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The President of the Republic at the reception for the best university and college graduates on June 21, 2002, at Kadriorg21.06.2002
Dear Graduates,
Education and how to acquire it have always had a very special meaning to our people. There have been times in which schooling of a son or, more rarely, a daughter farther away than in local village school was to be decided jointly by the whole family. They had to save up in everything and to organize their farm work in such a way as to enable the student to go to school. Education was sacrosanct. It was strived for and it was valued very highly.
In today's world education has become sine qua non for understanding this rapidly changing environment we are living in. At the same time, providing education in compliance with contemporary demands, for a little society, is a long-term investment of high priority. More important, this investment requires a national pact.
Graduation means that certain choices and decisions have already been made and a course for the life ahead adopted. Everything seems clear and completed. Yet, as a matter of fact, you know well that real life and fight for reaching one's goals is only beginning. Diploma, even if summa cum laude, does not mean that everything has been learned.
Since the time, you are living in, incessantly demands new knowledge and skills. Information becomes outdated not only within years and months but even within days and hours. A man willing to keep up with the pace of time has, figuratively speaking, been put into a situation where he has to run a race with his own shadow. Today's catchwords are: strategies and technologies, operating and manipulating, assertiveness and efficiency, and they to a great extent determine the frames of our life. I still wonder if they are characteristic of our quality of life.
Therefore, I would like to stress something else today. I would like to touch upon a word of rather old-fashioned sound - "ideal" - which in Estonian has a nice-sounding equivalent - "aade".
It has been stated that the better one knows how to do or reach something the less one asks for what purpose it is to be done. And so, I would like the young generation of Estonian intelligentsia to set their hearts on revival of Estonian ideals. On whom should we count if not on you, for you are those going to shape the face of the Estonian society and state in next decades.
Certainly, the new is always re-discovered old too. And, once the word "ideal" has been broached here, we can refer to earlier examples.
In 1923 Estonian students' fraternity "Veljesto" published a collection of articles titled "Mõtteid valmivast intelligentsist" (Thoughts On Maturing Intelligentsia). Those days, it was five years since the foundation of the Republic of Estonia. For now, ten years have passed since its re-establishment, but I must say that the ideas, occurred to young intellectuals in the early years of our Republic, carry weight today as well.
So, what did they mean by ideals, what did they dream of? The focus was the idea of a "state of spirit" being a model for an ideal society of a small state. They saw such a society as one governed by intellectuals cherishing patriotic and cultural values. They gave priority to culture as the universal measure of and criterion for all things. Party interests were not allowed to impair the basic unity so crucial for a small society. Agreement on principal matters deciding the development of state and society was demanded.
Of course, utopia and lots of youthful pretentiousness were inherent in the ideas of our young educated elite of those days. However, we cannot say that what they spoke and wrote about was unrealistic. They saw - as do so many in today's Estonia - that in the competition spurt, having actually turned into a marathon, for the sake of getting into top ten of nations, our permanent values have become shaky. Also today many bright minds ask, what is the price of this spurt and where are we supposed to draw new energy from to stand the pace in it.
Dear Young, now it is your turn to ask these questions and also to find answers to them. It is obvious that the restored Republic of Estonia, in which you have got at least the major portion of your education, can survive only due to our joint efforts. These efforts in turn must originate in some basic idea, in some central values.
Be persistent in looking for and proclaiming this basic idea, so that all the others taking you as an example could be sure of soundness and practicality of the way chosen together.
I wish you all great human happiness!
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