Today, President of Latvia Egils Levits visited the Riga State German Grammar School to congratulate students and teachers on the beginning of the new school year. Egils Levits was especially happy that children will have the opportunity to return to classrooms this year: ‘Enjoy learning! I know how tough last year was for you, dear children and teachers, and parents too. Government is currently doing its best to make sure we can avoid remote learning. Classroom instruction is vital for better learning outcomes, and it is equally important for you to be able to spend time together, in the same classroom. Neither internet nor mobile phone will ever replace human interaction.’
President Levits also stressed that school years are the formative years when children amass knowledge and their civic awareness is shaped. ‘Your personality grows very quickly during those school years, and that is what really matters most. Your life, your character traits are to a large extent determined by the kind of education you are receiving.’
‘The other benefit of education is knowledge. We tend to view the world in rational terms. However, as this pandemic has shown, there are rational and less rational views. Rational beliefs lead to good decisions for yourself and people around you, and teachers who help you learn rational thinking are absolutely essential in guaranteeing that,’ said Egils Levits.
President also mentioned a third important factor, civic awareness. ‘Citizens are the building blocks of any society. Citizens form Latvia, Latvia forms Europe and Europe forms the world. It is an opportunity and duty we as individuals have to form the world around us, our surroundings through civic participation. Right now, you are in school and various kinds of informal education on top of that, and later in your life you will become affiliated with various organisations, and maybe even political parties. Be it as it may, civic engagement is crucial for us to be able to make our life better. That is what the school can teach you and we are grateful to it for that.’
Egils Levits thanked the administration of the Riga State German Grammar School for giving children an opportunity to learn German language and culture on an advanced level. It is also necessary to learn other languages important for us in addition to English, which has become the lingua franca. ‘We are geopolitically a part of European Union, so German-speaking countries are our closest partners, and it is great that you have decided to learn German – it is good for you personally and for the whole Latvia,’ said Egils Levits to students.