Homework ghostwriters cashing in on 'fake culture'

SHIJIAZHUANG - Attending classes cannot guarantee that students will earn money but doing homework can.

As the end of the summer holiday approaches, the woes of Chinese pupils bogged down in too many school assignments is reaching its peak.

But "Yanyu," a college graduate in North China's Hebei province, is celebrating a business boom. Yanyu, a screename meaning "misty rain", is a staunch defendant of students' freedom during holidays. Freedom, however, comes at a price.

"Seventy yuan ($11) for an exercise book for a senior-high student, 10 yuan for an exam paper and five yuan for a short piece of an essay," said Yanyu, in an advertisement posted online.

Charges vary according to difficulties -- primary school homework is the cheapest, while assignments for senior highs are the most expensive. A discount can be given if your order is big.

With a team of three, Yanyu said the ghostwriting services could rake in several thousand yuan for each of them during the summer holidays, as many students come to them for a quick solution because of their excessive holiday homework.

But Yanyu has principles -- his team declines to do homework for those facing the make-or-break senior high or college entrance exams.

"We don't want to ruin the child's future, but we also hope they can think independently. Schooldays are a vital period in one's lifetime and should not be buried in homework," he said.

Yanyu is just one of many ghostwriters, who are mostly college students, profiting from the widespread complaint of too much homework and too little play time, among Chinese children.

Despite constant calls by educational authorities to trim excessive homework, educators said the burden on students has hardly lightened, mainly due to the cut-throat competition in school enrollment.

"Half of my summer holiday has been in remedial classes, with piano courses and loads of homework. I find the holiday more tiring than semesters," said Wang Qi, a senior high student, in Hebei.

Even life in primary schools is not easy. Holiday homework for a 11-year-old, in Jinan, capital of east Shandong Province, can include an exercise book, four essays and more than 60 pages of exam papers.

Fake culture

But experts said the real danger suggested by the emergence of homework ghostwriting was the "fake culture" of the adult world that seemed to be filtering down to infect adolescents.

"When adults hire ghostwriters to write a thesis or reports, they may not realize that they're setting a very bad example for the children," said Han Xiaoyu, a teacher at Shijiazhuang No 40 Middle School.

Wang Zhongwu, a sociologist at Shandong University, said the phenomenon was spawned by China's high tolerance for fakery, which could be found everywhere from copycat goods to academic plagiarism.

"The lenient penalties have prompted fakery to spread like cancer cells, severely compromising social credentials," Wang said. "But the impact of homework fakery is worse than counterfeit products or false accounts, as it dirties the soul of our children."