Pretending.

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When I was in community college, I took a remedial writing class because my writing skills suck coming right out of high school. It was not helped when I had to spend time at a special education school (SED school - that is because teachers have had to spend more time taking care of kids who are out of control than teaching the material). The teacher was teaching the class how to write more complex sentences that what I am used to writing. She was teaching a lot of independent/dependent clauses used in sentence structure and stressing sentence variety in writing papers. Well, I knew a lot of the answers to the questions that the teacher asked that pertains to the class material, so I raised my hand frequently. In fact, I knew so many the answer that the teacher told me to put my hand down because she thought I had my hand up once too many times.

Also, when I was in a four-year college as a transfer student, I took an Intro Microeconomics course because I was considering an actuarial career as a career possibility at that time. The TA has explained things so well that I felt like an overachiever of that class. So during a final exam review class, the teacher asked a question that the final exam is covering and I know the answer. After I got my hand up, she said "I know you know everything", and called on another student to answer.

When I was a sophomore in high school, we were reviewing for a personal clothing class (basic in-depth sewing class) final exam. So when teachers asked questions regarding the class material, I blurted the answer that I knew without looking at my notes. Soon a girl in the class yelled to the class that I was going to pass the final as if she seems to think that she is going to fail it.

Last, but not least, a girl used to call me a loser until she and I were put in the same algebra class. Once she found out on her own that I am not the dumb that she made me out to be, she seemed to regret bullying me. That was in high school.

If people bully you because you know most of the answers, that means they are probably just jealous because they do not think they are capable of doing well in school. When I asked the transition teacher at the special ed school that I went to about the possibility of taking courses in the middle set when I was set to attend my zoned high school full time. After she granted that request, a kid from the special ed school made fun of me and said right in my face 'First grade, basic classes". Because courses were limited there, I look like an overachiever by special ed standards in 1990.

The bottom line is, intelligence is not just accepted, it is RESPECTED.

Last edited by sootie1 on 13 Jun 2018, 8:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

They may have been employing the Socratic method. The purpose is broader than just providing an already known answer. It's to demonstrate things like how you determined the answer, to make you think about why that's the answer and challenge presumptions/biases that got you there.

It also can be simply about showing the instructor that you paid attention and retained the information. Recitation also helps some people better remember what they learned.

This is a perfect example of me in math classes in school(It doesn't hurt that complex math is one of my special interests). I could either work out how to solve the problems before the teacher would get half-way through explaining it to the rest of the class, or I had done my own research on it and knew how to do it already. It is sad that one must act dumb to ensure others don't get their feeling hurt, but that is how things are.