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Chinese school under fire for buying tracking bracelets for students
Source: The Guardian
Chinese school under fire for buying tracking bracelets for students
Smart devices will be used to record students’ health data and when they raise their hand
Lily Kuo in Beijing
Fri 8 Mar 2019 12.30 GMT Last modified on Fri 8 Mar 2019 12.40 GMT
A high school in southern China has come under fire for buying “smart bracelets” to track its students.
Guangdong Guangya High school has purchased 3,500 bracelets that would record students heart rate and physical activity, as well as the number of times a pupil raised his or her hand in class, according to local media reports. The bands have a location function and can be used to pay for items as well as track attendance.
Procurement documents for the wristbands, a purchase of 4.85m yuan (£560,000), circulated online this week, prompting outcry over the privacy of students.
“What’s the difference between this and putting trackers on prisoners or putting locators on dogs? Students are not prisoners,” one user wrote on Weibo, the Chinese microblogging system. “Is this Black Mirror in real life?” another said. One comment reposted several times on the microblog said: “This group of people working in education would be better off as concentration camp guards.”
-snip-
Smart devices will be used to record students’ health data and when they raise their hand
Lily Kuo in Beijing
Fri 8 Mar 2019 12.30 GMT Last modified on Fri 8 Mar 2019 12.40 GMT
A high school in southern China has come under fire for buying “smart bracelets” to track its students.
Guangdong Guangya High school has purchased 3,500 bracelets that would record students heart rate and physical activity, as well as the number of times a pupil raised his or her hand in class, according to local media reports. The bands have a location function and can be used to pay for items as well as track attendance.
Procurement documents for the wristbands, a purchase of 4.85m yuan (£560,000), circulated online this week, prompting outcry over the privacy of students.
“What’s the difference between this and putting trackers on prisoners or putting locators on dogs? Students are not prisoners,” one user wrote on Weibo, the Chinese microblogging system. “Is this Black Mirror in real life?” another said. One comment reposted several times on the microblog said: “This group of people working in education would be better off as concentration camp guards.”
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/08/chinese-school-under-fire-for-buying-tracking-bracelets-for-students