My first Publication 1926874721_Alumni_Magazine_June_2010 | Page 13

Issue 3, June 2010
Welcome to the Newest ACS Alumni:
The Class of 2010
On May 21, 115 students from the Class of 2010 received their diplomas, thus becoming the 14 th class to graduate from ACS after its reopening in 1992.
Following the initiative that started last year, a Senior Dinner was organized in honor of the graduating class. Seniors chose a student speaker and a faculty
speaker to address them during the dinner. This year, the faculty speaker was Mr. Ivailo Dimitrov, History Teacher. We present here excerpts of his speech.
Once again, good luck, ACS Alumni from the Class of 2010!
Dear Graduates,
First of all, I would like to thank you
for the honor of choosing me for your
speaker this evening.
What am I going to talk about? I was
wondering what to emphasize on in my
speech: on your education here at the
College and what the College has given
to you; on your future education in the
university; on the goals and purposes
of education in general; or on your
future social life. In the end, I decided
to include all of these elements in an
attempt to find out and show you the
logical links between them, including at
the same time some examples from my
personal experience.
As a historian, I should start with the
origins and purposes of the concept
of contemporary education. Let me
remind you of the Enlightenment era
and the ideas of the greatest minds of
the time. John Locke stated that people’s
minds at birth are “tabula rasa” and
therefore people are born equal. Later
on, in the process of growing up, people
become different in their intellectual
development because they are shaped by
their environment, society and education.
Voltaire developed the concept of
Deism which stated that God created the
Universe along with a whole system of
principles, elements, and dependencies,
according to which it should function.
This system was called the Universal
Natural Law. Then God didn’t interfere
anymore in what was going on on
Earth and left this responsibility to his
best creatures on Earth, people. They
were given the sacred mission to find
out and understand all the elements
A moment from the Graduation Ceremony of the Class of 2010
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