A false good idea
From the opening, the site was saturated . Ministry of Education, associations of parents, teachers, and the media, were immediately unleashed against the site by denouncing its lack of morality . Burst of conscience, sincere or not, too many orders (“thousands”, according to its founder) or consequence of this media outburst: twenty-four hours after its opening, the site closed. How to explain this success as dazzling as it is ephemeral?
Too expensive !
Three math questions: €5. A history essay: €10. A complete presentation (in PowerPoint, please): 80€. At this price, even the most desperate student would have tried to answer the questions alone ! As for those who have a well-filled piggy bank, they generally already have recourse to private lessons. “For me, this site could only have created conflicts , and further increased inequalities ”, summarizes Hugues Hervet, professor of history.
Not fast enough…
72 hours of delay is huge. When you opt for cheating , it’s often in a hurry, in a hurry because the clock is ticking. As one student says: “At the last moment, in panic, some copy the homework of the best in class, before going back to class.” Mastering your schedule to the point of knowing how to organize yourself to place an order and plan the time for copying… This ability to anticipate is already the sign of a good adaptation to the school system, and it is rarely the fact of candidates for cheating.
All false !
The site specified that the team of correctors was made up of students from Grandes Ecoles and National Education teachers. Mercenary teachers ? “I doubt it, confides Joël Azoulay, a physics teacher: it goes against all pedagogical principles .” Delivering turnkey answers, without explanations, without support, is to deny everything that makes up the value of the profession. In short, society is less immoral than the site “ fairemesdevoirs.com” would have us believe . Anne Bideault – for Phosphore
Thousands of orders
The designer of the site explained after its closing: “This site, we set it up in three weeks. In 3 hours of opening, we had 80,000 unique visitors , and several thousand orders. We didn’t expect it at all. When we realized that we represented a real danger for National Education, we decided to stop before it was too late.”
Not easy to cheat!
A danger for National Education? Which teacher would have been trapped? Certainly not Aurélie Pieterwas, French teacher : “ When a student gets help from his parents, a big brother, a private teacher, or by copying and pasting on the Internet, I see it right away. The construction of the sentences, the vocabulary, the style… it has nothing to do with what he does in class.” Math isn’t more conducive to cheating .
The site’s proofreaders would have worked without contact with the student. However, writing a blind answer key, without adjusting to the progress of the class in the school program, exposes you to errors that do not forgive . David Groison has a bad memory of it. Before writing the editorials for Phosphore, he was a final year student: “My father, a preparatory math teacher, once helped me with a math homework. Except that he used formulas that we hadn’t covered in class. I didn’t realize it, but the teacher did. Shame!”
The law of the teacher… and exams
If French law does not punish this type of cheating , as the designer of the site has constantly reminded us, the law of the teacher is unequivocal. Some divide the mark by two, others put a zero and split a little note to the parents, others denounce the cheater in front of the whole class… So, “faismesdevoirs.com”, dangerous ? “It is not the people employed by the site who will take the exams , and the young people know it!” recalls Aurélie Pieterwas, philosopher. “It’s very simple, smiles Joël Azoulay, physics teacher, if the site had really been successful, we would have stopped giving homework to do…” Another replied with humor by creating ” fairemescorrections.com”, a random generator that lists the appreciations: “17/20, excellent job”, “9/20, can do better”, “0, zero!” Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Anne Bideault – for Phosphore