Yerevan daily: Military-patriotic classes to be banned in Armenian schools

Armenia's newly-appointed education, science, culture and sports minister has ordered to ban all types of military-patriotic classes and educational activities in schools.

The statement came from the Yerevan-based daily Zhoghovurd, Caliber.Az reports.

"A circular appeared at the disposal of the newspaper Zhoghovurd, in which the minister instructed Yerevan's deputy mayor and the chief secretaries of all regional administrations of the Republic of Armenia to avoid militarisation of schools.

This means refusing to cooperate with such military organisations as the Military Sports Club, the Zark program, Pokr Mher, the military-patriotic public organisation IOZ (The Art of Staying Healthy), etc.

Zhoghovurd learnt that Zhanna Andreasyan signed the mentioned circular while still being a deputy minister.

What happens? In fact, in schools, in addition to the subject of "Initial Military Training" (NVP), schoolchildren will no longer be able to participate in other military-patriotic programs and courses.

This is, in fact, the way of action and the handwriting of the ruling power – the further away from patriotism, the better.

In fact, we should still be grateful that the minister did not decide to exclude the initial military training from the list of school subjects. By the way, her predecessors had such an intention after the 2018 political reshuffle, but under public pressure, thank God, they had to abandon this idea," the newspaper writes.