I can believe most any story of a teacher being preposterously unreasonable, though of course not all of them are true. I've had some bad experiences. But that's not what I wanted to talk about; I wanted to talk about this:
> On the other hand, I have no such qualms believing a version where a 16 year old who thinks he's God's gift to mankind (hey, I was one of those) puts something together that doesn't fit the requirements of the project, submits it despite being repeatedly being steered in a different direction, comes up with unrealistic readings and interpretations of the assignment or context of the class to get them to fit his world view, and then (even if he does get a passing mark in the end) complains to everybody who will listen about how he's being discriminated against and how much smarter than everybody else he is, and oh I'm so wasting my time here between all these morons.
You say that with loads of negative connotations, but when I was a grad student teaching programming, I loved it when students would do this sort of thing, because they learned so much more than they would have by sticking to the lesson plan. Of course, I actually rewarded them with good grades for going above and beyond what they had to do.
Sure, it was inconvenient for me to have students ignoring my carefully-made lesson plans. But screw my plans; classes are about the students, and I wanted each student to do as well as they could. In other words, I wanted to be the kind of teacher I had always wanted, and occasionally had. It worked out well.
Yes, as with most things, it can go both ways, and I painted a stark contrast to make my point. Sometimes better results come out of people who don't stick to what they're supposed to be doing. On the other hand, sometimes the results are worse, too. I can't say, I haven't seen the project, don't know anything about the assignment, and haven't heard any other view. This particular story though doesn't sound very plausible to me, though.
Perhaps the OP was referring more to the student who turns in a GUI made with VB for an assignment that called for a console app made with C++. "But, it's a GUI! And GUI's are way more advanced than the command line!"
> On the other hand, I have no such qualms believing a version where a 16 year old who thinks he's God's gift to mankind (hey, I was one of those) puts something together that doesn't fit the requirements of the project, submits it despite being repeatedly being steered in a different direction, comes up with unrealistic readings and interpretations of the assignment or context of the class to get them to fit his world view, and then (even if he does get a passing mark in the end) complains to everybody who will listen about how he's being discriminated against and how much smarter than everybody else he is, and oh I'm so wasting my time here between all these morons.
You say that with loads of negative connotations, but when I was a grad student teaching programming, I loved it when students would do this sort of thing, because they learned so much more than they would have by sticking to the lesson plan. Of course, I actually rewarded them with good grades for going above and beyond what they had to do.
Sure, it was inconvenient for me to have students ignoring my carefully-made lesson plans. But screw my plans; classes are about the students, and I wanted each student to do as well as they could. In other words, I wanted to be the kind of teacher I had always wanted, and occasionally had. It worked out well.