Chinese Teacher admits leaving students behind as he fled earthquake

A secondary school teacher in China admits that he abandoned his students and fled the scene after the earthquake. He justifies his actions on a Chinese blog.

The recent earthquake in Sichuan, China was catastrophic especially to school children, many of whom perished in the disaster. Most families lost their only child in this deadly quake. Questions are being raised now about why many of them died and why others didn’t rescue them or guide them to safety. One teacher explained it in a blog and it is sparking outrage. Fan Meizhong is a secondary school teacher in Sichuan province. He wrote his experience in a blog, saying when the earthquake occurred initially he advised the students to stay calm, but immediately after asked them to evacuate in an orderly fashion. He quickly ran outside abandoning his students. He wrote:

I ran towards the stairs so fast that I stumbled and fell as I went. When I reached the centre of the football pitch, I found I was the first to escape. None of my pupils was with me.

Some of his students managed to escape and they asked their teacher, why he abandoned them. Fan explained:

I have a very strong sense of self-preservation…I have never been a brave man and I'm only really concerned about myself.

There was another teacher, Tan Qianqiu, under a similar situation but instead of abandoning the students he died shielding four of his students, who were rescued later. Fan however justifies his actions further by saying in an interview: "I didn't cause the earthquake, so I have no reason to feel guilty…When I got back to the classroom, the students were all fine." Fan added even if his mother were by his side during the earthquake, he said he would have done the same thing. But he would have helped his one-year-daughter. Fan told the press that there are no laws in China that specifies a teacher to save his students during an earthquake. Probably he doesn’t know that there is no law necessary to help another human being especially a child.

If every teacher was like Mr. Tan, then we'd have no more heroes…I admire heroes like Mr. Tan, but I can't do that myself. I love my life more.

The head of the private school, where Fan is working, is not happy about his blog. One commentator in Shanghai Daily called Fan, a “courageous coward” for admitting what he did, but that won’t be sufficient to exonerate his cowardly act. The Chinese bloggers are calling him “Runner Fan." Though Fan was the only who admitted his actions, there might be other teachers who might have also fled the scene but are not reporting it. One statistic estimates nearly 500 to 700 students died out of 900 students, but only six out of 80 teachers died. Some speculate the surviving teachers might have acted like “Runner Fan." If the above report is true, Fan probably needs a different job...not teaching, though.