Ashot Melkonyan: There are big mistakes and omissions in the 7th grade Armenian history textbook

There are big mistakes and omissions in the 7th grade Armenian history textbook, Director of the NAS History Institute Ashot Melkonyan told Alpha News.

“The author of the 7th grade history textbook is Smbat Hovhannisyan, a lecturer at the Department of World History. At first, he received congratulations for authoring the textbook, then complaints from teachers and experts. We started to get acquainted with that textbook. There were huge errors and omissions, both methodologically and factually. The Medieval History Department of the Academy’s Institute of History alone wrote a 37-page negative review of that textbook. Probably there was no expert left in Armenia who did not express their opinion and dissatisfaction. If it were discussed in advance, the experts would have tried to improve the electronic version, and it would have been put into circulation,” Melkonyan said.

At the same time, he noted that the reason was a lack of time.

“The reason was a lack of time. The author began to tell us that we are ignoring the history of statehood when the book does not describe the issue of state formations in the period 428–885, which is very important. At the beginning of the textbook, it is written that the purpose of the textbook is to present the history of statehood to generations. Meanwhile, the history of statehood is not only the history of kingdoms but also the history of governments. It turns out that a world history specialist wrote a textbook on the ancient period and the Middle Ages of Armenian history,” Ashot Melkonyan emphasized.

Our interlocutor noted that the terms “homeland” and “people” cannot be separated from each other.

“Obviously, it is not possible to separate the homeland and the people. The formation of the nation and the state runs in parallel. It is fortunate that we, being an ethno-nationality, have preserved our statehood, and it is a misunderstanding that people say that we have not had statehood for centuries. We have not had pan-Armenian statehood, but we have always had statehood in a localized form,” concluded Ashot Melkonyan.