Hacker News Reader

Comment by sio8ohPi | Hacker News Reader

Having been on the other side of the table... there's a tactic students will sometimes use, where they don't understand the question but will simply attempt to regurgitate everything written on their notecard that is related in hopes that they'll accidentally say the right words. Sounds like you did understand it, but the volume perhaps made it look like you were just dumping. It is indeed annoying to grade.

Grading is boring, tedious, and quickly wears down one's enthusiasm. The words of M Bison come to mind: "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday."

View on HN

Sure, we could speculate about his true unstated reasons for marking wrong my answer.

I highly doubt the science teacher marked me wrong for "dumping", though. He had every opportunity to explain that to me after I got my exam graded and I asked him about it. Then he had the opportunity to explain that face-to-face with my parents. He did not do so. He said that while I got the answer right, he was "mad", thus the mark against.

Besides, notecards were not allowed for any part of the exam, and I wrote my answer from memory. I think it was clear that I knew my stuff pretty well and was not "dumping" a bunch of bullshit onto the science teacher.

There was no indication before taking the exam that I would be punished for hurting his apparently-sensitive feelings while giving the correct answer (as he agreed I did). If there were, I certainly would have chosen a different medium for proving my command of the material.

Good experience to prepare you for the rest of your academic and working life where your performance rating will often be strongly influenced the evaluator's current mood or biases. Or the police officer's mood when you get pulled over. Or most other authority figures' feelings when they're making decisions that affect you. It's unfairness all the way until we die.

Authoritarianism, everywhere and in all forms, seeks to shut down curiosity and critical thinking.

I distinctly remember a student arguing with a teacher for a mark.

"Look sir, here in the scrawl at the margins is the answer you just said was right"

"Yes Dylan, but this was a 1 mark question. Part of getting the mark involves putting the answer inside the space provided."

I used to write my undergrad history essays in rhymed couplets because I figured the grad assistant doing the grading would be grateful for a break in the monotony and it was faster and easier than writing an actual good essay. Probably wouldn't work in the LLM era, but it was very effective in the 90's.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com