Dear schoolchildren!
Dear learning Estonia!

Today, I want to speak to the children going to school for the first time, and also to those who are going there for their last schoolyear. I would like to speak to the parents who send their children to school and to the teachers who receive them.

Why do I want to speak to you all at once?

Today is the first schoolday for the children born in the independent Estonia. This is important for us all, for our hearts as well as our minds.

For Estonia, the first of September is more important than the first of January. Today, dear students and teachers, you start to add another layer of bricks to the building of the state of Estonia. This task - the building and fortifying of our own state - is never going to be completed. The happy new working-year beginning today is going to form the Estonia of tomorrow. Let the bricks be without cracks and the walls upright, so that Estonia, our common home, could stand firmly.

A nation eager to learn is a strong nation. An educated nation is strong even if it is small. Learning Estonia is strong Estonia.

Your task, my dear Estonian students in all Estonian schools, your task is to start the new academic year with a clear understanding that Estonia's strength or weakness, her power to last or gradual diminishing, will depend upon or, as a matter of fact, already depends upon the choice you make today: whether to study hard or to play truant. I myself, naturally, prefer to study; I like to study, because I want to live in a strong and educated Estonia.

The history of education in Estonia goes back hundreds of years. We should not forget that even before they came to classrooms and teachers, our children learned their first lessons at home, from their mother and father, their grandmother and grandfather. The elder generations handed their experience and skills down to the next ones. At that time, there were no vocational schools, and yet there was no shortage of skilled masters.

Today the world is much more complicated, and presents new demands to the school system - the school must function as clockwork. We must not lag behind even a minute, it would rather be advisable to be half a minute ahead of the events. There must be no indolence in Estonian school!

Dear teachers! Last week on the island of Kihnu I was told that three things were needed for the island to last: the school, the church and the seaport. This is a touchingly simple and clear summary. The task facing you and the Estonian education system is just as clear: to give Estonia-centred education to all who are of school age. From elementary school up to university. The Estonian school must, from the very start, be so strong that a talented student from any village school could get the university degree if he has the will-power for it. For this, a strong foundation is needed. A very good system of textbooks written in Estonian, a set of textbooks that would complement each other in different subjects, is also needed. For this, we need a proper set of textbooks for teaching the Estonian subjects both in Estonian- and Russian-speaking schools. Thus, the teaching of Estonian in Russian-speaking schools must proceed steadily and without spite.

Every normal state has too little money. Therefore I would like to appeal to the Estonian businessmen to participate even more actively in the educational life of Estonia, to support the Estonian schools. The training of teachers, grants for the publication of good textbooks, the underbiddings of building companies for building new schoolhouses or repairing the existing ones will surely be much more profitable than stock exchange operations.

Dear students!

I am very grateful to you for the twenty thousand essays that you sent to the competition that was announced a year ago ''Beautiful Home - Why and How''. I consider this one of the most important cultural events that took place in Estonia last year.

Home decoration will never be completed. This is not a campaign, but a constant and even joyful activity. As Kaido Kahar, a last-year-student from Viljandi Maagümnaasium wrote: ''A campaign can never change anything radically, but education can, and this is the solution to the whole problem''.

So let us continue together - towards a beautiful home, a beautiful school, a beautiful Estonia. This is how love of Estonia is born.

I wish you, as I did a year ago, the courage to ask and the will to discover. The most beautiful present you can give your teacher is to raise your hand and come up with questions, questions, and more questions.

Learning Estonia is strong Estonia. This is our only chance.

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