President Armen Sarkissian met with a group of intellectuals: national unity is not only about Army, about culture, it is also about the textbooks which our children learn by

President Armen Sarkissian met with a group of intellectuals.

At the beginning of the meeting, President Sarkissian said he was anticipating a straight candid conversation and was ready to listen to sincere and unofficial opinions. ”If you have ideas or advice, I will be happy to hear them out,” the President said. “I have many concerns. For instance, the lack of public discourse with the participation of intellectuals,” the President noted in particular. “There is a lack of public, freely thinking people, the people, who are not only free per se but free in spirit,” Armen Sarkissian said. “There is another factor which disturbs me. Often, some happenings or processes are taken by the society very superficially. In the mass media, in analytical pieces, comments, statements one can hardly find any substantial analysis. Discussions are mostly emotional, sentimental, based on the headlines, meaning they read the headline and start to comment on it, disregarding what comes after, the material itself.

In general, I see the syndrome of discussing things at the level of headline, superficially which is very sad.
Another thing that concerns me and is related to pretending, when we pretend we have something. I can give you a simple example: we pretend that we have a developed IT area in our country. It is one thing to have talented young people, Soviet traditions in the areas of mathematics, physics, natural sciences, and quite another to have a mature industry. To talk today of a developed IT area in our country is just to pretend we do. Only 5-6 thousand people are working on it… We can’t move toward the future with twenty thousand engineers, only 5-6 thousand of which are software engineers.”

Stressing the importance of such meetings, the guests of the President - the author and movie critic David Muradian, literature critic David Gasparian, artist Samvel Sevada, poet and translator Hakop Movses, journalist Edik Andreassian, writer, editor-in-chief of Grakan Tert Karine Khodikian, Director of the External Relations and Protocol Department of the Mother See Archbishop Nathan Hovhannisyan – spoke about their concerns and presented their views. Noting that the world is going through troubled and challenging times, among important prerequisites to face them and overcome mentioned were national unity and togetherness which can have in their core first of all the Army and our culture.

Developing this idea, President Sarkissian spoke about the Hay Park program. “We need to create symbols of national unity. The Hay Park is based on that very idea,” the President said. “We will build a park on the territory of Tsitsernakaberd, and it will be a program of national unity. It may take years to build it, we need to unite. The Park will have a very simple structure: the first segment will be dedicated to our lost homeland – Van, Erzrum, Karin, and others parts; the second segment will be dedicated to Spyurk, and the third – to today’s Armenia and Artsakh. That big Park will be a composition of small ones. For instance, there will be the park of Artsakh, and the people of Artsakh will take care of it, the other – the Park of the Armenians of Marseille, others of Rostov, Moscow, or Glendale Armenians. This way we will show the world that we are a united nation.”

The participants of the meeting spoke also about the Armenian language related issues and stressed the importance of state attention and care toward it, preservation of its pristine nature, literate speech and writing. President Sarkissian stressed also the necessity of preserving Western Armenian language and importance of dialects and noted that they are the wealth of our language.

Presenting their concern related to the standards of educational programs, the intellectuals underscored the importance of education, national character, and national values. President Sarkissian said that education is the locomotive of development for any country in general and especially for Armenia, and the educational system is one of the most sensitive parts of our social life. “To change school textbooks, methods, attitude is not that easy. The process should unavoidably undergo lengthy public discussions and receive public approval. National unity is not just the Army or culture, it is also the textbook which our children learn by. If there is no national unity on what we should teach our children, how can we be united on the issues of army or culture?
Knowing the world well, we need to create our own, and should strive to make it one of the best. It is possible with the things that are yours, are in line with your culture, history, milieu and reflect what you represent, your national character. It is not nationalism. The German educational system reflects German culture and nation, British education is in line with British… We should be careful with our cultural and historical values. Armenia is not isolated. But this uncertainly also creates opportunities. Twenty years from now, the countries which have vision and know where they are headed to, know who they are, are disciplined, have a precise strategy, these states will be the winners. In that the vision, education, culture, and, certainly, healthcare will have a significant role. This world provides opportunities. We are located at the crossroads and here our ideas, notions, and values become important. It is important to understand who we are and assess ourselves. And this has nothing to do with national arrogance.”