President Armen Sarkissian's congratulatory message on the Occasion of Teacher’s Day

Dear Teachers,

I congratulate you on the occasion of Teacher’s Day.

In 1990, leaving his studies unfinished, the YSU History Department student of the fourth year Tatul Krpeyan went to Getashen village in the northern part of Artsakh and started his work there as a teacher of the Armenian history and geography in the local school. But first and foremost he was the Fatherland’s solider and died for its freedom. He became the National Hero of Artsakh.

Today, heroic sons of our people defend that freedom with self-sacrifice, again in the heroic Artsakh, against the same enemy again.

During the war, the teacher becomes a soldier. After the war, the soldier becomes a teacher.

Remember our history, remember WWII, remember Artsakh’s fight for freedom.

Look at the moment we live in, when your pupils appear at the battlefield when needed – of different age and different education, with different knowledge, from different families but all of them with the lessons of patriotism well-memorized, the lessons which you gave them.
That lessons start with the family and parents, continue in the first grade, through you, and never end because they continue also after school.

It is not just a lesson of patriotism. It is also a lesson of values and morality. Fatherland and faith, language and culture, family and home: our identity for centuries has been resting on these indestructible pillars.

These values are unchanged today too; threats to these values and those who threat these values didn’t change either. But the most important thing is that we didn’t change as a united nation, as a type. We didn’t change also because of you.

Education is a value in itself, a value which unites all other values, and you are the sowers of these values.

Every extraordinary situation – war or pandemic – is also a challenge for the educational system.

I am confident that because of the people like you, because of Teachers, all challenges will not only be thwarted but also the system itself will become stronger. Our country will become stronger.

Thank you, dear friends. Stay healthy.

God protect us all.