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I've never bothered cheating. If a class bored me, I wouldn't bother. I took the hardest classes that I could, and was happy if I learned something even if th

I've never bothered cheating. If a class bored me, I wouldn't bother. I took the hardest classes that I could, and was happy if I learned something even if the grade wasn't perfect. That said, I do get why people do it. So much incentive is put on grades, rather than what you know. And it many cases, it is arbitrary. You get good grades for spitting back what the teacher wants, even if they are no smarter than you. (There are great teachers out there, but the mean teacher's standardized test scores are less than the mean student entering college) While I get it, it really pissed me off when I saw it in action. Especially in grad school. I wanted to say, "Come on, grades don't matter in grad school. Do you really need to cheat?" Sometimes it was telling someone "I'm just auditing the class, can I have your notes and homework answers from last year?" Other times it was sitting for the same exam twice in different sections. When I saw it happen, I could never trust the person again.

dllthomas 13y ago
"If a class bored me, I wouldn't bother. I took the hardest classes that I could, and was happy if I learned something even if the grade wasn't perfect." Very much matches my experience, in school at the tail end of the first tech bubble. I'd say "I'm taking X, Y, and Z because they sound interesting," and others would say "but those sound hard, I'm taking A, B, and C, because I've heard they're an easy A." Always bothered me a bit. "You get good grades for spitting back what the teacher wants, even if they are no smarter than you." There are certainly bad teachers, and occasionally that's due to stupidity, but I object to the notion that "teacher being smarter than you" is important. Hopefully they know more about the material, but even if they know less but a substantially different set than you know you have plenty to learn from them, and if they are skilled at teaching they might be quite useful even without that. Having said that, I recall being quite annoyed when a teacher tested on the particular mnemonic devices she'd presented rather than the things they were supposed to help us remember...
- mathattack 13y ago
  It wasn't until I got to AP Computer Science in school that I had a teacher that knew the material. From 4th grade up until then the teachers were faking it. I guess that's why I am biased on this point. :-) I hear you on the pneumonics. Better to learn the essence.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    When I was high-school age, there wasn't any AP Computer Science, though I was taking intro CS courses at the local community college from someone who more or less got it. I hadn't suffered through tons of teachers trying to teach me CS without grokking it before that (though occasionally after...), but I can guess at the kind of sensitivity that might produce. I certainly don't claim that lack of deep familiarity is a virtue! I just claim that it's not always as big a hindrance as one might think (depending...).

dllthomas 13y ago

"If a class bored me, I wouldn't bother. I took the hardest classes that I could, and was happy if I learned something even if the grade wasn't perfect." Very much matches my experience, in school at the tail end of the first tech bubble. I'd say "I'm taking X, Y, and Z because they sound interesting," and others would say "but those sound hard, I'm taking A, B, and C, because I've heard they're an easy A." Always bothered me a bit. "You get good grades for spitting back what the teacher wants, even if they are no smarter than you." There are certainly bad teachers, and occasionally that's due to stupidity, but I object to the notion that "teacher being smarter than you" is important. Hopefully they know more about the material, but even if they know less but a substantially different set than you know you have plenty to learn from them, and if they are skilled at teaching they might be quite useful even without that. Having said that, I recall being quite annoyed when a teacher tested on the particular mnemonic devices she'd presented rather than the things they were supposed to help us remember...

mathattack 13y ago
It wasn't until I got to AP Computer Science in school that I had a teacher that knew the material. From 4th grade up until then the teachers were faking it. I guess that's why I am biased on this point. :-) I hear you on the pneumonics. Better to learn the essence.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  When I was high-school age, there wasn't any AP Computer Science, though I was taking intro CS courses at the local community college from someone who more or less got it. I hadn't suffered through tons of teachers trying to teach me CS without grokking it before that (though occasionally after...), but I can guess at the kind of sensitivity that might produce. I certainly don't claim that lack of deep familiarity is a virtue! I just claim that it's not always as big a hindrance as one might think (depending...).