Doing students' homework lucrative business

Sawasdee, krup! How the heck are you today, eh? Feeling overwhelmed with all the things you have to get done. Well, take a break; pour yourself a nice mug of coffee and munch slowly on a virtual doughnut or muffin while you mentally arrange everything you need to accomplish into a priority list. Believe me, you are not alone. In Thailand, there is a big kerfuffle in the Ministry of Education over an ad on InstaGram. Read on...

The Thai Education Ministry is investigating widely advertised "homework" services which complete students' assignments for them at prices starting as low as 50 baht.
A Facebook user Jakkriz Yompayorm, who is a part-time teacher and lecturer, wrote on his personal page about an advertisement on Instagram Homeworknaka. He said it offers to do homework for students in primary to high school levels, including Thai and English language essays, handwritten poems or essays, art works and other topics at a reasonable price.

The price is from 50 baht for homework and from 200 baht for a report.
He was of the view that the business was not good for education as a whole, even though it helps students who have to submit work to teachers but haven't bothered to learn at all.
“The students do not develop their skills and this business is indirectly hurting students,” he wrote.
His Facebook post was picked up by a popular page, Drama-addict community, and the issue was then raised with executives at the Education Ministry.
Some netizens said students have too much homework and could not finish it on time, and their parents were unable to help them, so some people have offered this type of business service.
Some said students have to study eight subjects each a day and they are unlikely to finish their homework if all teachers give them homework. They asked for a change in education system to reduce the work load on students.
Permanent education secretary Suthasri Wongsaman said the ministry was working with the Information and Communication Technology Ministry to examine such advertisements on all channels of online media,...
If the ministry finds the service is being offered by government teachers, they will face disciplinary action. Otherwise, the ministry has to consider whether the operators have broken any laws.

“I think personally this business is ruining the nation’s education system. Although these services are available in some countries, they should not be available in Thailand,” she said.
Ms Suthasri said Thai students already have bad habits, especially the “copy and paste” syndrome, but this one was worse.
The ministry will ask the Office of the Basic Education Commission and the Office of the Private Education Commission to look into whether schools have been giving too much homework to students, or not. 

Metchanon Prachuablarp, secretary of a committee supporting education reform under the Youth Network of Bangkok, said in some high schools students hired a different teacher of the same subject to do their homework. He said this is not a new issue. It has been the practice for a long time, particularly for students in Bangkok and nearby provinces, because they want high scores.
Mr Metchanon said society had to understand that students had a huge work load to complete against time. When they could not finish the work on time, they hired someone else to do it.
Some teachers took on the work because they were poorly paid and doing homework for students was a way to earn extra money.
Source: link:http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/428184/doing-students-homework-lucrative-business. 

 As an educator, I sympathize with the problem. I had more than one student who wrote the first and last paragraphs of a report and copied (cut and pasted) the rest of it from the Internet. She swore that because she had copied it, it was now her work! Yeah, right! It was very easy to tell by the vocabulary used that the work was not hers. But I agree with Mr Metchanon that it is not a new problem. However, it is so easy to copy and paste these days, and students are overloaded with homework assignments, that it has become more of a problem. 

And how about teachers? In Thailand where classes can range from 40 -55 students, how does the average teacher find time to correct all of these assignments? In one school there, I had 21 classes that I saw once a week - hardly time to get to know the students. With about 45 students per class, that was 945 students I saw every week... read and grade 945 homework books every week! 

In classes, it sometimes seemed as though a handful of students did their work and the rest of the class copied from the diligent (and not so diligent) ones...including copying mistakes. Here is a teacher's dilemma for you...because you do not know (though can often make a pretty good guess) as to who wrote the original with the mistakes in and who were the copiers, do you penalize everybody?

It needs a complete look at the whole process of learning. It is a worldwide situation and it needs addressing in a creative manner. 

See ya, eh! Whew... I'm ready for a coffee!

Bob