improvement. We need hard data in terms of measuring skills of course, especially in

math, reading, mastering of computers, digital technologies more generally and so on. So

these are the kind of hard measurable aspects of human capacity. But then there are ways

in which one can stimulate creativity and not very easily defined in data. Let me give

you an example. In Slovenia we have a very good network of musical schools. And there

are many people, young people who are learning to play various musical instruments. And I

think the overall effect of this doesn't depend on anything measurable but really on the energy

of the mothers of children to make sure their children go to musical schools at the right

age and that they learn.

Now I have been President for five years and I have visited many small places in Slovenia,

talked to musical school directors and mothers and so on. And I have seen how important this

motherly energy is for the learning of music at a young age. Of course many children are

not talented in this direction and of course they may even have some traumatic experiences

as a result. But on the other hand the overall effect of this is that we have pretty good

generation of young musicians in Slovenia and that has to do with something which is

really very difficult to measure.

I would like to propose that all governments stimulate everything that has to do with creativity

and it starts often with something which is really very simple. For example, when I visited

schools as President I often said to the teachers and to students, I said, "Well, you know,

you are usually told to be diligent. But I'm telling you be creative. Diligence per se

is not enough. Diligence may be good but not sufficient. So please teachers, teach your

students to be creative. Invent something in your own matter to work with your group

of students which would stimulate their creativity."

Now in Slovenia which is part of the central European educational tradition this is not

unimportant because that tradition has been for centuries based on a kind of a top down

model of education which still exists. And therefore there is a need to deliberately

inject the idea of creativity into the educational process. I would very much like that to expand

but I have seen since I lived in the United States for 13 years as well and my daughter

went to school in New York that the American tradition is different. There, I think, much

more effort and much more emphasis is put on individual talent of students, stimulation

of talent, can do approach, optimism and all these things. And of course that educational

tradition I find quite beneficial, something that we in Europe have to learn from and perhaps

develop creativity by using the techniques of education which put creative elements more

at the center.