Y!A - Boredom in school/college/university?

Why is it that those who claim that they "aren't being challenged enough" at school tend to be some of the worst students? If they find the material easy, then they should be acing all of their exams and assignments, right? What's the fallacy behind my logic?

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My Answer:

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

About success itself:
Success is relative and subjective.
Acing an exam or assignment is a form of success.
Actually learning something is another form of success.

While both can be done at the same time, one does not depend on the other, that is, you can have perfect grades without really learning anything just like you can learn everything without getting good grades.

People who look for a challenge are people who are looking to learn, not people who are looking for grades. Therefore, getting good grades is redundant for them as it is not required for actual learning, in fact, it often gets in the way because of all the time you have to spend memorizing details that will more often than not never been seen anywhere but in the exam or assignment themselves.

Moreover, going beyond the redundancy of acing tests and assignments, if a class is too easy, that is, that there's nothing new to be learned, one who seeks learning will lose interest in the class, as not only is acing the the assignments for the class is redundant but the class itself is redundant when it comes to acquiring knowledge... When it gets this bad you will often see the smartest people in the class either dropping out or just being absent most of the time.

In fact, if you do some research you will see that many of the greatest geniuses in the history of mankind either failed or dropped out at some point in their academic life.

Now to show you that this is not a theory, I'll give you myself as an example.

Back in Junior High (by the way I'm from Brazil and over there junior high is much more challenging as you have 11 subjects instead of 3), I used to get the books for school about 2 weeks before classes started, each book with the topics for the following semester. I would then take the books for the classes I was interested in, usually science and math, and read them entirely. By the time classes started, I already knew everything that there was to be learned, so I would cut classes and only go to them when there was a test, so that inevitably i failed in all class assignments and homework... At the end of the year, my grade was just enough to pass (I got 100 on virtually every test, making my overall grade just high enough to pass). My goal was to learn, and I succeeded in achieving that goal however much I apparently failed.

Also after I graduated from High School (which i completed here in the USA), I simply decided not to go to college at all, because of how pathetic the system of education has become (and note I could have gone to Ivy League colleges if I so chose as I actually went to class in high school for lack of anything better to do and got perfect grades on virtually everything as a byproduct of going to class). Instead I decided to learn things on my own, and trust me, if you have enough brains, you can bypass the need for a diploma on almost any career, the only real exceptions being law and medicine, although in one instance I convinced a state judge to let me represent someone in court even though I'm not a lawyer...

Today I'm only 22 and I've worked as:
Graphic Designer, Web Designer, English - Portuguese Interpreter, English as a Second Language Teacher, I've administered the finances and classes for a Church, among other things... all of which bored me and led me to the next thing... Today I'm currently studying sociology and psychology and writing a book on the evolution of human thought and behavior...

The bottom line is, people who "aren't challenged enough" have different priorities than people who go to school to get grades... People who go to school to get grades do so because getting a diploma and good grades is the only means they have available to succeed in life, for if they were to rely on actual intelligence they would generally fail miserably. That's why they make getting a diploma so easy nowadays, and why when I have to go to the hospital I'm always concerned if they (the doctors and nurses) actually know what they're doing (and I'll tell you that there have been a couple of times where I've had to correct them).

So, what is the fallacy behind your logic? That grades are simply redundant to people looking for a challenge... They don't care about it, so they often don't bother to get good grades...