Students often carry misconceptions about coursework. They may view an instructor as an opponent standing in the way of the grade they want. And they see “getting the right answers” as the goal of education because that’s how you secure that grade.

Pedagogy aside, this is not entirely untrue in the lower division, at least on an institutional level. It’s usually the institution propping instructors up to stand in the way. They are told “you have to meet these learning outcomes, so these assignments have to do X, Y, and Z” and turns out X, Y, and Z are bullshit, but it meets accreditation standards if the class is audited. I taught rhetoric and it had to be explicitly Aristotelian. It blew chunks, nobody liked it or really understood it, but it was what the department justified to the institution for accreditation purposes.

I hated giving grades. I wanted to see continual improvement rather than final products. With a gun to my head I wouldn’t go back.