Today, facial recognition technology is being used in many public places. Recently, China Pharmaceutical University, which is based in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, installed a facial recognition system in some classrooms as a trial run to prevent students from skipping class or asking others to take their place so that they would get the required attendance.

Once a student enters the classroom, the system automatically crosschecks his or her personal information and then monitors his or her movements in class. If students doze off during lectures or play with their smartphones, the system will record it.

The university says it has installed the system to ensure attendance and keep students engaged in the classroom. However, it has triggered a debate, with the students and others

saying it's not an effective way to improve the quality of the classroom, as claimed by the university. Instead, it violates students' right to privacy and creates the risk of a leak of their personal information.

Abuse of technology

Ji Yu (Xinmin Evening News): There must be some discipline in colleges. It's unacceptable that students will skip or quit class or do whatever they like in class. However, is it really right to force students to attend class by imposing facial recognition and all-time monitoring during class? It smacks of abuse of technology and even violates students' privacy.

Although classrooms are public, it does not mean students have no right to privacy there. Students do need to concentrate on the teaching but they should not be expected to stare at the teacher during the whole class. If a student is using a smartphone in class, he or she may not be playing or chatting with friends. They could be checking something the teacher has said online.

If students are required to look at the teacher as a measure of assessing whether they are listening carefully, it's certain that more and more students will become excellent actors pretending to listen so that they are in the teacher's good books.

While the facial recognition technology is growing mature, it must be carefully and correctly used instead of having rigid goals, in which case it could cause more harm than good. Technologies like facial recognition should be used to increase interaction in class and gain knowledge.

Besides, how to avoid personal data leaks and even abuse of digital data acquired from classrooms is an issue that schools must carefully consider.

Jiang Nanhao (Zhejiang News): The university claims that it installed the cameras for the students' good, but the fact is that the students can't bear it. To put their every movement under scrutiny is not facial recognition. It is personal monitoring and will make students feel very uncomfortable, since they know whatever they do will be captured on camera.

Since the university believes that the camera is a help in enhancing education quality, why don't they also use cameras to monitor the faculty to enhance the university's education quality on the whole?

There are so many ways to spur students to study hard. Why choose this most inefficient method? This facial recognition system focuses on whether students are in their classrooms and are behaving well, but does not pay attention to whether they can understand the teaching. The university's practice has already incurred students' and society's ire. It's time for them to review the measure and rectify it.

Jiang Jingjing (Yanzhao Metropolis Daily): Facial recognition doesn't mean facial monitoring, but it seems that the university has mixed up these two concepts. Students who bend their heads, doze off or stare into space will have their expressions recorded. This exceeds the concept of facial recognition to identify a student and is actually a kind of all-dimensional monitoring. When questioned, the university said they have to do so for the good of the students and so, students should not complain about it.

College education and the college classroom model are totally different from the middle and primary school models. College students only need to gain credits in the subjects they study. So the class discipline is not as strict as it is in middle and primary schools. Discipline demands that college students attend classes, but does not require them to sit still as school students are required to do. This is not what college education should focus on.

It's justifiable to use facial recognition to prevent skipping class or substitution, but it's unacceptable to collect students' facial expressions and every movement and other private information through facial monitoring. Ostensibly, it's to force students to listen carefully in class but actually, the university is treating college students as young children.

The introduction of an advanced facial recognition system in classrooms is fundamentally damaging the college education culture.

Teacher, improve thyself

Zhang Tao (Information Times): Classrooms are public places where students' behavior is exposed to the public, so the accusation of breaching students' right to privacy is groundless.

China Pharmaceutical University is not the first to install a facial recognition system in the classroom. In 2015, Wuhan University of Engineering Science's School of Continuing Education in central China's Hubei Province began to use a machine to identify students by face and fingerprints. Before and after class, students have to face the camera and have their features scanned.

This is only a first step to retain students in class. The key is to make them really concentrate on the lectures they are attending, instead of being just physically present in the classroom while their minds are somewhere else.

A growing number of college students are skipping class nowadays. While students should be taken to task for being lazy or undisciplined, dull classes are also an issue. Not all students have the forbearance to sit through boring or meaningless lectures. Hence teachers too should try to make their classes as vivid and interesting as possible.

There are many successful examples. Advanced mathematics is one of the most complex subjects, but Professor Su Weiyi with Nanjing University makes his lectures so interesting that in the past 53 years, almost no student has skipped his class and usually, even the last row is full. He never takes the roll call. He has said that he would not force students to attend his class but would instead make them realize that if they fail to attend his class, it would be their loss. This has fundamentally solved the problem of absenteeism.

Facial recognition technology is a very useful tool for retaining students with weak self-control. However, if the classes are really attractive, the technology will be unnecessary.

Yang Chaoqing (Beijing Youth Daily): Facial recognition technology can certainly spur students to attend class more frequently. Also, as their facial expressions are captured by the camera, they will be inclined to behave better in the classroom and at least try to look as if they are listening carefully to their teachers.

However, this technology will not solve the fundamental problem. If they are not interested in the teaching content, even if they sit decorously in the classroom, they will at best only pretend to be listening to the teacher.

Today, college admission in China is no longer limited to a small elite group. The number of students being admitted is rising. So some classes are also expanding; sometimes there are 100 students in one class. It means students are unable to have effective interaction with their teachers. Also, some teachers are not serious about their work. How can you expect students to like attending such classes?

Teachers who are confident of the quality of their teaching do not pay much attention to students' attendance rate. But those who are not confident are afraid that students will skip their class, leading to embarrassingly empty classrooms. They are concerned more about their own reputation than about the quality of their teaching.

If it is technologically and economically viable, teaching methods should be updated and modernized to stimulate students' interest instead of forcing them to attend class by camera surveillance. Students' sense of their right to privacy is growing, so any imposed monitoring will undoubtedly lead to a backlash. The answer is not facial recognition technology but classes of high quality.

Copyedited by Sudeshna Sarkar

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