[srslyTrying2hlp]

I learned about 'Sterotype grading'.

The teacher doesnt read, they skim, and they already know who deserves As or Ds.

I was a victim of this. I was a general A or B student, but I thought the funny kids (D students) were funny and hung out with them. I got stereotype graded. My last paper of the year I completely gave up, the least effort ever. Teacher gave me an A and said 'You improved so much!'

[nogridbag]

Back in the early dial-up era, when teachers were not tech-savvy, I went online and found a paper exactly matching what I was tasked to write about for a homework assignment. And I regrettably submitted it as-is with no changes. I guess I knew it was cheating, but I likely also thought I was being incredibly clever as I had not heard of anyone ever doing that before. However, another student in the class submitted the same exact paper. I received an A and he received a C.

The teacher likely didn't know that he used to be my best friend growing up, and at some point was more knowledgable with computers than me. He introduced me to things like IRC. But he became one of the most popular kids at school and started distancing himself from me.

After getting our papers back, he came over to brag about how he found his paper online and that's how we discovered we submitted the same exact essay. At that point in time, I thought the teacher must have assumed he copied from me. But I think your explanation is likely more plausible. I guess the teacher just skimmed the papers and graded based on our expected grade.

[Verdex]

I have a friend who dealt with this in highschool. The English teacher just copied whatever their grade was from their first assignment onto all other assignments.

It got so bad that his Dad, who was an active English and Spanish teacher at another school, was convinced to write one of his papers for him. He got a D.

[cjbgkagh]

I could imagine, I guess that would be a side effect of large class sizes.

An optimization when I was a student was to find out what the teacher thinks and re-affirm those beliefs with a few twists to give an appearance of depth. On occasion, for fun, I would take a dissenting position and I was always punished for it.

I think the entire education system is steeped in orthodoxy such that it's not in its interest to properly teach critical thinking, failing to do so is an emergent behavior / happy accident. There would have to be an environment that would reward students for actual critical thinking and not apparent critical thinking (agreeing with the teacher) and I don't know how to create one, and I especially don't know how to reform the current system.

I still get a bit of a kick out of the idea that the often proposed solution to the mass academic plagiarism, following the replication crisis, is a mass amnesty - which strangely seems to have tacitly occurred as it's no longer even being discussed.

[spiritplumber]

My literature teacher started reading my essays when I turned a report on Dante's Inferno into a crossover with Doom.

[greenavocado]

You failed to establish the link between giving up and getting bad grades from hanging out with the funny kids and how any of that is even remotely caused by stereotyping.

[cjbgkagh]

I think that is a misreading, they got good grades due their prior stereotype of 'A' student despite doing 'D' student effort.

[Dylan16807]

If their grades never changed it could be they're better at writing than they think, even with low effort.

[cjbgkagh]

That scenario seems rather contorted, seems like taste is important part of writing a good essay.

[greenavocado]

I see what you are saying now. It should be clarified.