President Lennart Meri visited the Vara Elementary School today at noon and handed over the present – Anu Raud’s carpet “Kodukotus” – to the Vara School that had won the competition of the most beautiful schoolhouse in Estonia of the Home Decoration Year.

President Meri, who first initiated the Home Decoration Year in 1997, said that this year his duties have more taken him abroad than enabled him to walk around in Estonia; as the President said, it is unbelievably wonderful to ride through the Estonian countryside that has been rubbed so clean. The President said that now that the Estonian homes and schools are clean, the time has come to clean Estonia spiritually. Here a lot depends on the pupils themselves, a lot depends on the teachers.

Schools are the temples of science and education, and the President asked the schoolchildren to keep in mind that beauty and love are born of science, and science and love are born of beauty. As the President said, the children of Vara are lucky to have such teachers, they have created a hearty and friendly atmosphere and urged the children to participate in the home decoration competition and get to know their home neighbourhood.

President Meri also reminded the school that the philosopher Artur Võõbus, who must have known almost everything that any inhabitant of Vara has ever known, and also studied the languages of distant Orient and the manuscripts of ancient Syria and wrote 15 volumes of the Estonian history in the English language, had also been born at Vara. This man’s life should set an example for the Vara schoolchildren, the President said.

President Lennart Meri planted an oak-tree on the Flagstaff square of the Vara schoolhouse.

The most beautiful schoolhouse in Estonia was chosen by the Estonian Teachers’ Union on the basis of student essays, where the students described their ideas for the decoration of their schoolhouse. The Vara Elementary School will receive a prize of 30,000 Estonian kroons from the Estonian Teachers’ Union. At Vara also the Väike-Õismäe Secondary School in Tallinn, the Karksi-Nuia Secondary School in the Viljandi County, the Türi Secondary School in the Järva County, the Hummuli Elementary School in the Valga County, and Ülenurme Secondary School in the Tartu County, whose pupils’ works were admitted to the final competition, received letters of gratitude from the Teachers’ Union.

Lehte Jõemaa, Chairman of the Estonian Teachers’ Union, today also announced the theme of the pupils’ creative work competition for the new academic year, which is “Child-friendly school and way to school”.


Press Service of the Office of the President
Kadriorg, May 31, 1999

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