Hurriyet Daily News
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Kasım 25, 2008 00:00
ANKARA - The Education Ministry will take legal action to shut down Web sites that are providing "ready homework" to students.
The online homework sites, which have approximately 100,000 members in Turkey, provide homework assistance and "ready homework" to students for assignments on almost every subject. There are even Web sites that sell doctoral theses. The move came as a result of the increasing number of complaints from teachers and schools that ready homework Web sites make students lazy, the daily Akşam reported yesterday.
Legal status checked
The ministry conducted a comprehensive investigation of the homework Web sites and of their legal status, which revealed there are thousands of examples of ready homework on the Internet. The ministry decided to introduce a series of legal measures to prevent students from using such Web sites. Students who are proved to have purchased ready homework on the Internet, will be fined and given a lower grade. The ministry also plans to apply to courts to prevent access to these Web sites.
Ministry officials said ready homework led students not to research and made them lazy.
"We have come across a serious problem. The real task belongs to teachers in this respect. It is interesting that these Web sites initially provided support to teachers. The teachers themselves first enjoyed the use of these Web sites and later ready homework appeared. The real problem here is about ethical principles," officials said.
Google, the world's largest search engine on the Web, announced earlier it would not accept advertisement of Web sites that sell ready homework and theses. The Web sites in Turkey sell homework to students for an annual fee of between YTL 20 to 30. The Web sites feature comprehensive homework on almost every topic of school lessons in the basic education curriculum, summaries of many books and research projects.