Parents of students concerned at homework help app

The popularity of a "magic application" for doing homework has raised concern among parents.

The mobile phone software has been widely downloaded by students to solve difficult questions in their homework. By taking photos of assigned questions and uploading them onto the Internet, students can obtain answers from knowledgeable netizens, Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday.

The app is widely favored by primary and middle school students who have a lot of homework to complete during summer vacation.

"Answers are so easy to find and I never need to worry about homework," Wang Leyan, a primary school student in Zhengzhou, Henan province, was quoted as saying.

However, parents are concerned about wide use of the app.

The mother of a middle school student said she is extremely dissatisfied with the app, because she thinks it will turn her child into a plagiarist who does not use his own mind to think about a question.

"My child may lose the skill of thinking independently if he uses the app for a long time," the mother was quoted as saying.

A father in Jinan, Shandong province, took his son’s mobile phone to ensure the boy could not use the app too often.

The father, surnamed Zhao, said the app is contrary to parents’ goals of nurturing children’s abilities to think and solve problems independently.