Some Thoughts about Runner Fan (NO.1 hot keyword online in China)

Runner Fan now is probably the No.1 famous figure in China. His real name is Fan Meizhong, a teacher in one school in the quake affected area, and when the quake happened, he ran out of the building and didn't do anything to try to help the students. After that, he wrote article online and argued he did the right thing. Later, there are a nationwide argument going on about him. Since he ran so fast and he is very proud of his running, he gained his name 'Runner Fan'. Now he is the No.1 hot keyword online and there are even two songs about him online.

I like one of the two songs because it tells basically what happened in the whole 'Runner Fan' argument and says something reasonable and true. And following is my excerpt of the translation of the lyrics in a essay format. The link following the title of this post is a video of the song.

You shouldn't run that fast when the earthquake happened.
It is OK to run that fast but you shouldn't abandon students.
You shouldn't feel that happy after you ran to save your life but didn't help students.
It is OK to feel glad you saved your life but you shouldn't write the whole thing proudly online.
You shouldn't publish it online.
It is OK to publish the whole story online but you shouldn't claim you have high morality.
You shouldn't argue you did the right thing and even say you are pursuing freedom and justice.
It is OK to argue you did the right thing but you shouldn't say running when the quake happened is the dangerous thing to do to prove you have the reasons to abandon students.
You shouldn't say you would only save your daughter.
We all support you to save your daughter but you shouldn't claim you wouldn't save your mother.

In my opinion, running fast to save his life is totally reasonable and is the right thing to do. But as a teacher, the occupation assigns him the responsibility to take care of students. He shouldn't claim teacher is only an occupation but refuse to take this responsibility.

And furthermore, he claimed that he only teach students to take care of themselves since 'nobody would take care of you' and to obey the minimum of moral rules, which include no stealing, no cheating and so on. And he considers no violation of the minimum of moral rules can make a good enough citizen. It is very easy for the Chinese people to feel angry facing his point of view. While at the same time, an online survey showed more than half of the parents would want Runner Fan to be their kids' teacher since he tells the truth of the world.

I am highly against two extremes of education:
1.Runner Fan's selfish theory focusing on individual base but no emphasis on community sense. Individual is absolutely important, not only to individual's happiness but also to society's well-beings. See United States of America, I think you can find the brilliant policy at the very beginning, which worships individual freedom, built the foundation of this wonderful nation. But no community sense and caring for bigger pictures of the society and the world would not produce people who are capable to build a better world.
2. Always standing on the higher level of moral. The products are moralizer with a over simplified judgment and talking useless ideas. Students under this kind of education are not aware of the problems in the society and have some very simple and innocent ideas. Those ideas would be destroyed later by the facts they would come across and change into a suspicious attitude towards everything they are being told and come to the opposite side to understand what is going on.

The best way is telling story in the both sides objectively with a hopeful voice and transplanting a critical thinking way based on reasons and facts. Under the current society of China, I would suggest teachers move towards the first extreme, but don't go that far as Runner Fan.

The good thing is, in my opinion, probably for the first time, Chinese people begin to talk and face something so true and so cold of human nature and the current society, which is almost a forbidden issue and always gets an 'NO' sign on it. And the whole discussion online about it, to me, is such a great progress for the freedom of speech in China.