As a recent HS grad, these suggestions disgust me. I would have learned absolutely nothing all four years if these guidelines were followed. As it is, I could

As a recent HS grad, these suggestions disgust me. I would have learned absolutely nothing all four years if these guidelines were followed. As it is, I could make it through a multiple choice/free response test (with 4 or 5 choices, and open-ended questions) in many subjects knowing less than half the material going in. Getting an A, mind you. Granted, I'm not the typical case, but the point is not to have everyone getting easy A's. That's not why we have school. School is supposed to be a place to learn to challenge yourself continuously. It should teach the value of persistence and hard work, because those are skills that can be learned and will seriously affect the life potential of an individual [1]. This is a separate consideration than intelligence, which according to some studies (that happen to agree with my point... don't you love selection bias?) has a fixed, unchangeable component [2]. The effect of these suggestions would be to lower the effort bar - more students will be like me, and have to put very little effort into their schoolwork to get the grades they want. I did not learn how to work hard (at least from school), and neither will they. [1] [pdf] duende.uoregon.edu/~hsu/blogfiles/sat.pdf according to University of Oregon researchers, high college GPAs are not correlated with high SAT scores. If we assume the SAT tests what it intends to, the implication of this study is that hard work can lead to mastery at least as well as intelligence, in most fields. [2] http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20020017191357data_trunc_sys.shtml http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20020017191357data_trunc_sy... Neural plasticity implies that you can learn new things, and the rate at which connections can change determines a "general intelligence factor" commonly called G.