30 August 2010, 17:00
Greetings of the Chairman of The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine
on the Occasion of the Knowledge Day
Dear pupils and teachers, students and professors, parents and education providers!
Please accept my sincere greetings on the occasion of the Knowledge Day and the beginning of a new academic year!
Today is one of the truly national holidays for all the families, as everyone studied at school in due time, everyone had their favourite teachers and close friends. Every one of us has experienced the dramatic moment of the first school bell and the joy of the graduation party.
It is a special holiday for the first-graders. There are more than four hundred thousand first-graders this year, and four million pupils in total. It is a promising prospect that most of them will enrich their mind with deep knowledge. The results of the recent contests and academic competitions confirm it. 16 527 school-leavers received gold and silver medals, while five hundred thousand became students. Their ardent work confirmed that they not only mastered the fundamentals, but also developed as personalities confident in the complexities of modern challenges.
The country lays hopes on the nearest future embodied by the student community of 2,7 million people. Their competence, ambitiousness and faith in their vocation are reassuring. Professional devoted educators who follow the pedagogical pursuits of M.Pyrohov, K.Ushynskyi, A.Makarenko, V.Sukhomlynskyi greatly contributed to this. Introduction of innovations combined with the careful protection of traditional national practice yields the best results.
Beyond any doubt, training of professionals in the technical vocational schools and higher education establishments is a challenging task; however, it is even more important and difficult to train real intellectuals and the political elite of the country to assume full responsibility for the future of Ukrainian nation. It is necessary to meet these challenges uniting the efforts and capacities of the authorities, educational stuff and parent community. I sincerely wish all the best to you. May this academic year open new horizons and opportunities to you, becoming the happy time for realization of your plans, intentions and dreams.
Volodymyr LYTVYN