July 14, 2020
State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi wrote on her Facebook page yesterday that it was important that school children do not drift away from learning, and that next week they would initiate steps to reopen schools that had to close down due to COVID. This was what she wrote:
For health and education levels to be high are two basic requirements for citizens. Both are requirements for the whole life and it was necessary to nurture and develop with care.
Some may say, we understand the importance of health but what about education. Are we supposed to be educating ourselves our whole lives? In this instance, I want all of you to define “knowledge” in a broader sense. Isn’t it the pursuit, study and contemplation of worldly knowledge and knowledge of liberation for deeper understanding and advanced insight “the search for knowledge”? Actually, knowledge is something all of us have to seek on an individual basis. The main job of schools is to teach students how to seek knowledge. That is why in assessing the success of an educational system we need to make a decision based on how many knowledge seekers this system has been able to give birth.
To bring our education system to a high level, there are so many things that need to be done. That is why we are putting education on the same level as health.
It is important that school children do not drift away from learning. Next week we will initiate to reopen schools that had to close down due to COVID. As you all know we will begin by reopening the high schools. Based on the success of this plan, we will make plans to reopen the middle and primary schools.
During the period while we have to confront a disease for which we don’t have preventive or curative vaccines, there are many factors to be considered before we take one step. That’s why we have to make steady steps to reach our goal as quickly as possible.
(Translated by Kyaw Myaing)
