A Message from President Gao Song: Meeting the Challenges, Leading the Future

Since the beginning of the new semester, teachers and students of South China University of Technology (SCUT) have met online to jointly adapt to the new teaching mode of online teaching. Over the past week, teachers and students have gradually become proficient in online teaching from the initial awkwardness, and online teaching has carried out smoothly and orderly.

Recently, in an interview with the Guangdong Television, President Gao Song took the anxiety, doubt, and even panic caused by the epidemic as well as its influence on teaching and learning as an example, and sent a message to all the students of SCUT. He pointed out that the challenges brought by complexity will gradually become the norm, and he hopes that students will take great pains to develop their power of learning, power of thinking and power of action, so as to better deal with the challenges of the uncertainty in the future.

Keyword 1: Complexity

With regard to complexity, Gao Song believes that human beings often have a fear of unknown, such as the COVID-19. In the future, we will encounter many things and problems that we have never seen before. The root cause of fear is that we don’t understand the things and problems heading towards us. They are often complex, and the complex problems will generally lead to two results: one is uncertainty, and  the other is diversity.

Keyword 2: Rational Thinking and Judgment

Gao Song observed that the most important factor for university students to cope with the future problems of complexity is to gradually form their ability of rational thinking and judgement based on facts and logic during their university life, so that they are able to make a rational judgment when confronted with the complex and unknown things.

Keyword 3: Self-learning Ability

In order to form the rational judgment, students must develop their self-learning ability. For the things unknown, students must have the ability to master it through constant learning. And this process of learning is also a process of thinking. Gao Song believes that self-learning must be combined with practice so as to solve the real problems of complexity. The power of learning, power of thinking and power of action are the core qualities that university students should strive to develop. Only with the combination of above abilities, can students cope with the coming challenges of uncertainty, and can they lead the future and develop their creativity.

Translated and Edited by Chen Juncheng
Proofread by Wu Zhaosheng
Source from the GZIC, SCUT News Network