Fountain of Knowledge

1. Yes, but students, peers, and pretty much everyone else would regard the professor who pulls this kind of thing as an asshole.

2. I would complete the material, yes. I'm a good student not so much because I have a talent for earning high grades as because I refuse to work for them. If the course isn't going to provide something useful and/or interesting, I'm not going to bother with it in the first place.

Gee, you'd never guess I'd turn into a homeschool mommy, would you? My own history is that I was placed in early-start kindergarten at four and failed in an epic manner for three years. In third grade I got into a class with a neighborhood friend who skipped a grade, and she showed me how to work in a way that pleased teachers--finishing everything neatly and quickly, guessing when faced with ambiguous questions, that sort of thing. After that I cruised through high school. But by the time I got to college, I was thoroughly sick of all the BS involved in academia. I got my degree, but by that time I knew I would never again have any patience for busywork and stupid teachers.