Address on “Confucius Institute Day”
Honorable guests, ladies and gentlemen:
Good afternoon!
Today is really a big day in that it is “Confucius Institute Day”, 465 Confucius Institutes and 713 Confucius Classrooms in 123 countries around the world are celerating the 10th birthday of Confucius Institute together. Confucius is the greates thinker and educator in Chinese history whose Confucianism has had tremendous effects on thousands years of Chinese civilization. UNESCO has listed him as the top of “the World’s 10 Major Celebrities”. As a great educator, Confucius has accumulated and summarized a lot of teaching experience in his long-term teaching activities which makes outstanding contribution to human being’s education career. Firstly, he broke the obstacles of “learning at the government hall” and advocated to raise the level of universal education among ordinary people; Secondly, he maintains that teachers should “teaching students in accordance with their aptitude”, emphasizing that different teaching methods should be applied on different students; Thirdly, he holds the heuristic educational method that “Don’t enlighten students unless they have racked their brains and yet fail to understand; Don’t instruct students unless they have tried hard to express themselves but fail to open their mouth”; Forthly, he puts forward “Isn’t it a plesure to learn and constantly practice what is learnt?”, emphasizing the importance of reviewing; Fifthly, he puts forward “Learning without thinking leads to puzzlement; Thinking without learning is perilous”, emphasizing the combination of learning and thinking; Sixly, he puts forward that “When you know a thing, say that you know it; When you do not know a thing, say that you do not know it. It is wise doing so”, emphasizing the correct learing attitude; Sevenly, he put forward “In a parity of three there must be one who I can learn from. I will pick his merits to emulate them, and find his demerits to amend mine”, maintaining that people should be good at asking others regardless of feeling ashamed and learn from others. We sincerely hope that under the educational guide of Confucianism, our Confucius Institute would be more than better and all the students make continuous progress.
Thank you all!