Since the government announced in April its intention to modify the current law on language in order to accommodate the opening of foreign language schools in Armenia, several politicians, journalists and public service groups have been in an uproar.

The decision primarily stems from the planned opening of a new private school in 2013 situated in Dilijan, where course instruction will be taught in English.

The Dilijan International School of Armenia will cater to 600 students between the ages 13-18, only 30 percent of which will be required to pay a tuition fee. The school will attract teachers from around the world and the curriculum will be taught with the 21th century concepts of global networking and individualism in mind.

Critics of the amendments to the law argue that the Armenian language will be undermined by the opening of additional schools where Russian will undoubtedly be the primary language of teaching, as was the case in the latter years of the Soviet Union, when parents had the choice of sending their children to either English or Russian schools.

On May 29, prominent journalist Tigran Paskevichyan in an interview with Tert.am even went so far as to suggest that Russian would dominate as Armenia’s primary language in 15 or 20 years, claiming that the foreign language schools, which will largely be Russian in his estimate, would cater primarily to the upper class, and since the upper classes tend to rule in government, they will insist that legislation and other state-level matters be conducted in Russian since their Armenian language skills will be weak. Other critics claim that the opening of such schools will not be a quick fix to the perceived damaged educational system in Armenia, and in former Prime Minister Vazken Manukian’s opinion, the amendments “do not correspond to our [Armenia’s] national and state interests.” He himself was responsible for banning primary education from being taught in foreign languages during his term in office.

Armenian society should not oppose the opening of foreign language schools for the paranoid, unfounded reason that the Armenian language would be under threat of extinction. The government was already pressured to limit the number of schools that could open under the proposed amendments to five, as the Minister of Sciences and Education Armen Ashotian revealed in a press conference on May 26. Furthermore, he insisted that students of all schools, private or public, would be required to pass state “graduation exams in the Armenian language.”

Rather than be overly cautious about how students learn and how their parents make decisions about their children’s schooling, society should instead concentrate on raising the quality of education nationwide by pressuring the Armenian Ministry of Sciences and Education to step up its efforts in eradicating corruption in universities, where professors demanding bribes in exchange for high grades or acceptance into college faculties is a tolerated practice. The salaries of teaching staffs should be considerably increased nationwide with state funds dedicated for that purpose in all primary and secondary institutions of learning to eradicate apathy that is rampant among school faculties. All regional schools lacking proper heating systems and hygienic conditions, and most importantly books, must be rehabilitated to provide the proper learning environments for young students. These are the things that society should be active in resolving.

In the meantime, let private schools open in which students demonstrating intellectual promise receive a premier education they could not otherwise benefit from in substandard schools where complacent, mediocre teachers expect “donations” in exchange for good marks while the quality of education suffers.