---
title: "In Chinese Schools, Brain-Reading Headbands Measure Student Focus"
description: "Several Chinese schools have started making students wear brain-scanning headbands that can detect when they start to lose focus or slack off."
date: "2019-04-08"
modified: "2019-04-08"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/chinese-schools-testing-headbands-measure-student-focus"
categories:
  - "Future Society"
tags:
  - "china"
  - "education"
  - "neuroscience"
  - "the digest"
---

# In Chinese Schools, Brain-Reading Headbands Measure Student Focus

![Several Chinese schools have started making students wear brain-scanning headbands that can detect when they start to lose focus or slack off.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/chinese-schools-testing-headbands-measure-student-focus.png>)
*\<em\>Image: Cole Stivers via Pixabay/Tag Hartman-Simkins\</em\>*

## No Rest

Chinese schools are taking extreme measures to make sure that students are paying attention.

Over the past few months, several schools have made students wear a headband that measures the brain's electrical activity to track whether students are focused at any given moment, *[The Next Web ](<https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/04/05/china-is-reportedly-trialling-attention-detecting-bands-in-schools/>)*[reports](<https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/04/05/china-is-reportedly-trialling-attention-detecting-bands-in-schools/>). It's a jarring level of high tech discipline in the classroom — and one that seems like it's more exhausting than beneficial for young students.

## High Score!

The headband, manufactured by Boston-based tech company BrainCo Inc, uses [built-in EEG scanners](<https://futurism.com/brain-scan-stressed-pilots>) to track whether a student is focused or daydreaming.

All that information gets sent to a teacher's computer, giving them a real-time feed of which students are focused. But BrainCo didn't stop there: it also built a leaderboard of students who focus for the greatest amount of time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=71&v=fQ3eW3qQ2pk

## Good Intentions

The idea behind the headband is that it could give teachers insight into how to better educate their students, according to *The Next Web*. For instance, if teachers notice that certain students keep losing focus during certain activities, they could change the curriculum or work one-on-one with particular students.

But odds are that there are better ways to give personalized attention to students — such as cutting down on [class sizes](<http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/research/class-size-and-student-achievement>) — than strapping brain-scanning headbands onto all of them.

**READ MORE:** [China is reportedly trialing attention-detecting bands in schools](<https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/04/05/china-is-reportedly-trialling-attention-detecting-bands-in-schools/>) \[*The Next Web*\]

**More on education:** *[This Ebook Company Is Trying to Make Reading More Like Videogames](<https://futurism.com/people-reading-publishers-gamifying-books>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)