That's horrible. Especially since I guarantee you and everyone else in that class had it down after the first 50 problems.

It astounds me how many teachers honestly think that teaching/learning is about drills, rote memorization, and slavishly grinding away to get results. While I have no doubt that some people absolutely need to do this in order to get things to stick, I think it under-estimates the intelligence of most kids in the classroom. I would argue it's not exactly learning and more like programming.

For instance, I can recall "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" like some kind of Manchurian Candidate sleeper-agent. But that tells me nothing about how that organelle metabolizes ATP to fuel other activities, what happens when it breaks down, and so on. Memorization and drills are great for algorithms, formulas, and basic foundational things. But the real learning happens in other ways.

That's cruel!