President al-Assad to students and staff of the National Center for Excellence in Homs after its reopening: Love of the homeland is not shown with emotions, but with work, science, achievement, defense and sacrifice

Homs (ST): President Bashar al-Assad visited the National Center for Excellence in Homs, after it reopened after being suspended for years due to terrorism.

During his visit, President al-Assad was briefed on the laboratory and educational departments, met with the Board of Trustees of the Excellence and Creativity Authority, the Council of Scientific Affairs of the Center for Excellence, and the Committee of Experts and Specialists, and discussed with them their proposals and ideas about advancing education in line with scientific and economic changes and how to support the research path to be reflected in the production and service sectors.

President al-Assad told the center’s students, cadres, experts and specialists: “Dear students, gentlemen, supervising teachers, who are in charge of this national center, congratulations to all of you for returning to this center, which was established in 2009 to be a scientific, social and national beacon. I am happy to be with you on the first day of the year. The first school year after the opening, after ten years of interruption, and thirteen years after the inauguration of this center in 2009.”

President al-Assad added: “Although this occasion is an occasion of joy, this joy carries with it a touch  of sadness,  for the lost years of the life of this center, sadness for the destruction that befell it as a result of terrorism that destroyed this center and many centers, facilities and edifices. It destroyed cities in different regions of Syria, hindered the development and modernization process, and set the country back decades. However, all this destruction was not able to stop the education process in the National Center for the Distinguished, which moved from one governorate to another and from one university to another without stopping, and there was insistence by students, parents and those who work for the continuation of this educational process to overcome all the harsh conditions and this insistence was embodied in the end by the solidarity and cooperation of the various parties concerned with this process, and we were able to continue for ten years in this process, and today we were able to return to the original site of the center and to its main mission.”

President al-Assad continued: “After ten years, from a scientific point of view, new sectors have emerged, on the one hand, and there are at the same time in Syria great changes. When the center was established in 2009, the main objective at that time was to support the development process taking place in Syria with distinguished cadres, because development cannot be imported, but rather there must be a local scientific, intellectual and creative production. Today and after what happened in Syria, and based on the lessons learned, there are additional tasks to be added to the graduate staff of the institute later, not only in the scientific field, which is necessary, essential and obvious, but in the social aspect. What destroyed Syria was ignorance. part of the people went towards terrorism under different wrong addresses and another part took people who love their country but at first they did not understand the truth of what happened and because ignorance is widespread, they went in the wrong direction and served terrorism and served the enemies without knowing unintentionally, then there is a basic role that we must think about for the future that differs from the roles we thought about before the war, but in order to be able to do this we must go in several directions from now on after returning to this center”.

President al-Assad added: “Knowledge development, of course, depends primarily on information, but in order to benefit from knowledge, we must raise the capacity of analysis in order to analyze the information and benefit from it.”

President al-Assad said: “The idea of sacrifice is not only the sacrifice of the soul, but there are different forms of sacrifice. Exerting the maximum effort is a sacrifice, especially working under extremely harsh and unreasonable conditions, and some of you have gone through it during the past ten years.

K.Q.