By Alexander Tagvoryan

YEREVAN, July 16–The project of DILIJAN International School of Armenia project could be suspended in the near future. The initiators of the project — Ruben Vardanyan, Veronica Zonabend, Tim Flynn and Noubar Afeyan — wrote an open letter to the members of the Public Council under the President of Armenia and indicated that they are seriously thinking about suspending the project and to realize it outside  Armenian territory.

The DILIJAN International School was planned to be the first international-caliber boarding school in Armenia where 600 children aged 13-18 from different countries (mostly from the Armenian diaspora) would study. Two hundred of those children should be Armenian citizens, about 80 percent of whom would be sponsored by charity organizations.

The education curriculum should be given in English, and all the students, despite of their nationality and ethnicity, would have to study several foreign languages. The graduated students of the school would receive an International Baccalaureate Diploma.

One of the main goals of the school was to include the Armenian language into the list of the IB languages, which would give an opportunity to teach Armenian in any of the 3,000 IB schools in the world.

“It is the school’s mission to create strong, long-term ties based on the principles of inter-ethnic tolerance with an Armenian coloring and receiving an education of the highest academic caliber. We wonder how to motivate our children to study Armenian language, which as of today is neither the language they use to communicate with family, nor at school, nor with friends. For this reason, we are investing in a program for studying Armenian under the IB system. It is also the reason why we plan to teach Armenian history, its literature and arts, and we also want to train our students in ancient Armenian crafts,” said the initiators of the project.

One of the other goals of the initiators of the school was that “the words ‘Armenia’ and ‘Armenian’ will not only be associated with people perishing during the Genocide and earthquakes, conjuring not pity and sympathy, but a feeling of pride for victories, achievements and the successes of our graduates in the fields of science, culture and art.”

“We are deeply concerned about the question of how the young generation of the six million Diaspora — our children born outside of and having never lived in Armenia — will consider themselves. Our children are assimilating, and we can’t help but be alarmed by this,” the letter said.

But, of course, this school wasn’t thought to be just for Armenians that lived in the diaspora. The initiators were sure that the school would help to make Armenia a more appealing place for people from other countries, so that they come to live, work and study in Armenia.

“Unfortunately, we have to admit that because of an unfavorable combination of circumstances, our project has met with a negative reaction among the progressive and outspoken members of Armenian society,” the initiators said.

The amendments in the law on language and education in Armenia have resulted in a negative attitude towards the school. Those amendments weren’t actually needed for the successful realization of the project, but the current law “On Language” would make it difficult for Armenian citizens studying at the school to enter Armenian universities after graduation.

“At present, we are regrettably seriously considering the suspension of work on the project, as it is our belief that even without these additional obstacles to the successful realization of such a complex initiative, and even provided the full support of government and society, it will require an incredible amount of effort to convince parents to send their children to a country about which they know very little and which they do not conceive of as a place to live and receive an education. In the current situation we do not view it as feasible to develop the project, as it is fundamentally incorrect to create a school in an atmosphere that rejects it,” said the letter.