Introduction
In this report we will criticize the curriculum of Armenian governmental schools. The tables on the bottom shows the curriculum of humanitarian, Natural Science and Math flows in high schools, Art Craft Flow and Private Schools. First of all, we would like to start by mentioning that the biggest problem of Armenian high schools is that they even exist. The reason why it exists is because of Europe, they require high school education for us to enter their universities. The existence of our high school wouldn’t be as much of an issue if it wasn’t for how poorly it is organized. The reality is that our high schools don’t teach us anything valuable they are just made for show. We agree that 10th grade is necessary to finish up everything that we learned up upon that point but beyond that nothing we do in 11th and 12th grades gives us anything remotely close to what can be called education. Every high schooler with plans to apply to university goes to additional classes rendering the whole school useless. The curriculum is not perfect as will be discussed later on, but in theory it is not as bad as the reality shows us. In theory it gives us enough time to learn all of the subjects but because of neglect on the side of teachers and non-caring attitude of students the whole system fails to function the way it was designed to function. The frustration that this creates for the students is unimaginable and it causes them to lose hope in education and this frustration translates to anxiety, depression or anger which is why most teenagers are aggressive. The ignorant behaviours that is associated with Armenian teachers is mostly caused by their salaries. They earn just enough to survive and by no means have any energy left to educate teenagers. The main role of the school in our opinion should be more of a guidance through life rather that forcing knowledge into students and abandoning them into the real world where students have no idea what to do, where to go and how to survive in general. The main idea of the school in early years should be to give general information about how our world functions and the history of it. But that’s not enough, it shouldn’t just force the information it should explain why the given information will be helpful in the future. For example, in my middle school years I’ve always heard from my peers that math is useless and will never be useful in any way that they can imagine. This is the fault of the education system that doesn’t explain the information it provides. The school is not just a place to study, it is where we form our social connection it is the place the place that we call our second home and this is not just a clever wordplay by teachers it is our second home by the definition of the word itself. Now let’s discuss rest and sleep. In our opinion as a student’s we get too little sleep especially in12th grade. The time that we waste in school doing nothing can be spent on doing homework for tutoring which is necessary in the system that the government built. The same problem of rest is present in the time that is dedicated to breaks in between classes. The time dedicated is simply not enough not properly rest and it would be inadequate to speak of eating. It’s not enough in every angle you view it, we need a minimum of 15 minutes to eat and rest before the next class.
Humanitarian education
Looking at the table you can spot a trend, as the grade gets higher the number of subjects per week increases. This causes time management problem for students because in the 12th grade they are starting to prepare for university exams as well as governmental exams. The increase of subjects can be explained by giving us more class time to better prepare for exams. But what this does in reality is give us even less time to actually prepare because as we discussed almost all of the students chose additional tutoring over staying in class which causes students to experience great deal of stress as to manage both school and additional tutoring which eventually makes them start skipping school. We recommend increasing quality of classes in school so that students don’t need to attend additional tutoring or decrease the quantity of subjects per week so that students can focus on attending their additional tutoring. We also think that some subjects are not needed so in further we suggest outright removing those subjects. The subjects we think of are Social Sciences, Native Christian History and Military Preparation. The amount of work that students have to do is already high enough and giving them knowledge about the listed subjects is a waste of time. Teachers in these types of schools are frightening and not at all motivating or anything like teachers. Teachers talk about respect that a student should respect the teacher. Teachers want to earn respect by scaring students, that is really not respect it is something forced into a student’s head with something that will scare them. Teachers should give them a knowledge of the certain subject not to force it into the students head, because of these the student in becoming like a robot rather than a thinking and normal functioning human being.
Subjects
The main concern that people who plan subjects should be how much information they can pass in the shortest time possible. Of course this includes efficiency, brute forcing information won't work for the majority of children, because in majority of cases children or teenagers won't be able to cram in such amount of information in such a short amount of time. Looking at the subject plans I can confidently say that they weren't made by the same person, some subjects teach too slowly which is very inefficient and deprives the whole education of excitement. Some subjects are being brute force which also scales down efficiency quite significantly. Math, it's on of the most important subjects which should teach people quick and efficient decision making not just multiply and divide numbers fast. A lot of students think that the further mentioned is the case which deprives them of motivation to invest time into it. There isn't a whole lot of information in the basics of math to be passed, but the way that it's being thought is on of the worst cases ever, there isn't a lot to learn but because of the way it's thought students think that it's endless time consuming and pointless. This is mainly because of one simple fact that they don't teach the basics of the basics, let me elaborate. Most of the themes in math are connected to one idea understand which will lead to ultimately understanding the whole themes connected with that main idea. What the teachers are doing is cramming the themes without giving the main idea which narrows down all the paths to only one brute forcing the subjects without proper understanding. This leads to students which are good at brute forcing to the top of their class and lefts out children with the gift of logic because it's not required in the math that we are being forced to learn in school. This colossal unmotivates children to the point where in each class there's only student who understands what he is learning and that is mostly due to the fact that he took private tutoring. What needs to be done is address the main idea in the beginning and increase the amount of classes dedicated to it to the point where students understand it after that every other theme concerning that idea should be a breeze for the students.
