Re: Spying on Students?

Personally I don't see the big deal, I mean where do you think you are, Brooklyn? Too often westerners visiting China and staying here for any length of time feel a very real need to impose their moral and ethical ideas on the locals. Whether from a sense of superiority, or righteous indignation, westerners often feel that they know better than the local population, and should try to right wrongs, and instruct the locals in kind. I say this is foolish.

OP, you need to mind your own business. Why do you care exactly? The Chinese people have been getting along just fine without you for 5,000 years, a number they love to bandy about to foreigners. Why the need to correct what you see as a wrong? You seem to forget where you are, and also that the Chinese "chose" this way of life, as they adopted the ways of fatty "Mao" with a zeal rarely seen in today's modern world. They chose the society they live in, and they will have to choose the change it if they wish. I don't see this happening any time soon.

It's not your place to reform the local population. Your intentions are good, but you know what they say about good intentions, the road to hell was paved with them. Not only that, but you are putting your job at very real risk. What is more important to you exactly? Screwing yourself out of a job because you felt some need to be some kind of hero, who no one will remember by the way, or keeping your job and improving your life for the better? It is often this kind of impulsive attitude that I see often in other foreigners here. Such an impulsive attitude without thinking about the consequences is one of the most sure fired methods for creating a loser that I have yet to see.

My advice, keep your opinions to yourself. The school wants to track students cell phone use, good for them, as long as they are not tracking mine, I could care less. This might sound callous, but in truth it's called reality. You have to choose your battles, some you can win, some you can not, and some are not worth fighting whatever the outcome might be. Are you really prepared to lose your job because students had to buy a cell phone?

As westerners, given the greater exposure to the world that we have, and the attention that has been given to individual freedom and privacy in our own countries, it is easy to see and be incensed by the ways of people like the Chinese. We are far better equipped to spot the injustices, as well as the why's behind them. That said, it's best to keep your head down, mouth shut, and focus upon yourself and your own activities. If you can not learn to control your emotions and embrace your position as a guest in someone elses land, then you should not be here. Just my two cents worth.

Re: Spying on Students?

Dave, privacy to locals means little. Many local public schools at all levels believe they "own" their students. Schools' gates with spying security guards, that serve just like the suspicious cell phones you have mentioned, are quite common around too. Those, that are to keep us safe, have their assignment to not only spy on the students but also on teachers, especially foreign teachers. Then, local public schools routinely assign their local employees to "keep eyes open" on us as well. So, we're talking about a new model of a transparent harmonious society that's supposed to change the world. Haven't you watched the CCTV news?

Cheers and beers to the new model of the transparent harmonious society called Peoples Republic :)

Spying on Students?

I work as a teacher at a public university located about a 45 minute train journey to the south of Wuhan. The entire English Major First Year student body numbering around 300 or more students has just been told that they are to be supplied with mobile telephones by the university at a cost to each student of RMB:50 - (they pay for their own calls). They have all been told that they must ONLY use these new telephones and must NOT use their own mobile telephones. They have all been made to sign an agreement to this effect.

These students all have their own mobile telephones and I wonder why a university that cannot be relied on to spend a single penny to keep the place well maintained. That does not provide anything else at subsidised costs, should suddenly insist 300 new students should be supplied with telephones at a heavily subsidised price and make it a rule that their own phones must not be used.

I am reminded of the case earlier this year in the USA where a high school had issued telephones or maybe issued mobile phone software that enabled the school management to literally spy on their students' call patterns and history as well as record and listen in to calls in progress but most importantly they could remotely activate the cameras in the phones so that pictures would be sent back to the management of whatever the cameras were pointing at - and all this could be done clandestinely without the knowledge of the students.

That incident caused an uproar and I believe that most of the senior management were either fired or allocated elsewhere into less senior positions.

Chinese management, especially those in schools, routinely act as if they are God and generally look on their students with little consideration. Cladestine underhand surveillance with 'doctored' mobile phones is right up the Chinese cheating street.

I have so far warned two classes of students that there is a reason for this issue of telephones and it is most unlikely to be for the students' benefit but is for some reason that suits the management. In fact I contend it is against the law of the land to force students to use university issue telephones when they all have perfectly serviceable phgones of their own and if the university wish to have a contact number for each student they do not need to issue them each with a telephone.

Any commments about this? Anyone come across this in China before, Would it be worth approaching the press and tv people to see if they might like to expose it?

Dave