In September we reported on a Zhejiang school which was using controversial brainwave-monitoring headbands. Now the authorities have instructed the school to halt the experiment.
The headbands are produced by a US-based company, which claims they measure whether students are paying attention. However pictures and video of the children wearing the sinister-looking devices caused an online backlash, and the local education bureau intervened to forbid the practice.
Beside concern about the ethical issues, the effectiveness of the devices is questionable. The headbands use electroencephalogram (EEG) technology, the same technology that’s used in hospitals to monitor brainwaves. There is some evidence to suggest that EEG can indeed be used to measure emotional states, but outside a clinical environment, many factors such as sweat or even blinking can interfere with the accuracy of the readings.
The device’s inventor, Bicheng Han of Brainco, gave an interview to thepaper.cn in which he defended his creation. He pointed out that parents had signed an agreement for their children to use the headband, and that he had not sold the system to schools but donated them for testing. He added:
“The technology is similar to that of the sports bracelet,” and his company had merely “simplified the instrument and turned it into a headband.”
According to Han, the purpose of the headband is not monitoring but to train students’ concentration by providing “neural feedback.” However this does not tally with previous reports suggesting that parents were being sent the readouts from their children’s headbands.
Brainco plans to continue testing the devices. They are in use at exclusive US private school Cambridge School of Weston, but in what may be an interesting reflection on different attitudes to education, there they are part of a mindfulness program, with the goal of helping students reduce their focus by meditation.
Photo: en.people.cn
