEACHERS FACE CHALLENGE OF EXPLAINING EVENTS TO CHILDREN

Teacher Anahit Margaryan, 34, says that the next day after the March 1 bloody events in Yerevan her 15-year-old daughter Sona said while returning home from school that together with her classmates they wanted to raise a voice of protest and organize a march. “Mum, we study human rights, civil law. We have that right to raise our voice and join it to the voice of the people who were subjected to violence for a peaceful demonstration that day,” Sona told her mother. “We want to go out on a march, don’t say no, besides, they won’t try to beat us, this is our country.”
Anahit says she told her children the truth – the military should not have used arms against peaceful demonstrators. But it was more difficult to look into the eyes of 25 pupils of the ninth grade and give explanations regarding the events. They put one question to Anahit and that was: How can an Armenian kill an Armenian?
“Children are very sensitive. You can’t distract them or make something up in the name of justice. They invoke the first article of the Constitution that Armenia is a democratic, sovereign country and without waiting for my answer say: ‘No, we aren’t sovereign.’ They were surprised when the protesters had gathered near [foreign] embassies and were saying: ‘So, our people’s hope is the outside world, in fact they were asking help from those embassies, to mediate between them and the authorities’,” says Margaryan.
Karen Mnatsakanyan, a teacher from Yerevan, says that when pupils began discussing the March 1 events during classes they particularly spoke about the work of the media.
“Our children are much more informed than we were years ago and modern technologies contribute to this. They say they mainly watched Yerkir Media TV station. They were angered at the discontinued broadcasts of the Armenian-language programs of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It means they see and hear everything, you can’t distract them.”
Another teacher from Yerevan, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says that it is impossible to say a different thing to teenagers because the presidential election was rigged before their own eyes.
“And that was beginning from the moment when we were saying to children that on a given day there would be no classes after the third hour since we would together go to the public rally of the government candidate. It was still then that they were asking why it was prohibited for teachers to go to the public rally of Levon Ter-Petrosyan and providing an answer themselves – We live in a tyranny.”
Anahit Margaryan says: “The authorities have devaluated themselves, moreover in the eyes of teachers, but it is these teachers who now educate tomorrow’s generation.”
Civil education specialist Flora Khachatryan from Etchmiadzin says that children bear with difficulty the events of March 1 and have serious psychological problems.
“We teach children about civil society, human rights. I am asked what the political rights of people are – participating in demonstrations and marches?” Khachatryan says. “But one thing is when we present and a different thing is how a person should be able to realize and defend this right. I could not explain it in any way, because the reality contradicts all that we have been teaching.”
Khachatryan says that senior students asked during conversations – what a civil duty means and what executing an order is.
“I was saying that some of you will go to study in a police academy. What would you do if you had that order to shoot at your own people, won’t you obey it? And if a person chooses that field an order is a law for him. And among the demonstrators are women, children. It gave rise to serious thinking among them,” she says.
Nevertheless, Khachatryan thinks that every teacher must consider it to be his or her civil duty to explain to children simply a misunderstanding took place. Misunderstanding, because nonetheless a person must have the right to express and defend his or her opinion.
“They seem cautious lest they should express their opinion. But we tell them, children, you have the right to free speech, don’t we? We have rolled our whole liberation struggle, our spirit and breath at least 15 years back,” she says.
Teacher Hamlet Nahatakyan does not agree that a sense of fear will be formed among children.
“This generation is a generation of independence. There is so much boldness in their eyes, so much strength and vigor in their looks, and it is clear from the questions they give that they are not afraid,” Nahatakyan says.
And Anahit Margaryan thinks that it is the generation that has genuinely appreciated the value of free and fair speech – and it is difficult to put off a person who has got the taste of freedom.
Khachatryan says that she will continue to tell her pupils not to be afraid, to trust that they live in a free country: “Now we have a problem, to be able to keep the liberal spirit in pupils so that they don’t feel miserable and fearful.”
Gayane Mkrtchyan

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