Punishing students who are ahead is an excellent way to make all students equally disinterested. (Oh, but not equivalently disinterested.) The question is whe

Punishing students who are ahead is an excellent way to make all students equally disinterested. (Oh, but not equivalently disinterested.) The question is whether the student knows about commutativity of multiplication or if he/she didn't understand what was taught or made a mistake. Personally, I think the problem here is that math is taught as processes rather than as concepts.