Wang Yuanyuan

    A professor from Beijing Normal University said on his microblog recently that if any of his students did not possess 40 million yuan in assets when he/she reached 40-years-old, he/she should not tell anyone that he/she had been his student.

    For a highly educated man, poverty means shame and failure, said Professor Dong Pan, director of the Real Estate Research Center of the university.

    “One of my jobs is to help students learn how to get rich by legal means. If an alumnus is rich, he can contribute to the GDP growth, provide more job opportunities and help those less fortunate than themselves. This is a very good thing for the whole society and I am proud to be a teacher of that kind of student,” he said in his microblog at sina.com.cn, one of the country’s largest Web sites.

    The microblog has since drawn national attention as many netizens criticized Dong’s opinion as an educator.

    “It is very sad that a teacher should say things like that. A teacher should teach students to be useful and pursue one’s dream besides teaching them knowledge. Lu Xun was poor, but he was one of the greatest men in history and I think his teachers felt proud to have a student like that,” a netizen, identified as Wutongshanjiao, said at www.sznews.com.

    Later Dong explained himself on his microblog that it was only a way to inspire his students to make big achievements in life.

    “I am encouraging my students to work hard. I am an expert of the real estate industry, so it is my duty to talk about money and investment with them. Most of my students will enter business in the future and if they can not be successful in business, it will be my fault,” he said to a Chinese newspaper last week.

    Many students from Shenzhen did not approve of what Dong said, either.

    “I think this is not a good phenomenon. The most important thing for a teacher is to give their students the intellectual and moral core that will make them functional members of society,” Chen Huiyu, a Senior 2 student from Xin’an Middle School, said.

    “It’s as if the only measure of success is money, which is not true. If everything is about money, humanity will not progress,” she said.

    Another student also thought success did not only mean money and great achievement. “I think for most people in society, a truly happy and peaceful life is in itself a success. If you only judge by money, it will become a sad world full of violence and deception,” Zhong Li, a Senior 1 student from Shenzhen Middle School, said.