A final exam question at the Law School of China’s prestigious Nankai University has gone viral in China. The question asks students to recognize the face of their course teacher. If students don’t answer correctly, they fail the course straight away.
The Law school students taking the final exam for the course “Code of Civil Procedure” on Jan. 17, were taken by surprise when they saw the first question of the exam, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.
“The instructor who taught you the Code of Civil Procedure for a whole semester is ____?” Four profile photos, labeled A, B, C, D, are shown below the question. The exam specifies that students don’t get any points for answering the question correctly, and if answered incorrectly or not at all, they lose 41 points. Students need 60 out of 100 points to pass the exam, so if they lose 41 points they definitely fail.
Skipping classes has become common practice in China’s higher education. Many Chinese university classes are quite large with hundreds of students in one class. Taking attendance is a headache for many teachers, so many schools have created various methods to test attendance. Some teachers take student group photos every class, and some request students to punch cards at a meter for each class.
The Nankai University Law School vice president said that the instructor who created the question is a young teacher who had been recruited just last year. He was complimented for coming up with such a solution for testing attendance. The teacher figured out such a “killer move” in response to students frequently not showing up in class, the Southern Metropolis Daily’s report says.
It also prompted heated discussion among Chinese netizens, with many calling the teacher “witty.”
