(VNN) - So-called “reference books” containing answers to school textbook questions and sample essays are helping kids cheat in school, according to educators.Parents and students have begun relying more on such books than on actual school exercises and textbooks, Nguyen Minh Thuyet, deputy chairman of the National Assembly Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children, told Thanh Nien.
He said many unwitting parents were buying up the reference books in bulk for their kids to use as study aids, while most didn’t know the difference between cheap cheat-sheet type books and real reference books like encyclopedias.
Most of these “reference books” mainly provide answer keys for exercises in school textbooks and model literature papers, which destroy students’ creativity and their motivation to study, said Thuyet.
But the “reference” industry is thriving.
Thirty-five of the country’s 57 publishing houses now print reference books and the popular bookstore Vinabook carries over 600 reference titles, many of which are designed simply to help students get passing grades without studying.
The state-owned Education Publishing House, which has a monopoly on textbook publishing in Vietnam, recently said that it finds many reference books violating its copyrights every year. The most common violation is publishers who print answer keys to textbook questions in reference books.
Teacher Vu Tuyet Lan from Hanoi’s Le Ngoc Han Secondary School told a local newspaper that the shady reference books were making it even harder for students with poor marks to learn.
“Many students in fact are depending on the books to answer questions in their textbooks,” Lan said, adding that students were also writing literature papers by compiling different paragraphs from a variety of reference books.
