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President Ilves: the key issue for rural life is education

08.08.2008

The President’s Academic Advisory Board gathered on Wednesday in Ärma, where the main topic of discussion was the possibilities for living in the countryside and the need for keeping people in the countryside.

“Living in the countryside is a part of our cultural identity, I would even say that it is of fundamental significance for the survival of our culture,” President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said yesterday to the members of the Academic Advisory Board.

According to the Estonian Head of State, the national and local governments, as well as the people themselves, must together find the means and opportunities to support the diversity of rural life, to determine how to modernize life in the countryside.

“However, everything starts with the opportunities for acquiring education—for parents the school that their children attend is the key question. Other problems are resolvable,” President Ilves added.

Writer Tõnu Õnnepalu and Andres, Rõigas, Mayor of the Halliste Rural Municipality, also spoke at the meeting of the President’s Academic Advisory Board.

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