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Only Armenian School in Jordan Closes; Assimilation Threat Grows

By Maral Nersessian

The Armenian community of Jordan, one of the prominent minorities in the country, faces a survival threat after the closing of its only school.

The Yuzbashian-Gulbenkian (kindergarten and elementary) school, founded in 1961, belongs to the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

It was built with the cooperation of three institutions: The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and the Armenian General Benevolent Union.

The school received annual financial supports from the AGBU and Amman’s Armenian Relief Society.

Approximately twenty Armenian student scholarships were sponsored by philanthropists living in Jordan and an annual fund that was suspended four years ago from the Gulbenkian Foundation.

As a last effort to maintain the school, that has been struggling for the past two years and was in decline much earlier, the management of the Armenian community institutions, led by community leader Very Reverend, Fr. Avetis Iprajian, the Patriarchal Deputy of Jerusalem, petitioned the Patriarchate for financial support.

The request was refused because the school failed to meet the threshold issued by the patriarchate of a minimum 70 Armenian students.

This school year, only 30 of the 64 students were Armenian.  Father Iprajian announced that the number of Armenian students expected next school year was seventeen.  In 2010, they numbered 88.

The community of about 3,000 Armenians, recognized by the Jordanian government as a community under the auspices of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, has failed to maintain the only Armenian school for various reasons.

The decline, noticeable for more than five years, can be attributed to indifference and a lack of understanding of the importance of the school’s continuation.

Continuous development with innovative systems could maintain a level of competition with other schools in the country. This is interconnected with the school’s financial needs.

Without this school, the assimilation process within the community will only speed up in the coming years.

A prominent community, with its strategic location, that once shouldered the obligation of connecting the Armenian communities of the Middle East and creating a strong diasporan Armenian network through regional conferences and youth targeted events, now faces an existential risk.

Maral Nersessian is a EU Projects Advisor, Technology Transfer Expert & GMP Consultant who resides in Jordan.

Comments (3)

Jilet kokorian
AGBU CLOSES ANOTHER school/community centre like they did in Los Angeles California and Toronto in Ontario Canada....WHAT IS NEXT ?????
Fr. Gomidass Sherbetdjian
Armenian Schools must be reopened if we do not want revolution in its true sense of the word. Dealers will not have chances for survival. Threats against the Armenian people will be retaliated by threats against all kinds of enemies. Armenians have experiences concerning this subject.
Taline Voskeritchian
Maral Nersessian's report on the closing of the Yuzbashian-Gulbenkian Armenian School of Amman sounds the alarm on a situation that has been festering for many years and that has finally come to its sad conclusion. Nersessian correctly attributes the causes of the school's decline to indifference, lack of innovation, and financial difficulties. But the picture is more complicated, as I have seen it and heard about it from my mother, Anahid Oshagan Voskeritchian, who was principal of the school for close to two decades since its founding and into the 1970s. The Armenian compound, which also includes the Saint Thaddeus Church, sits on a hilltop on Jebel Ashrafiyyeh, a lower-income neighborhood that had a large Armenian population when the school was founded. In those years, the school also benefited from having a strong academic standing, which was a incentive for some parents who did not live on Ashrafiyyeh to choose the Armenian school over others. As I recall, the student body in those years numbered more than 150. In time, the strong Armenian presence diminished as new, more desirable suburbs emerged in the heyday of Amman's dizzying expansion. This expansion also saw the establishment of new schools with more innovative (and sometimes hyped-up) curricula. Over time, the Armenian presence of the Jebel was replaced with migrant workers from abroad. To this demographic change must be added another important point: While the community organizations in Amman have been traditionally strong and active, the religious leadership of the school has lagged behind in sustaining a strong, generative,and democratic relationship with the community, and in bringing about innovation and renewal to a situation that has been festering for many years. All of these factors have, yes, led to the indifference of the community toward the school's fate, but it is important not to place disproportionate blame for school's demise on indifference of the community. The school's closure saddens me for a more personal reason. I had my first shot at teaching in the Yuzbashian-Gulbenkain School, at the untested age of 15, when my mother threw me into a classroom of wild children, as a substitute for a teacher of English who was taken ill. That was decades ago, but it was an initiation of sorts into a profession I still practice and love.

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