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High School in China Installs Facial Recognition Cameras To Monitor Students' Attentiveness (theepochtimes.com)

A high school in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province located on the eastern coast of China, has employed facial recognition technology to monitor students' attentiveness in class, local media reports. From the report: At Hangzhou Number 11 High School, three cameras at the front of the classroom scan students' faces every 30 seconds, analyzing their facial expressions to detect their mood, according to a May 16 report in the state-run newspaper The Paper. The different moods -- surprised, sad, antipathy, angry, happy, afraid, neutral -- are recorded and averaged during each class. A display screen, only visible to the teacher, shows the data in real-time. A certain value is determined as a student not paying enough attention. A video shot by Zhejiang Daily Press revealed that the system -- coined the "smart classroom behavior management system" by the school -- also analyzes students' actions, categorized into: reading, listening, writing, standing up, raising hands, and leaning on the desk.

23 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Mechanisms of propaganda. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    See how the message is received and refine until accepted.

    1. Re: Mechanisms of propaganda. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In the old days the teacher kept an eye on his students... and a whack on the wrist with a ruler was the first warning. These days everyone is SJW'd and their kids are assholes.

    2. Re: Mechanisms of propaganda. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Or if lots of kids aren't paying attention, they could be dismissed and allowed to roam the streets freely

      If most of the kids are not paying attention, that is the teacher's fault. Any subject can be interesting if presented in the right way. I once took an evening course on "Introduction to Bookkeeping" at my local community college. The 80 year old geezer teaching the course kept us on the edge of our seats with stories of how he uncovered fraud, embezzling and lapping. Did you ever see the movie The Accountant? I think it was about him.

    3. Re: Mechanisms of propaganda. by EETech1 · · Score: 2

      Classic South Park
      https://youtu.be/MBEfHZITrgo

  2. Because... by taiwanjohn · · Score: 2

    Falling asleep in class would be a huge loss of, umm... prestige?

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
    1. Re:Because... by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 2

      A loss of points on your Social Score, perhaps. You know, the thing that tracks Chinese citizens' behaviour and bars them from flying and other "privileges" if the score drops too low.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  3. If we had this in my generation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I would have ended-up as a drop-out instead of a Ph.D.

    1. Re:If we had this in my generation by Falconnan · · Score: 2

      Which, in the long run, is less than helpful to them. If one subscribes to the premise that The Party wishes to lead their country to greatness, to being a superpower, if not THE superpower, then one must therefore assume they think this is a good idea. The psychology is simple, that they believe that their party is the only hope for this to happen. What they are missing is that the limitations on the exchange of ideas in the end limits their nation's potential. They think unity of purpose alone can lead them to their end goal, but they have missed a simple reality: Unity of purpose alone leads to the risk that, if they drive off a cliff, they do so as one.

  4. Upgrades by mentil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    the system also analyzes students' actions, categorized into: reading, listening, writing, standing up, raising hands, and leaning on the desk.

    Soon to come: doodling, fomenting rebellion, gossiping, sleeping, reading non-class materials, and pranking.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Upgrades by bursch-X · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Even sooner to come: wrongthink, doubting the propaganda, not being a good citizen, dissentient thinking

      --
      There are two rules for success:
      1. Never tell everything you know.
  5. What happened to good old-fashioned test scores? by Hallux-F-Sinister · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What if Chinese students turn out cleverer than the adults and adapt to show attentiveness and comprehension while secretly being out to lunch? Or worse, look on as if in rapt attention while secretly fantasizing about a world in which they don’t have to pretend they’re not bored when they’re bored, a world that does not, if you’ll forgive me, so closely resemble the Seventh Circle of Hell?

    --
    Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
  6. Re:China will lead the World by 2030 by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    Somewhere, early on, you seem to have lost both your train of thought as well as your periods.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  7. China wants to weed folks like that out by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    any authoritarian regime does. Here in America we do it with religion. You need to put a damper on progress somehow if you want to say in power.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  8. Re:HS in China? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    Does China even have indoor plumbing?

    Not everywhere. Some rural inland provinces are very poor. But TFA is about Hangzhou, one of the most prosperous cities in China, with a per capita GDP higher than some EU countries.

    Hangzhou is about two hours south of Shanghai by train, and well worth visiting. It is a beautiful city, built around a lake, with a lot of old architecture. It is a great place to spend a quiet weekend away from the bustle of Shanghai.

  9. Coming soon to a place near you by hyades1 · · Score: 2

    Does anybody doubt we'll be seeing something similar in American schools, stores, police stations and workplaces before long?

    American corporations have been telling us for years if we allow them to modify their wares to meet Chinese demands, the end result will be a China that is more free and more open.

    Instead, often with the assistance of Apple, Google, Microsoft and dozens of other corporations, China is tightening the screws on its population. Meanwhile, privacy in America is becoming a thing of the past, and the powers of "Free World" corporations and governments are increasing every day.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  10. Totalitarian government + technology = joy by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 2

    At least in the west, Big Brother still pretends that he isn't actually watching you ever second of the day.

  11. Snow Crash by AlanObject · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As usual, the best sci-fi writers were well ahead of this curve. The following is an exerpt from Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson in 1992:

    Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo, and her reaction, based on the time spent, will go something like this:

    Less than 10 mm. Time for an employee conference and possible attitude counseling.

    10-14 min. Keep an eye on this employee; may be developing slipshod attittide.

    14-15.61 mm. Employee is an efficient worker, may sometimes miss important details.

    Exactly 15.62 mm. Smartass. Needs attitude counseling.

    15.63-16 mm. Asswipe. Not to be trusted.

    16-18 mm. Employee is a methodical worker, may sometimes get hung up on minor details.

    More than 18 mm. Check the security videotape, see just what this employee was up to (e.g., possible unauthorized restroom break).

    Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary.

    1. Re:Snow Crash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm fascinated by the change from minutes to millimeters. Can I subscribe to your newsletter?

  12. Re:STOP THIS CRAP by sheramil · · Score: 2

    Yeah, they tried that. It was called the Cultural Revolution. It didn't work quite as they expected it to.

  13. Re: Mechanisms of masturbation. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You've clearly never been to China.

    Here, I can stereotype too. All Americans are fat, lazy and materialistic.

  14. Geography by Jesus+H+Rolle · · Score: 3, Funny

    A high school in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province located on the eastern coast of China

    It's good that they specified which coast.

  15. Re:What happened to good old-fashioned test scores by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or maybe it's just a tool to assist the teacher when they have to deal with a large class of kids. I'm not saying it isn't Orwellian, merely that perhaps it's not designed to force the kids to pay attention but rather to help the teacher notice where they need to focus their attention. Managing 30 kids who have to do boring work is hard.

    I actually know some Chinese kids, and I've seen their school... It wasn't some kind of Party Loyalty factory, it was just a normal school full of normal kids but with more of a focus on rote learning than we have in the west.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  16. It was done since the 90's everywhere else by Laxator2 · · Score: 2

    I remember in the mid-90's when Windows NT was used everywhere in the corporate world, monitoring the employees was the order of the day. It was very common to hear from managers that were sales people and accountants things like:

    "Between 2 and 2:30 PM you did not type at all. Your colleague was typing all this time"

    Nowadays it is known that bosses take snapshots of the websites that the employees visit and put them on their individual files so they can use them during performance review.

    An none of this has anything to do with China.