Another major subject that needs to be changed is history. There are so many complex problems in it that it's each of them will require its own dedicated essay to fully explain the issues that it has. As I'm not fully educated in this subjects I can't give fully detailed explanation concerning this topic but I will explain and give explanation to the problem that I've encountered as a past and current student. The main one that I've encountered is the amount of history and the way it's being taught. History is a limited subject it's being written as we're learning it, because of this to teach it from 5-th class they stretch the events, walk around the main idea and repeat them in each book. Because of the stretched nature of the book separating the main idea and opinions that the writer put there is very hard and takes colossal more time than it should. Opinions and lies inside the books are also a very big problem, propaganda in the books I most common and a lot of professionals agree that religious tampered with the history books to push their own agenda. This is not only outrageous but should be outright illegal tampering with history deprives us from learning our mistakes and gives in this case religion full control over people to brainwash them from the very start of their learning period.
Natural Science and maths education
Looking at the table we can easily spot that this type of high school education is relatively much more complex and stressful for students than humanitarian. This is useless because the subjects do not provide enough knowledge to students to successfully pass the exams and in the end students attend to additional tutoring. The same problem with humanitarian but only bigger and more complex. Students get more stressed because not being able to manage their time correctly which again causes depression, anxiety and anger but in a more complex way. What we suggest to this problem is almost the same solution to this problem. We suggest to increase the quality of classes so in this way students don’t attend to additional tutoring or decrease the quantity of the classes so the students can attend to additional classes in ease. And also we suggest outright removing Military Preparation, Computer Science and Social Knowledge so this way the effort of school is less and easier to comprehend. We also think that the subjects that are connected to Natural Science should be by choice. Students should choose between Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Geography. Students may choose two of the listed subject to learn and furthermore get examined by their chosen subjects. These students tend to become geniuses and if the teachers don’t motivate them when teaching it will cause problems. To be honest teachers are often destroying hopes of students rather than motivating them to become best. These is a major problem which comes in a lot of this types of schools. Wet think that the most effective way to solve this problem is to outright replace these teachers.
Bullying
Bullying also can be rooted down to curriculum. This is a very complex social issue that predates to our ancestors, there was bullying is bullying will be bullying, but curriculum created schools where in order to learn you have to significantly cut down time spent on socializing. Bullied kids are mostly the ones who lack experience needed to socialize properly and when the time comes to cement themselves into the school social network they are unable to do so and become underdogs. Because of the nature of brute forcing method of teaching that curriculum provides teens who want to learn need to spend enormous amounts of time studying and as a result they don't gather the experience needed to socialize properly. Socializing can be more important in getting prestige job that the education provided in the schools. Most of the people who invested time in education and became office clerks which marks the complete failure of the system. This time invested in it doesn't just justify itself it actually harms more in the end. People invested in it not only don't get good education but become outcasts as well. This is a deep issue which can't be solved easily. Just cutting down education won't do, because as much as socializing is important, the main goal of schools is education.
We believe that this issue can be solved by teaching kids that socializing is also an import part of education. For example, in the lower grades organizing social games and actively supporting children who are socially awkward. Once the child breaks the barrier of fear of social interactions he will be able to focus on studying without the fear of being an outcast. This needs to be done at an early age when kids are just starting to cement themselves into social organism of the school after everyone is in their position nothing can be done and it will ruin the life of the child significantly. Another good way will be to organizing camping trips with children to give them time outside of school to socialize with each other, we believe this is the most efficient way to make kids discover each other's personalities and form groups based on their interests. Alternatively to force kids to socialize and learn group projects are one of the most effective ways. This way children get to know each other and work towards achieving a common goal. Working alone is import in developing an individual but gutting down the group projects all together is big fault of the educational system. People are social animals we crave social interactions and our brains understands how important it is for us, that's why socially awkward kids are scared to mess up and stop interacting altogether. Giving kids time to interact is also an important part of the education. Without it comes depression and anxiety which negatively affects the studying process. People who design the curriculum should take into account social interactions because they play a huge role in the future of the child. School shouldn't just give education and release teens into the real world. School is the place where we spent on constructing our individual person and this should be taking into account. School should make productive people for the society and happy people are the most productive state of the human beings. Also forbidding any relationships between students makes them lack the experience needed to find partners and construct a family. Because of the nature of the problem, it cannot be controlled and what results in is hiding and avoiding teachers further separating the line between the student and the teacher.
