Everything you say is correct, to some extent. Nothing you say is wrong, and any comment you make can be greeted with some form of positive reinforcement, as long as it's not completely off the wall. At least that's what I've come to believe in the four weeks I've been in my current class. No clearer evidence could have been given for this notion than in last Thursday's class.

One student in particular has a real knack for giving answers to questions that are so incredibly vague in nature that it's almost a given that he hasn't done the readings or, in this case, watched the assigned film prior to class. My guess is that his responses are simply just that, responses for the purpose of maintaining his class participation grade. On the one hand, I should thank this guy for at least speaking. There are a handful of us who make an effort to contribute to the class discussion, but there are a few zombies in it as well who have yet to utter a single syllable. (My favorite of these muted malcontents did make an attempt to tell the instructor the name of an artist that he couldn't immediately think of. He hasn't been heard from since.) On the other hand, I'm driven to the point of insanity by the instructor's inevitable response of "good" to every one of his remarks before making an effort to either clarify his original query or, in a roundabout way, correct the remark as being not quite correct.

I'm not advocating that teachers need to have the personalities fit for third-world dictators in order to elicit responses that are genuinely thought out before being unleashed on the rest of the class, but isn't it better to just say, "No, that's not correct" than to allow someone's comments that are entirely off base to color the content of the class in the wrong way?