05 March,2009 11:25 AM IST | | Agencies
"You can't do it? We're here to help," says the homepage of a new French website where children can pay for older students to do homework for them.
On faismesdevoirs.com (domyhomework.com), children will be able to buy answers to simple maths problems for 5 euros, while a full end-of-year presentation complete with slides and speaking notes will cost 80 euros.
The website went live today morning, founder Stephane Boukris.
"I realised there was a gap in the market. Add to that a dose of insolence, a zest of arrogance and the Internet, and you have faismesdevoirs.com," he said.
Schoolteachers reacted with outrage.
"It is shocking. It defeats the purpose of education," said Agathe Field, a young English teacher at a secondary school in a suburb of Paris. "It turns them into consumers. The message is that for the right price you can get the results you want. It's nonsense," she said.
Boukris defended the website, saying that the schoolchildren would still learn something if they bought homework from the site because it would come with annotations from the students explaining how they got to the final result.
"We're not just giving them the fish, we're teaching them how to fish," Boukris said in a telephone interview.
"Of course some schoolchildren might use the system to cheat, but they'll have to learn sooner or later because we won't be there on exam day," he said.
