With no time to do projects, students opt to buy them

Vijayakumar D, a resident of Pallavaram, used to take pride in preparing his school projects. He would painstakingly collect flowers, leaves and even insects, clean them, paste them on boards with little labels. The procedure took days, sometime even weeks, but since Biology was one of Vijayakumar’s favourite subjects, he took pride in creating the projects. But that was in the 1980s. Now, Vijayakumar’s son is in school and most of the projects that he is assigned does not take an hour to make. It is just a matter of minutes as the son, unlike the father, does not prepare school projects on his own. He buys it from a nearby shop. 

“I remember collecting hibiscus flowers and leaves to make charts on Botany, making windmills and periscopes but nowadays, children hardly have time to make anything from scratch and they prefer to buy such projects from shops,” said Vijayakumar. 

“In fact, a colleague’s son had to build a drone on his own. So he went to a store, bought one, pulled it apart and replaced some of its parts with plastic counterparts and put it back together clumsily so that it looked like the he had genuinely build the drone all by himself,” he added. This is hardly a surprise as almost all activity-based learning materials are available at stationery shops across Tamil Nadu. As the competition for the exams and marks touch new heights, parents claim that it is better that their children concentrate on studies rather than making projects at home. Even engineering students are using this facility to clear their academic projects within a short time, and at a nominal price. 

“Now-a-days, parents are more concerned about their children’s exam marks than what the kids are actually learning. They ask the children to study instead of wasting time in putting together such projects at home,” said S Venky who owns a stationery shop at Georgetown. 

“We have been selling school activity-based projects for four years and till a few years ago, parents would complain that buying such projects was an expensive affair. But now, they are willing to shell out anything to save time,” he added. The business, however, requires knowledge of the kind of projects that schools in the area favour. Accordingly, Venky showcases models of projects that are usually assigned in local schools. 

“Student projects differ from one are to the other. So I keep models prepared so that students from different schools can have their pick. The projects are made after the students place orders,” said Venky. Meanwhile, parents too seem to support this habit. S Shalini is a software engineer from Nanganalur could not spare time to help her daughter make her school project at home. 

“My daughter is in Class 6 and was asked to make a windmill as a part of the school activity. She wasted almost three days without even completing one fourth of the model. Since, I could not devote the time to her, we decided to outsource it from a stationery shop”, Shalini said. She also blamed the school for not guiding her daughter in doing the model. 

“Even though teachers assign the work, in most cases they do not know how to go about the project and fail to guide the students properly,” Shalini said. So much is the demand for school projects that stationery shop owners have come up with catalogues to help their customers choose their buy. At M Senthil’s shop in Thambaram suburbs, the projects range from Rs 150 to Rs 500 and there are more than 80 types and variants to choose from. Senthil said that his best sellers include working models of a windmill and the ecological system. 

“The demands vary from subject to subject. For example, Chemistry students require chart-based worksheets on various equations and formulas, so they sell like hot cakes here,” he added. Also, with the increase in demand, comes the need to specialise because having multiple students show up in class with similar-looking models cannot be good for business. Hence, Senthil has taken to selling customised models. 

“We have contract labourers who are hired specifically for making school projects,” he said. Commenting on this, Malathy Balakrishnan, director of Academics at Sri Sankara Public school in Pammal said, “Learning-based activities should be taught only in the classrooms. Teachers should explain and demonstrate how to make these models so that children are not forced to approach stationery shops.” 

Balakrishnan added that currently, a lot of pressure is applied on teachers to complete the syllabus in class well before the examinations and so they do not contribute much time for the projects. 

“Also, teachers are blamed if the exam results, especially that of high school students, are not up to the mark,” she said. Speaking a long a similar vein, K Revathy, a high school teacher of Science said, “Kids these days want everything to be done fast. At present, there is tremendous competitions among students to get better marks and that’s why they take a casual approach towards such projects”. 

Revathy added that most of the teachers do not check whether the class projects are indeed prepared by the students because it saves them time and effort. The trend goes beyond school students as K Ashok Kumar, an engineering student studying in private college, said, “All we need to do is get the details of the assigned project, look for it on the internet and buy it and then submit it.” He said that many students prefer doing this as the studying and social media take up most of their time. Interestingly, most of the online sellers teach students how to make the project on their own in case they are quizzed by their teachers. 

One such seller, S Sasikumar, said, “We teach each student how to modify the project to make it look as if they worked on it. But, is up to the student to learn the theory and then explain it to the teacher when the turn comes.” 

Meanwhile, Dr R Kumar, a professor of electronics and engineering communications at SRM Institute of Science and Technology in Kattankulathur, said that to prevent students from outsourcing projects, the college ensures that the projects are built within the campus. 

“In our college, the students have to make their projects in the campus and the procedure is carefully monitored,” he said. Meanwhile, S Chandravadhana, professor and head of the department of mechatronics engineering in Agni College of Technology, said that many small companies make huge money by selling college projects. She pointed out that it is imperative for engineering students to work on one small project during the seventh semester and a major project in the eighth semester, some of which may vary from college to college. 

“We know that students have made it a habit to buy models so we make our students work on industrial models which area not available for sale in the market,” Chandravadhana said. She added, “We take the final year engineering students to various industries and ask them to choose a project which may be used by the organisation. With this, the students get a better chance of getting jobs in the industry and the industry will also benefit from the students’ models.” 

Explaining how buying such projects affect students’ learning and understanding of the subject, the professor said, “Projects provide an opportunity to learn and gain practical experience. Students’ creativity and understanding can be gauged through these projects. By using ready-made projects, the students are cheating themselves, not us.”