School textbooks cite American radio sources to describe 2018 events

Today, we are facing content-related issues with school textbooks, said education expert Atom Mkhitaryan in an interview with Alpha News.

“There are content-related issues with school textbooks. For the third consecutive year, dozens of textbooks have not made it into schools. Two years ago, some textbooks were delivered late, and there were printing issues that took so long to resolve that half the academic year had already passed,” Mkhitaryan said.

According to the expert, no one is held accountable for this. “It has become normal to go to school, walk into a classroom, and explain things without a textbook. Clearly, that’s not how education works,” he added.

Mkhitaryan also spoke about history textbooks. He said that last year, a competition was held for the 10th-grade history textbook, with only one group participating.

“The group included Armenia’s top historians, academics, experts from the Institute of History, and specialists from the Department of Armenian History at Yerevan State University. The textbook was compiled and submitted to the ministry, but the ministry responded that it did not meet the so-called new standards. As a result, the textbook was not introduced into schools. The 10th-grade students, who are now in 11th grade, had no history textbook. In other words, the ministry preferred that children have no textbook at all rather than one compiled by top historians and academics,” he said.