The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
– Gustave Le Bon (1841 – 1931)
A sad truth politicians, government functionaries, con men, the media, and psychopaths (but I repeat myself) depend on. As a teacher, I have lost count of the number of times I’ve heard “will this be on the test?” from “smart” students who do well in school but are destined to do poorly in life because they do not hunger to truth or reality, but diplomas and accolades. They are fundamentally lazy and incurious. They are confused enough they think knowledge and diplomas are the same thing. It’s the sort of person that believes the story ends when the Disney Princess gets married, and Prince Charming will always come back from the war (or tavern, or brothel, or…).
Related to this:
People are not addicted to drugs or alcohol, they are addicted to escaping reality.
– Unknown
The desire of people to avoid hard truth is impressive, and politicians pander to this fact every day. When your perception of reality and yourself are positive, the desire to escape is low. When reality is horrible, the desire to escape is huge…. Makes you wonder about the reality of Hollywood and political elites when you look at the number of them who have to enter rehab.
The Advocate, a magazine which once praised me as a ‘gay innovator,’ even published an article saying that as of now I am, and I quote, ‘not a gay man,’ because I don’t agree with their politics. The lie behind the buzzword of ‘diversity’ could not be made more clear: If you don’t conform, then you don’t count as ‘diverse,’ no matter what your personal background.
– Peter Thiel
And the left excels in obfuscating the truth. In their calls for diversity, they enforce (leftist) conformity. In their calls for tolerance they impose numerous zero-tolerance policies. if you agree with them and stay “on the reservation” in your political thought, every crime will be forgiven, but if you stray then every action is unforgivable.
I would suggest a good answer to “will this be on the test” is “yes” — always. That will force them to recognize that things can change, and your expectations are not always valid in the end. Or, if you dislike being bitched at afterwards (“you said it would be on the test, waaahhhh”) you could make it “probably yes”.
I’d hand out a sheet or syllabus at the beginning of the term that explicitly says, “Assume all material covered in class could appear on a quiz or exam. Asking, ‘Will this be on the test?’ indicates that the student is not willing to pay attention and/or learn the material, and will result in losing the discussion/attendance credit for that day.”
Basically, a student asking “Will this be on the test?” is looking for a shortcut — an excuse to be intellectually lazy — but there are no shortcuts to knowledge or understanding.
The last school I taught at explicitly disallowed that. They used “standards-based grading,” which does have some good points. It essentially said “here is the standard you will be graded against” and that rubric is the entirety of the grade. It’s clear, and simple. It also means that things like plagiarism, because they are not an official part of the “math” or “science” curricula, was not punishable by anything in their grade. They must be given a chance to do it over (potentially for full credit) and the punishment for plagiarism must be non-academic. It meant that late work couldn’t be marked down, because the standards we were given to use didn’t have anything about being “on time” because that isn’t a “math” or a “science” thing.
Yeah…. my jaw hit the floor too when I first heard it, too.
I don’t think “school” is the correct label for an organization like that. “Scam” would be more accurate.