Art Craft Flow
If you look at the table, you can spot that this high school education is based for people who are dedicated to become people of art. In this case there are a lot of subjects that need to be removed from the educational component. These subjects are Military Preparation, Physical Education, Natural Science, Social Knowledge, Native History. If this happens than students will have more time to work on their ideas and create works of art. The final examinations should be based on subjects that refer to art rather subjects like Mathematics or Native History. These types of students need more free time to think about and develop something new and most of these types of students attend to essential Art based clubs to improve their view and skill in art. Also their schools have to provide them with everything they can such as canvases, painting tools, clay and so on. These students are creative so they have to be a little free, so artistic gift would be for nothing good. These people are almost always introverts and tend to keep things to themselves that’s why most talented people don’t even become known in small city. To fix this problem art craft schools should make environment where these students will feel free and will become more open.
Teacher student relationship
Relationship between students and teachers is a very important part of education. Cementing authority and respect for teachers is very important but if the teacher focuses only on these two what happened is that students are being afraid of the teachers, which greatly affects the effectiveness of the curriculum. This is happening in most of the government schools, the role of the teacher is to make the students listen and although removing all of the distractions and being authoritative is one way and the easiest way to achieve this it brings a lot of problems with it. The respect that those teachers are after is being flipped around and students hating them start giving them nicknames and avoiding them at any cost. Respect cannot be earned through fear, because of what they are doing achieves the goal of forcing students to listen but it fails at making them learn. The authoritative attitude of the teachers only worsens the situation of making students learn and develop into human beings in order to survive in the real world.
Solution to this problem is more effort from the teachers in order to develop friendly but at the same time respectful relationship between them. Respect is two sided the attitude of the teachers needs to show support to the students who are putting effort into studying and as an effect encouraging them to study more. If teachers show respect to the students and not look down on them, the respect will be given back to them. The reason why teachers are disencourage in putting more effort is because of their salary. They received way too little to justify spending more effort than the minimum amount required. We think they are not to blame because given the same circumstances, we wouldn't be able to be better than them. The world that we built operates on money, it is the ultimate motivation of everyone. When a person is given a minimum salary it is only essential that he puts minimum effort. What needs to be done is increase their salary and put more effort into giving them the proper education needed for teaching students. Increasing the salary of the teachers can be economically justified, because more productive students are released from school in order to work, means more money generated for the government. After the salary is increased teachers should have more motivation, which will lead to better relationships of students and teachers which ultimately will lead to more effective curriculum.
Private School Education
Now let’s look at a table that displays a private type of education which does not educate with the standards of governmental education. Private schools are more free and less stressful for students and tend to teach more things that would be needed for adult life and skills that will help teenagers make their first steps of surviving in this world. This table is Mkhitar Sebastatsi Educational Complex’s table.
Looking at the table you can easily spot that private education is a lot different than normal governmental education. They have different types of subjects rather than normal educational subjects. There is a choice based subjects where the student can choose from a variety of subjects to improve and become good at. The physical education is also choice based, which means the students chooses from the verity of sports to play at the class. These choices can be changed every semester. The Military Preparation actually prepares students for military emergencies, because it is taught in military based camps not in classroom. This way students get practical view of the subject and it becomes more efficient. The homework in these type of schools is less stressful and you can hand in any time of the year as long as you have it in the end of the year. Student teacher relationship is better than normal schools, because teachers tend to become friends with students and tend to understand their mentality. But as long as there are advantages, there are also disadvantages. Private schools are not for people who are not dedicated to learning, because private schools are more free and less stressful for students and these lazy one take advantage and tend to actually interrupt students who are actually dedicated to learning. Private schools also have subjects that are not really needed for students of high school such as ecology, economy, native architectural flow, art, philosophy, human right, political science. These subjects do not need to be removed, rather than they need to make to the list of chosen subjects. Also there are teachers who are a little old fashioned and do not like things that teenagers do these years which is not good. In our opinion these types of teachers need to be replaced or they should be taught to keep their opinions to themselves because it causes students to be less confident and that makes them more closed and it will result in a bad effect on a student’s mentality and that causes anxiety, depression and so on. Overall private schools create more confident, interactive, socially prepared, knowledgeable people if of course a student is dedicated to learning. Private schools give interpersonal skills, for example in our Educational complex we learn subjects in groups of people of our age who have chosen the certain subject and this way we interact with a lot of people. That is why in normal governmental schools a 7th grader would not know about an 8th grader, but in our school a lot of people know each other and socialize together.
To summarize every problem concerning school has all to do with nailing the balance between social interactions and education. Every system has problems and nothing is perfect, but we still think that a much better job could have been done if more effort was put into properly thinking about every aspect of the school system. Neglect of social interactions and cramming information is not even close to a good educational system. This makes the curriculum not work properly and ultimately makes the students hate school.