It?s eight o?clock in the evening and a man, visibly tired after a day?s work, enters a cyber caf? with a boy in tow. He thrusts a sheaf of papers into the hands of the cyber caf? attendant and utters two simple words, ?school project?. The latter nods knowingly. As the two men get busy, discussing the ?project? ? what pictures are to be put on which pages, how the pages are to be designed, etc ? the boy looks around him casually, utterly disinterested in their discussion. Which is strange, considering that it?s his school project that the two men are discussing.

This is not an isolated case. Schools, especially ICSE schools, require their students to hand in a lot of projects, both as part of the syllabus and otherwise. But unlike in earlier times, when pictures were cut out from magazines and newspapers, or drawn out by students, and the entire report hand-written by them, today, projects are executed with the help of computers. Pictures have to be downloaded from the Internet, pages have to be designed and the written matter typed out on computers.

But do students do all this by themselves? The answer is ?no?.

Ronit Mitra, a Class VI student of a well-known south Calcutta boys? school has his father look for all his project pictures on the Net. His mother, Nandini, defends him, saying, ?He either finds the topics uninteresting or too tough to handle.?

For students who do not have a computer at home, cyber caf?s are the only answer. Siddharth Mukherjee, a student of Class XI, says, ?I copy the matter from the book and my uncle gets it done at the local cyber caf?.? It?s not that his school has made it mandatory for students to get projects done on computers. ?But it is always the ones who submit such ?hi-fi? projects who get good marks,? says Siddharth, ?so, in a way, it has become mandatory.? And it?s good business for the cyber caf?s too. They charge Rs 10 for typing out a page and Rs 5 for a print.

Of course, the teacher usually decides how a project is to be done. Says Mitali Chatterjee, a senior science teacher in a reputed south Calcutta girls? school, ?Some teachers put too much stress on getting additional information from the Internet, colourful pictures and well-designed pages. But what is the use of all this if students don?t do it themselves? And why do they believe that every child will have access to the Net?? Chatterjee believes that these projects are nothing but a tactic by the ICSE Board for guaranteeing a certain number of marks to its students. These projects are part of the internal assessment category that accounts for 20 marks in the exams.

Mumbai-based Swati Banerjee, whose son, Sirsho, studies in Class VII, says, ?The teachers want projects to have information over and above what is there in textbooks. For that you have to go to the Net.? While she looks for information or pictures on the Net, her husband gets the prints from his office. But the good thing is that Sirsho has to work on the projects at school once the pictures and information have been downloaded. Even then, says Banerjee, one of Shirsho?s classmates once got the whole thing done from home and the teacher did not say a word.

So what good are these projects if most of the work is done by others? Barnali Ghosal is a teacher and has two sons studying in Classes IX and XI. On being asked about the usefulness of such projects, she replies, ?They help you learn a lot beyond school work?. This, despite the fact that she herself does most of the projects for her sons. Her explanation: ?The boys have neither the interest nor the patience to deal with such things. But I feel good if my son can present a well-made project at school. For that, I do my best.?

The big question though, is, what do students learn from this exercise? ?Nothing much,? replies Siddharth, curtly. ?We are given these projects just before our exams. I hurriedly copy whatever I can from the textbook and the rest is taken care of at the caf?. What do you expect me to learn?? He says he has friends who get their parents to do even the copying out for them. This is not to say that no student ever does a project on his or her own steam. But Ghosal estimates that if 10 per cent of the students do them on their own, the rest get them done by parents, relatives or professionals.

But projects can be made interesting too. For instance, Sirsho is now doing a live project at school for which they are required to work in groups and give a demonstration in class. ?This is how a student can learn something,? says Swati.

Today, the question being asked by students and parents alike is that if teachers have the noble intention of making students cyber-savvy, why can?t students do the projects on their school computers within or after school hours with their help? And if that seems like too steep a demand, then why have these projects at all?