Madam Director General of ORT Uruguay, Mr Vice Rector, Deans, authorities from national and partner institutions, ORT authorities and academics, friends of ORT, dear graduates and their families. Welcome to this important day that means so much to us all.
Dear families, we have dedicated our best effort to prepare your children and grandchildren for the future. I hope we have succeeded. Dear graduates, I would like to congratulate you on your graduation. Education is a joint endeavour between educators and students. As educators, we provide everything our knowledge and experience allows. You, as students, must bring your willingness to learn, your dedication, your resilience against the inevitable setbacks and frustrations that occur along the way. All of you here today, have done your share and can be proud of it.
For all of us, this graduation ceremony is one of the highlights of this year that, unfortunately, has witnessed tragic events. This year Uruguay saw its first race-motivated killing in decades. Mr David Fremd was murdered and his killer gave anti-Semitism as his sole motive. David Fremd was not the only Uruguayan killed this year. His death does not hurt any more or less than the other victims' death. However he was the only person murdered for racial reasons, and the 20th century has taught us that race-motivated violence leads to tragic consequences no-one can escape from. The killer had published his racist ideas and threats and had shared them with workmates and neighbours. Our collective indifference and passivity enabled this announced crime to be committed.
Next year ORT Uruguay will celebrate 75 years. Since our foundation in 1942 we have sought to help spread education and technology throughout our country. We have sought to bring the world to Uruguay, and have strived to bring Uruguay to the world through new courses, new technologies and new teaching methods. From the beginning we have pursued a mission that remains unchanged; expanding the educational opportunities of Uruguayans. Our mission is to help you discover what the world has to offer you and what you can contribute to the world.
ORT is a Jewish institution open to all. Like all peoples and religions, Judaism has made contributions to humanity. Many believe that the works and actions of Freud, Marx, Einstein or Jesus, are Judaism's greatest contributions to humanity. And without doubt their works and those of many others were of transcendent significance. But in my opinion, the most important contribution of Judaism has been the consecration of education.
Prior to Judaism, and in some cases afterwards, education was subordinate to and at the service of faith. Education was reserved only to the powerful. Twenty-seven centuries ago Judaism introduced revolutionary principles for the era, such as universal education, the imperative mandate to teach and the obligation to learn. In Judaism, learning takes precedence over almost all other obligations. Schools are more important than synagogues. Teaching children has the same priority as feeding or clothing them. Judaism conceives education as a precursor of freedom, because only an educated people can truly be free. Ignorance is the worst form of dependence. Only educated citizens can distinguish between artists and propagandists, between journalists and sycophants, between visionaries and demagogues.
Dear graduates, a new world awaits you. A world where value is created from knowledge and creativity. Global connectivity, digitization, new forms of intelligence automation, will allow you to create, design and produce in Uruguay, in collaboration with others around the world. Your generation is the first that will have the opportunities and the threats of a world without geography and without distance.
This new world will offer you more opportunities than ever before, but at the same time your education will constantly have to keep pace with unrelenting technological change. In a world where more and more tasks will be carried out by robots you will always have to reflect on what makes us human. What you know will no longer be as important as what you can do with that knowledge.
Dear graduates, you are attending this ceremony today thanks to your past merits, i.e. the years of study that you have invested in your education. But today should not just be a recognition of the past but also of your responsibility for the future. Not only responsibility for your personal future, and professional career but also your willingness to give back to your family and to all those who believed in you, your willingness to share the fruits of your knowledge with society.
Alas, no GPS for charting the future exists. Your compass must be your conscience, your inner voice. In this new world where technology reveals new opportunities every day, sometimes it is difficult to understand why there are things we want to do, that we are able to do, but that we should refrain from doing because they are unfair or harmful to others. In this world of constant changes we all need a moral yardstick that helps us face our fears, control our temptations, respect our peers and think about the consequences of our actions.
