High Schoolers Write Final Essays
Thousands of 12th-graders across Estonia endured a time-honored rite of passage on April 25 when they wrote their final essays, an exam that's considered to be a test of a student's maturity.
The essay is compulsory for all students graduating from Estonian-language upper secondary schools but is optional for those in Russian-language schools.
Around 9,900 students from Estonian-language schools and 1,500 from Russian-language schools took part this year.
In the space of six hours each student must write 600 to 800 words, in Estonian, on one of ten topics set out by the National Examination and Qualification Centre.
The topics, which were announced simultaneously on radio stations across the nation, were the following:
1. My Estonia
2. Social Media's Impact on Relationships
3. Education is the Key to Society's Development
4. The Meaning of Life is to Support Each Other (Irish proverb)
5. Every Era has its Own Face
6. "How Many Things I don't Need" (Socrates)
7. "We Learn from History that we do not Learn From History" (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)
8. Culture in and Around Us
9. How Literature has Influenced my Beliefs
10. "Purpose is What Gives Life a Meaning" (Theodor Parker)
According to writer Andrus Kivirähk the themes of this year's final essay were very general and conventional.
"There is always the possibility to choose between two options: to write traditionally as expected or to write to the contrary something very original. This of course is dangerous, because you never know the people assessing the essays as they will probably prefer something conventional and boring," Kivirähk told uudised.err.ee.
For the first time in history, the final essay was administered on Monday, while in previous years it had always taken place on Saturday. The change was made in answer to the Mother Tongue Teachers' Society plea to conduct the exam within the working week, as there had been problems paying teachers and transporting students.
Ingrid Teesalu