Comments on: Mind the Gap: Runner Fan Paopao

By: Angela

Angela — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:21:41 +0000

While I do understand Mr. Meizhong’s reaction as a selfish and senseless man, it is undeniably wrong as a ‘teacher’ and ‘civil servant’ to not at the very least warn his students to run for their lives too. As an analogy of the fundamentals of teaching, where the teacher does not provide answers to their students but rather the skills and resources to find the answers, a simple “run for your life!” may have sufficed to provide his students the ability to save themselves. It is not rocket science to anybody or at least a descent human-being that there is a certain level of social responsibility to being a ‘teacher’ / ‘civil servant’. I would imagine that this, at the very least is what Mr. Meizhong would expect from his daughter’s prospective teachers.

By: bunnie1123

bunnie1123 — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:45:29 +0000

if there is a teacher that said what he said, i don’t think any students would want to be in his class. nor would parents want their children to be his class. besides, it’s not a matter of the “free speech” but the content of what is said that got him fired.

By: L'espresso | Oltreconfine » Blog Archive » Corridore Fan di Federica Bianchi

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:16:13 +0000

[...] Qualche settimana dopo ha confessato l’avvenuto e ha difeso un internauta che si vergognava di ess… [...]

By: How Chinese Society Is Changing | The China Vortex

How Chinese Society Is Changing | The China Vortex — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 09:49:02 +0000

[...] interesting story is that of Fan Paopao, the teacher who ran away from his classroom, thinking first of his own personal safety, ahead of [...]

By: Min Guo

Min Guo — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:25:01 +0000

Fan only blogged about his reaction on his blog. He didn’ t do any physical harm to his class or students. His school was forced to fire him after one month. He is another example that people pay price for what they said in China. Very sad.

Fan teached at a private middle school, the principal refused to fire him at the very begining as he tought Fan is a very good teacher. However, the “one voice” critizism forced the school and the local edcuation department to deprive his certificate of teacher finally.

By: Paul Denlinger

Paul Denlinger — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:04:00 +0000

What class was he teaching, and how many students in his class died?

If no one in his class died, it doesn’t really matter. But if some of his students died because of his actions, he may quickly come to the point of living to regret running, then trying to justify, his actions during the quake.

By: cerebus

cerebus — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:38:49 +0000

I’ll take option number five:

• Criticizing or even talking about “Runner Fan” actually advances the Chinese — this is a first for China, and China has to experience a lot of things in due time.

Interesting you mention “collectivism”. You know collectivism could be deconstructed into a sort of super-individualism. Societal bonds all come to revolve around personal gain, as opposed to advancement of an underlying ideology or morality.

This ties in with evolutionary prerogatives; to be more protective of one’s offspring than parents, and of close family than eg. a second cousin. Of course a stranger wouldn’t even feature in this spectrum. The conventional stereotype of Chinese is that in society people only matter in relation to how much benefit they are to you. Whereas in “western” society, the extent to which people matter is a gradual continuum, in Chinese society there’s a very sudden drop-off beyond utilitarian or filial bonds.

“Collectivism” might just be a very special case of “individualism”.