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It's FACTS That We Don't Need FACS

Being in school brings out a mix of emotions in every student. Wether the student is stressed, happy, or sad depends on many different variables. A student can feel these emotions because of a situation at home, a problem with a friend, and obviously because of the lessons or schoolwork going on in class. Can a machine truly and effectively montior these emotions? Is a machine like this really needed in the current education system? It's not, The use of the Facial Action Coding System to read the emotional expressions of students in a calssroom is not valuable.

First of all, human emotions are complex. The article "Making Mona Lisa Smile" gave us several examples of muscles in the human face that were used when expressing emotion. A couple examples of these are the "frontalis pars lateralis," and the "orbicularis oris." Although these muscles and the parts of the face they move are an important part of dictating emotion, that's not all there is to understanding emotion. Body language is a massive part of emotion. The FACS may register a happy smile, but it won't see slouching shoulders. The text even states that, "Each expression is compared against a neutral face (showing no emotion.)" This means the FACS reads a blank expression as showing no emotion. What if someone with a person with a blank expression is conveying emotion through body language? Being a student and teenager, body language is a huge part of communication. With the FACS not being able to read body language, that's already a giant hole in its value.

Next, how useful would this technology be outside of an elementary school setting? The answer is absolutely not useful. In elementary school the teacher caters to each students' needs. They're able to do so because you have the same 20 to 30 kids every minute of every day for 180 schools days. But, in middle school and high school students have seven to eight different teachers throughout the day. Middle and high school teachers don't have the one on one time to cater to their students. As cold as it sounds, middle and high school teachers simply might not even care about their students feelings. At least not to the degree an elementary teacher would. Teachers in the upper levels have a strict set of standards that they need to teach. Students must then master those standards to pass the class. There isn't enough time for an upper level teacher to care about their students' emotions.

Finally, students are kids. Kids experience a plethora of emotions throughout the day. Even though, "The facial expressions for each emotion are unviersal," what would one use the information gathered from FACS for? Dr. Huang believes that, "it [FACS] could modify the lesson, like an effective human instructor." The fact that the text states that FACS is just as effective as a human teacher completely renders itself useless. If Dr. Haung, the software engineer of FACS, believes that this machine performs on an equal level to a human, there is absolutely no need for the FACS. As previously mentioned, upper level teachers do not have the time to modify their lesson plans due to their students emotions. That fact alone removes the need for the FACS.

In conclusion, the use of FACS is not valuable to read the emotional expressions of students in a classroom. The FACS does not have a place in the current education sytem. With evidence from the article "Making Mona Lisa Smile" it is clear that the FACS is only on the same level of reading emotions as, "an effective teacher." This renders the FACS not only as useless to students in a classroom, but also as a likely massively more expensive alternative to human teachers.

Score: 6