This is a speech at the closing ceremony of the 2020-2021 Academic Year of ECNUAS high school
Note: photo taken in Anting in June 2021
Dear teachers and students,
This is the last day of the second semester of the 2020-2021 academic year. As students and teachers who live, work, and study within China, probably you feel we are the luckiest people in the world, as many places around the global are still under the severe impact of COVID-19. According to the statistics from the WHO, total confirmed cases and total deaths toll are still climbing worldwide. Globally, as of 22 June 2021, there have been over 178 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including almost 4 million deaths. Thanks to great effort by countless scientists and many pharmaceutical labs, countries are now able to vaccinate people, as a result weekly confirmed cases are clearly declining.
We don’t know exactly how long it would take for this pandemic to go away from human being. But we should choose to believe efforts and collaborations by all governments and all people will eventually conquer this disease. I think more and more people understand that this kind of pandemic is really a challenge for our shared humanity, it demands every person’s and every nation’s cooperation, collaboration, and caring for each other. Facing this common enemy who should learn to love each other more instead of fighting each other more, we should learn to reach out more instead of closing in more. In such a connected and integrated world, it is not imaginable that one nation can close its borders and hence people within it will live safe and happy lives ever after.
In this world, international education is needed than ever. People will travel, will move, will exchange with people from other places, and will do business with others who might have different languages, different cultures, and different opinions. These human mobilities, virtually or physically, all demand people who are open-minded, who understand other cultures, who know how to communicate and collaborate with other people.
Hence, do you realize what you live here, what you study here are preparing for this kind of world? What you are pursuing here and in the future is not only for the purpose of entering a good university, although being in a world university is a more tangible goal for you certainly? What you are preparing in this school will help you become communicators, collaborators, or even leaders in international settings that you will step in soon. You need qualities such as knowledgeable, reflective, or risk-taking which are the purpose of the international education at ECNUAS.
It is true that you still need to learn another language or more than one language other than your mother tongue, yet beyond languages there are culture and your understanding of different perspectives. You need to study and improve your knowledge in a range of subjects, yet beyond knowledge there are problem solving skills and your insights across different subjects. You need to take tests and exams, yet beyond academic performances there are opportunities to take real actions and hence make impact on the world around you.
How productive and happy it must be if you are fully engaged in opportunities and responsibilities around you! We have seen so many good examples around us. Look at the students around you who led the four Houses, who created interesting student clubs, who made the high school magazine, who created beautiful art works for this community, who play cheerful music for us, who bring home national and international prizes, or those who keep working hard year after year just for the purpose of being better and being excellent.
We encourage and promote the sense of being excellent. Besides, do you realize that this school encourage many kinds of excellence and develop many kinds of talent? In this inclusive learning environment, you should not feel unconfident because your math is weak. Your Chinese could be strong. You should not be dismayed because you can’t become one of the top five students in a class. You can be more balanced, or you can be a leader in one of your interested fields. What you should do is just not to give up learning and growing. Everyone can find his or her strengths and keep developing them confidently. That is to say, everyone can be excellent, excellent in your own ways. This is how our teachers support you, and this is how this school does its international education as we understand the larger world needs all types of talents, be it painters, mathematicians, musicians, physicists, poets, interpreters, etc…
This world might have been changed due to COVID-19, yet our pursuit of learning and growing should not be altered to any degree.
Please follow your home teacher’s instructions on how to spend your time and plan your study. Please treat your subject teachers’ assignments seriously as you will have to continue to study after two months. We will gather here again in September.
Sharing these thoughts on our education, I now wish you all the best during the summer holidays. Wish you a productive and happy summer vacation!
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