Armenia

Located in Asia Minor, Armenia borders Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan (including the disputed Nagorno Karabagh region) to the east and southwest, and Iran to the south. While the historic Armenian kingdom once extended into northeast Turkey and northwest Iran, from the Caspian to the Mediterranean seas, Armenia is the smallest of the 15 former Soviet Socialist republics, at only 29,800 sq km (11,490 sq mi) in size. The population is 3.8 million. Although for centuries most Armenians lived in highlands tending animals, today 68 percent occupy the nation's towns and urban areas.

Education in Armenia has long been regarded as a vital part of the nation's identity and heritage. An ancient culture and mountainous land, Armenia was located at the center of what has been called the "cradle of civilization." Unfortunately, because it was situated between Eastern and Western civilizations, the country was continually caught in the turmoil of war. At the same time, however, its seat astride trade and migration routes between Europe and Asia Minor allowed goods and ideas to pass frequently through the land. Intercourse with China, for example, may have helped bring to the west some of the tools and knowledge that aided in events of the Renaissance such as the discovery of the new world.

Over time, Armenia developed a unique language, extensive literature, and distinctive art and architecture, all the while sustaining several dynasties. In 301 A.D., it was the first nation to adopt Christianity as the official state religion; subsequently, Armenian schooling has been closely connected with the Armenian Apostolic Church at various stages of the nation's history.

Until the fifth century, Armenians wrote in Greek, Aramaic, Syriac, or other alphabets. In 406 A.D., the clergyman Mesrob Mashtots created the original Armenian alphabet of 36 letters (two more were later added). Immediately afterwards, the first Armenian schools opened. They were state-run and accessible to a large population.

In the seventh century, Anania Shirakatsi developed a primary school that marked a milestone in education. Shirakatsi's writing gained renown outside Armenia for pioneering ideas such as tailoring material according to age and emphasizing not only content but methods of teaching.

One of the first institutions of higher education, the Academy of Tatev, was founded in the ninth century. Other schools and tremendous scholarship emerged over the next 400 years in centers of education throughout Armenia. Notably, one of the historic educators and deacons of the time, Hovhannes Sarkavag, was distinguished for arguing that love of the child was central to teaching. Although an invasion by Seljuk Turks in the eleventh century caused the first large-scale emigration of Armenians, universities were founded, such as University of Gladzor in 1280. The reestablished University of Tatev, celebrated beyond the borders of the country, was referred to as a "Second Athens,"with instruction in music, aesthetics, and philosophy. These medieval Armenian institutions conferred degrees of "Archimandrite" and "Rabbi," upon passing of written examinations and defense of theses. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, libraries issued forth and the first schoolbooks were pioneered.

Just as the West began exploring new lands and engaging new ideas in earnest, the East began to degenerate. By the sixteenth century, increasing numbers of schools were forced to close as the land was invaded repeatedly. Soon, most of Armenia was ravaged and fragmented. With no leader, its people amounted to a small Christian cluster surrounded by Muslims and nomads. For many years, the Armenian culture and its people dispersed, with their cultural life developing primarily in centers abroad, in Moscow, Venice, Tiblisi, and elsewhere.

Yet by the 1800s, Armenian intellectual life began to expand again as contact with Europe grew. Armenians helped build the first printing house in the Middle East in 1638 in Iran. The first novel ever written in spoken Armenian was produced by Khatchadour Abovian (1805-1848), making leisure reading accessible to more than solely the rich or educated. Armenians—at home and abroad—grew an extensive educational system during this time, developing schools, textbooks, teacher training, and educational policies to guide the process of learning across the lifespan.

This cultural and educational revival was aggressively dismantled, however, as Armenians fell victim to one of history's first genocides. In 1894 the Ottoman Turks began a massacre of over 200,000 Armenians which lasted for the next two years. The Russians closed Armenian schools and ordered the confiscation of church property, while the Turks wanted to move Armenians to Mesopotamia. After WWI broke out in 1915, the Young Turk party of the Ottoman Turkish Empire oversaw the systematic elimination of 1.5 million Armenians and the deportation of thousands more in a genocidal campaign that lasted until 1918.

With the advent of a brief period of statehood between 1918-1920, the first Armenian republic was established, building on the progress that had been made decades earlier—and then destroyed—to help create a foundation for today's educational system. By 1920, the institutions of school and church were separated. Over the next 20 years illiteracy was reduced drastically, from 83 percent to 16 percent between 1932 and 1940. Compulsory secondary education evolved in the 1960s with extensive construction and development of preschool, vocational, secondary and higher education systems.

After 1921, the Communist Soviet era dominated and information and literature from non-Communist nations was censored. Stalin's policy of "Russification"discouraged Armenians from preserving traditions and customs of their predecessors. By the 1980s, however, Gorbachev's rise to power brought new notions of reform, namely glasnost (openness in the media) and perestroika (rebuilding and restoring prosperity).

Just as positive change began to come to the region, however, the nation and its education system suffered the devastating blow of a massive earthquake in 1988. Some 50 villages were hit directly, and more than 500 schools were utterly destroyed. In all, estimates of as many as 50,000 Armenians were killed and 500,000 people left homeless by the earthquake. Conditions in the earthquake region continue to be dire, with tens of thousands of people still living in—and business and schools being conducted in—the temporary housing they were granted at the time of the quake.

Meanwhile, a war had ignited earlier in the year with neighboring Azerbaijan over the small region of Nagorno Karabagh ("mountainous fertile black gardens"), spawned after hundreds of Armenians were raped, maimed, and killed in Sumgait, north of Baku. Although a tenuous cease-fire has been in place since 1993, Azerbaijan and Turkey continue to impose a blockade around Armenia, leaving the nation in a crippling energy crisis and desperate economic condition.

Upon the breakup of the USSR, the Armenian people declared themselves a republic in 1991, for only the second time in nearly 700 years. While the main cities bustle with activity, they badly need modernizing due to lack of state financing for the fledgling nation.