Abu Dhabi: An educated citizen is the "best investment" serving the country, producing dynamic leaders and productive scientists who contribute to the progress of their homeland, General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, said on Monday.
He made the comments at the official opening of the first school in the region to teach Chinese, in Abu Dhabi.
The school will serve through building a base of national specialists as a bridge for cultural interaction.
Shaikh Mohammad, also Chairman of Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC), lauded President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan for his unstinted support for education as a top priority in the country's progress.
Shaikh Mohammad also opened a kindergarten which will be a model of pre-schooling at local and regional levels.
He said education in Abu Dhabi has been witnessing radical transformations to become one of the best five most advanced learning systems in the world.
Engine
"Advanced education is the engine that drives national development of any community," he added.
He said: "The development we see today in curricula and determination to teach our children other foreign languages aim to groom an educated, innovative generation, which can catch up with changes and satisfy community needs and job market demands and has the capacity to interact with other cultures and global challenges and cope with rapid progress in information technology."
At a meeting with the teaching and administrative staff, Shaikh Mohammad said kindergartens are considered a vital chain in the learning process. According to him, the kindergarten is the foundation through which the teacher moulds the character of the student. A good teacher helps unleash a child's scientific and practical talents and skills and his excellence in sports, music and arts. It also instils other values and concepts in children — foremost of them being loyalty to the homeland, love of work and responsibility.
He said the inauguration of the Chinese school is a forward-thinking initiative on the part of ADEC, which would allow sons and daughters of the UAE to interact with global cultures, including the ancient Chinese one. He added that more schools for teaching other foreign languages of rich cultures would be opened.
Shaikh Mohammad attended classes and various activities in both the school and kindergarten.
