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Comment by tcbawo | Hacker News Reader

> surprisingly childish response from an adult that ought to know better

The lesson you learned from this experience was that the adult was being childish?

I expected them fail me on the homework, as was fair. The assignment has a point-value, I showed up each morning with an empty notebook and requested a zero on the assignment instead of a late penalty. Homework was worth 15% of the final grade and I had no problem passing without any homework credit whatsoever.

The lesson I learned is that if you beat certain people at their own game they will never let you live it down. Whether I was dysfunctional or not, their response didn't work and they refused to renege after months of failure. They failed as a teacher, when I hadn't failed as a student.

Do you think your teacher saw potential in you and was trying to get more from you? My biggest frustration with the public school near me is that they don’t care whether a student thrives, only that they don’t fail. Attempting to instill a work ethic as a teacher is admirable, but clearly didn’t work in your case. I could see how facing resistant students could grind the optimism and energy out of a teacher.

I share a similar experience and response to talldyo. The problem is "we" (talldyo and I) understood how to solve the problems (as proved by passing the tests) but were uninterested in wasting our time doing busy work. The teacher could have changed their grading to be something like 50% of the grade comes from homework and 50% from tests. Then I likely would have done the homework, while still being pissed because it's just "busy work". I prefer just taking quizzes and tests to determine grades and if I understand the material. How I learn and how much practice I need to get to understanding and being able to solve the problem should be no ones business but my own. If the teacher was prudent they would have just left talldyo alone. The teacher needlessly caused additional problems and pain and suffering.

Did you achieve mastery of the subject matter without doing the homework? If so, kudos to you. If not, then perhaps doing the homework might have been of some value. Practicing leads to solving problems faster and with less mistakes. Of course the length of the assignment matters, too. Hours of additional work would be a burden. So, I guess it depends on the situation. You would hope that the adults involved (parents and teachers) have the student’s best interest in mind and would work something out.

Why makes you think you didn't fail as a student?

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