<p>^He’s going wrong in lots of places, but I agree with your point as well. If I manage to instill any concept of the subject I’m teaching in my students, that’s an achievement in itself.</p>
<p>Did OP leave the building?</p>
<p>Well, I’m going to throw out a (small) lifeline to collegehelp on the issue of late work. When I was teaching a college course (online), there were a lot of assignments, and I gave deadlines, and applied penalties for late work. But I decided that those deadlines were primarily for my own convenience–I wasn’t really interested in teaching the students about the importance of deadlines–I wanted to teach the subject matter. So I didn’t actually penalize students for late work as long as I received it before I sat down to grade that particular assignment. Sometimes this was right after the deadline, sometimes a few days later. Was this unfair to students who turned in their work on time? Well, maybe.</p>