PM highlights education in International Workers' Day address

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan released a statement on International Workers’ Day.

Below is the full statement published by his office.

"Dear people, dear citizens of the Republic of Armenia,

On May 1 we celebrate International Workers' Day, and I’d like to congratulate us all on this occasion.

Civilization has formed and has been developing as a result of work, and work is the tool through which it is possible to make the life of the individual and the society better. The keyword here is ‘it is possible.’ Work is certainly a necessary but insufficient condition for making the life of the individual and society better, because only productive work brings satisfactory results, and in order to be productive, work must be based on knowledge, continuously developing skills, i.e. on education and being educated.

Usually when we say education, knowledge, knowledge-based work, we associate it with scientific-technical, technological and research work, which certainly isn’t inaccurate. But any work is more productive when it is based on enhancing and enriching one’s own knowledge about the given work, its nuances and peculiarities. This pertains to everything, crafts, arts, entrepreneurship, agriculture, pedagogy, state, military and municipal service, labor and leadership, and those countries and societies that have achieved prosperity have been guided by this logic.

The government and the ruling majority are guiding the Republic of Armenia with this logic, realizing that this is not a simple path, because to speak about the need for enhancing knowledge and developing skills means to take note that we do not know something.

And sometimes, on the individual, public and state levels, it is not easy to admit that we don’t know something, although obviously everyone, everywhere doesn’t know something. And perhaps we need to have the strength to admit that we have a bad life to the extent of what we don’t know and we have a good life to the extent of what we do know, and in order to enhance our welfare we must minimize the volume of what we don’t know and enhance the volume of what we do know, and this is possible through work and education, the closest interconnection of education and work. Dear people, dear citizens of the Republic of Armenia, happy International Workers’ Day, and I wish that work would mean the enjoyment of its results and creative joy for all our citizens, our society, because work must be the means to create results and enjoy these results. Long live the Republic of Armenia.”