Values will have to be your anchor of stability in the turbulent world that awaits you. We must insist on systematically integrating ethics into our personal lives, professional activities and into public life. Demagoguery, inconsistency and improvisation should be condemned, not applauded or tolerated. Leaders’ decisions should address what is best for the country, not what is worse for their adversaries. We must remind our leaders that in a fair society benefits must be distributed according to the fairness of the demands, not according to the power of the claimants.
Dear graduates, always be willing to change. Your capacity to adapt will be more important than your erudition. Remember that our successes do not depend exclusively on our own merits, and therefore we must be willing to share the rewards. Remember that a society is always judged by the way it treats its weakest members.
Be demanding with yourselves, because this is a prerequisite for demanding the same from others. Always use dialogue as way to understand; to propose, not impose. You cannot speak if you don't know how to listen. Remember that speaking well is a skill, but listening well is an attitude.
Look and listen all around you. Avoid living in echo chambers where you only read or listen to the opinions of those like you. Avoid living in monophonic intellectual systems where new ideas cannot enter, dialogue is not possible, preconceptions harden and opinions become immune to facts. In such groups, the incentive is not to act well, in the Kantian sense, but rather to avoid the censorship of the group. In such groups, individual conscience becomes subordinated to the group rules, becomes externalised from our inner forum to collective oversight.
Always choose major challenges that force you to grow. Do not be afraid of your fantasies; do not be afraid to dream. Dreams allow us to explore our possibilities. Do not be afraid to succeed. A society without outstanding individuals cannot progress.
Demand your rights as citizens. Citizens have legitimate obligations. However life in Society is based on the reciprocal nature of rights and obligations. The State acquires obligations that emerge from citizens' rights and is forced to fulfil them. But our society tolerates breaches by the State as if they were unanswered prayers rather than legal obligations and political responsibilities. We have the right as citizens to safe streets, clean air, clean water, schools that teach, mail delivered on time, and everything else that a dignified and productive life requires in a modern society. Demanding the fulfilment of the State's obligations will be part of your contribution as citizens to a modern and competitive society.
Our drama, that we hope will not be transformed into tragedy, is that some of our leaders want to live in the past century while the others know that this is not possible. Our freedom is at risk today, because a free society must be an educated society and this is the capital that we have been living off for decades without making new investments. I do not mean economic investments which are a necessary, but insufficient condition for educational improvement. I am referring to the intellectual and cultural investments required for us to dare to think and act differently than in the past. Dare to contradict the corporations whose goal is self-preservation, dare to have the humility to take inspiration from what others are doing.
I refer to the moral courage needed to believe that educational improvement is not a zero-sum game. The contributions made by private education are not to the detriment of public education or vice versa. The moral courage needed to believe that the important distinction in the education realm lies not between public or private, but between excellence and mediocrity, between accessibility and exclusion.
In the knowledge society we have been born into, breaching society's obligation of providing education to citizens is the moral equivalent of dereliction of duty. In the knowledge society, the opposite of education is exclusion. If we do not improve our education, our juvenile courts and prisons will not be able to cope. If we let time pass and the number of inadequately educated citizens accumulate we will reach a point where there will not be enough state resources to help people to participate in the race between education and technology.
Our leaders seem to be bewildered by the knowledge society, where the State is no longer omnipotent. The search of oil or foreign mega-investments should not be used as evasive manoeuvres to give the illusion of movement. They cannot replace the inevitable changes we must carry out to find our place in the world. Adapting to this new world will require much faster and more profound changes than we are accustomed to. So far, we have only changed within the limits allowed by political correctness.
We have been unable to review the ideological memes of the past. Political parties are looking at themselves rather than looking towards the future. Regardless of the party you support, encourage your representatives to look squarely into the future. The world not is going to adapt to us, we will have to adapt ourselves to this new world and do so quickly. Forming a collective will to change what seems unchangeable is the most important task ahead of us.
Dear graduates, thank you for being here today with your families. Thanks again for everything you have taught us over these years. Uruguay needs you. Succeed from Uruguay, make your country succeed. Seek your own paths, follow your own paths, and remember ORT will always be your home.
Thank you very much.