Broadcasting live: China puts students’ every move online
BEIJING — In the halls of Yuzhou No 1 High School in central China, students refer to them simply as “the cameras.”
BEIJING — In the halls of Yuzhou No 1 High School in central China, students refer to them simply as “the cameras.”
When the first bell sounds before 7am, their fish-eye lenses spring to life, broadcasting live as students sit at their desks and measure geometric angles, pass notes or doze during breaks. Before long, thousands of people — not just parents and teachers — are watching online, offering armchair commentary.
“What is this boy doing? He’s been looking around doing nothing, like a cat on a hot roof,” one user wrote. “This one is playing with his phone!” added another, posting a screenshot.
As Internet speeds have improved, live-streaming has become a cultural phenomenon in China, transforming online entertainment and everyday rituals like dating and dining. Now the nation’s obsession with live video is invading its schools, and not everyone is happy about it.
Thousands of schools — public and private, from kindergarten to college — are installing webcams in classrooms and streaming live on websites that are open to the public, betting that round-the-clock supervision, even from strangers, will help motivate students.
School officials see the cameras as a way to improve student confidence and crowdsource the task of catching misbehaving pupils. Parents use the feeds to monitor their children’s academic progress and spy on their friendships and romances. But many students see live-streaming as an intrusion, prompting a broader debate in China about privacy, educational ethics and the perils of helicopter parenting.
“I hate it,” said Ding Yue, a 17-year-old senior at Yuzhou No 1 High in Xuchang, a city in Henan province. “I feel like we are zoo animals.”
Some experts warn that live-streaming in schools will make Chinese youth, already accustomed to the nation’s extensive Internet censorship and use of outdoor security cameras, even more sensitive to surveillance.
“If classrooms are under surveillance at all times, instruction will definitely be influenced by outside factors and the opinions of whoever is watching,” said Mr Xiong Bingqi, vice-president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, an influential Chinese think-tank, who called the practice a violation of students’ rights and a threat to academic freedom.
After a critical article on the subject was recently published in The Beijing News, a prominent newspaper, several schools announced they were ending the broadcasts.
But thousands of others chose to remain online and continue to draw a daily audience of cyber class monitors eager to report daydreaming students and lax teachers.
There are dozens of live-streaming platforms in China, and classroom feeds can be found on many of them. Anyone with an Internet connection can visit and choose from thousands of live school feeds.
The most popular site may be Shuidi, owned by Internet-security giant Qihoo 360 Technology Company, which sells webcams and software, among other products.
“When you tell them, ‘It’s possible your parents might be behind your back watching’, it’s like a sword hanging over their heads,” said Mr Zhao Weifeng, the director of a private school in the eastern province of Jiangsu, that installed cameras in its classrooms last year. “Having surveillance makes children behave better.”
The Deep Blue Children Robot Centre, a network of technology enrichment programmes based in Beijing, said it had made live-streaming a central part of its teaching model.
“A noble person shouldn’t have anything to hide,” said Mr Jiang Jifa, a computer scientist and co-founder of the network. “Everyone needs to be able to pose onstage, to run for office, to receive attention from the country and the world.”
In China’s cutthroat education system, live-streaming has also found evangelists among GPA-obsessed parents looking for new ways to push their children and schools eager to improve academic performance.
“It helps students spend their time more efficiently and get into their dream universities,” a parent of a senior at Yuzhou No 1 High wrote recently in an online forum.
Ms Deng Xu, whose daughter attends an elite pre-school in Beijing, said she understood the desire to keep an eye on children and their teachers at school, especially when they are very young. But she said at some point, parents have to let go. “It’s just sad to be watched all the time,” she said. “Parents need to learn to be hands-off.”
Live-streaming in general is on the cutting edge of entertainment in China, making stars of ordinary people as they use their phones to broadcast meals, candid monologues on the meaning of life, and tutorials on subjects like applying make-up and rebuilding cars.
The industry more than doubled in size last year and is expected to generate US$5 billion (S$7 billion) in revenue this year, largely through the sale of virtual gifts, according to Credit Suisse. But it has proved difficult for the Chinese government to regulate.
The authorities issued guidelines last fall that banned pornography and original news reporting on live-streaming channels. The rules recognised a general right to privacy, but did not address the use of live-streaming in schools.
At Yuzhou No 1 High, which began live-streaming classes late last year, students now joke that their school should instead be called “Yuzhou No 1 Prison”.
To avoid the camera’s stare, they sometimes congregate in a blind spot near the front of the classroom, they said. “Who knows if there are any psychopaths watching?” asked Li Li, a junior. THE NEW YORK TIMES