Learning about education

Delegates on Friday attended “school” led by Dr. Thomas Samuelian, a lawyer who was born in the United States and now lives in Armenia. He also has a doctorate degree in linguistics and translated the prayers of St. Gregory of Narek into English.

Dr. Samuelian is working with the Diocese to strengthen its youth and education programming.

“There’s lots of different ways to learn and teach Armenian and Armenian topics to different groups in different ways,” he said.

He introduced the delegates to some sample resources that can be used to teach the Armenian language, faith, and heritage in an intertwined way.

“If we really take seriously being Christian and we really take seriously the Sunday service, we have to understand the words going by. It’s not enough to stand and hear familiar songs,” he said.

Part of the process he outlined was to tie Armenian words to their roots to see the connections between Armenian and English. In knowing these roots, individuals can better understand the badarak and better be a part of it. The Lord’s Prayer, for example, represents about 60 percent of the language needed to follow the badarak.

“It would be more interactive and it was meant to be interactive. These are simple things we can teach parishioners who are not that comfortable with our service so they will feel comfortable in church,” he said of learning the simple phrases used in the badarak. “Why is it important to look at the language in which we pray? Because we can get more out of it. We can get a great deal more out of our heritage.”

“People should enjoy learning this, because if they’re not enjoying it they’re not going to learn it,” he said, noting that there are many different ways to learn and individuals should find a system that works for them. “I’m not trying to oversimplify learning a language, but one can do it. And one should do it, because there’s plenty of hidden treasures there.”

Most of the resources he used in his discussion came from the Arax-29 Foundation based in Yerevan, Armenia.

Posted by Jake at May 4, 2007 11:38 AM