Is it a big problem if pupils distract in class?

After being a media focus for days, Jinhua Xiaoshun Primary School in Jinhua, East China's Zhejiang province, has reportedly finally given up its practice of letting pupils wear headbands to "detect their brainwaves" to "stop them from being distracted" in class.

The school has not made any statement about the incident yet, but the manufacturer of the headbands, BrainCo Inc based in Massachusetts, said in a statement that their products are meant to help pupils concentrate, not monitor their thoughts.

According to the company's blurb about the headbands, they function by measuring the brainwaves of pupils, then display different colors that show different levels of distraction. If that is true, the headbands can easily store information about the pupils, which could be considered monitoring. Maybe neither the school nor the manufacturer had that intention, nonetheless that is the case.

Besides, even if a pupil is distracted for a few minutes in class, is that a big problem? Probably not. It is a kid's instinct to stay active, and very hard for them to concentrate for the whole 45 minutes in class.

In most cases, whether a pupil can concentrate on the teacher in class depends on whether the latter can gives interesting lessons and tells stories that the pupil is interested in. Which child would like to listen to a teacher's boring words, without thinking about anything else?

In order to let pupils concentrate, the proper measure is to let teachers improve the quality of their teaching so classes are interesting, instead of detecting whether the pupil concentrates.

Some might argue that the teacher could improve after knowing whether the pupils concentrates on him/her. Some domestic reports show that the teachers could record the children's brainwaves on computers and share them in their WeChat groups with the children's parents; That only puts additional pressure on the children and their parents, not the teacher.

Fortunately, the local education authorities have realized the wrong and halted the practice of the school. Maybe it is a correct measure to help children concentrate, but please remember that the pressure should be on the teacher, not the pupils.