Yezidi Children Continuously Discriminated at Schools

Residents of Ferik community of Armavir Marz have addressed a letter to Arayik Harutyunyan, Minister of Education and Science with a demand to dismiss the head principal of the school. The letter is published by politik.am website, accompanied by a video.

https://www.facebook.com/politikyou/videos/254148715233724/

“Honorary Mr. Minister,

We, a number of residents of Ferik community of Armavir Marz, are writing to express our discontent with the situation at our village school. It is more than 30 years that the school is headed by Levon Poghosyan. During his tenure, the school performance has deteriorated, there are almost no specialists at the school who would work with our children according to required competences. While during the Soviet period many children from our village would become higher education students, in the recent 30 years the village has not produced a single university student.

Activities necessary to engage children into the educational process are often not held at the school, the teachers frequently disregard children and humiliate their dignity. The classes are not held fully, often times classes are missed out. Children are called names, such as imbeciles, illiterate, teachers declare that as Yezidi children they don’t need to study, there are teachers who show up to work having consumed alcohol, the head principal and his teacher fellows frequently organize parties at the school and consume alcohol at the presence of the children. Before the Velvet Revolution we were not able to speak about these issues, because we thought that as a Yezidi village neither the Marz administration, nor the government would pay attention to our issues. After the revolution, a hope has arisen in us that we will be able to speak about our issues and eventually the situation at the school will change and our children will have an opportunity to receive quality education.

The residents of the village no longer wish the school to be administered by people who have no intention to give education to our children, who demonstrate a discriminatory attitude to our children. Despite the fact that there are some teachers at the school who have good faith, we demand a change of school head principal and the teaching staff.”