14 DAY TRIAL // Some entrepreneurs in France have had the idea of starting a website dedicated to solving math problems. It's a place where children from all around the world can post the problems they have been assigned at school, so that older French mathematics students can then solve them and post the solution. Naturally, all of this is done for a fee, which isn't all that high. According to Reuters, which has spoken to founder Stephane Boukris, the website goes live on Thursday, though a preliminary version is up even now.
The managers of the site say that an average math problem will cost approximately 5 euros to solve, but that other options will be available as well. They add that an end-of-term presentation, complete with PowerPoint slides and speaker's notes, will cost somewhere around 80 euros, or 100 dollars.
Clearly, they expect a large number of children to visit the faismesdevoirs domain, a name that literally translates into “do my homework.” In order to make the endeavor cost-efficient, they would have to hire personnel to work around the clock, so they can answer calls from all around the world.
“I realized 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,” Boukris tells Reuters. However, not everyone is as excited about the initiative as the little ones. Teachers from both mid- and high-schools have already expressed their outrage at the site, vouching that it will favor cheating and that they will be left with no realistic means of assessing the level of knowledge each student has at the end of a term.
“It is shocking. It defeats the purpose of education which is that the pupils need to learn for themselves how to do the work. It turns them into consumers. The message is that for the right price you can get the results you want. It's nonsense,” secondary school English teacher Agathe Field, who does her job in a Parisian suburb, complains.
In a telephone interview, Boukris has expressed that “We're not just giving them the fish, we're teaching them how to fish,” referring to the fact that not only the answers will be posted online, but also the correct ways in which the result can be arrived at. Thus, the founders of the site seek to help children who are having problems with keeping up in math at the same time. “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 concludes.