Most students respond to a bad grading system by complaining about it, but the student in this story responded by dismantling it from the inside out.

When a college student realized his political science professor was awarding points based on popular opinion rather than factual accuracy, he stopped trying to be right and started trying to be strategic.

So when the student staged a rebellion, the syllabus got a much-needed makeover.

Keep reading for the full story.

I organized a rebellion against the professor in my Political Science class

This was about 10+ years ago when I had returned to the local university to finish my bachelor’s degree in Political Science.

I was a “non-traditional” student, so I was a little older and a little more willing to question things.

I was taking a 3000-level Political Science course, so it was designed for PoliSci majors and was required for my PoliSci degree.

It was the professor who really made this class stand out.

It was a fairly basic Political Science course, but the professor did some weird things.

Specifically, there was a quiz every class over the assigned reading.

These quizzes made up a significant part of the grade.

His grading methods were rather unorthodox.

But here’s the tricky part: he seemed to be doing some sort of experiment with the “wisdom of crowds.”

The “correct” answer for a quiz question was the answer that was given by the most students in the class (a plurality) — whether it was based in fact or not.

Whatever the most students said was the answer was the “correct” answer.

As expected, this complicated traditional studying strategies.

This forced you to make a decision: try to be factually accurate, or try to figure out what the crowd was going to do and go with that.

Neither guaranteed you a correct answer.

The majority of the time, the majority of students would actually choose the factually correct answer. But if it was a common misconception, or the question was poorly worded, that could lead to a situation where the “crowd” was wrong.

But that wasn’t even the worst part.

But here’s what drove me nuts…

I was not willing to make my grade dependent on whatever the other students thought might be the correct answer.

This student had some serious doubts about the usefulness of this experiment.

My grade became dependent on conforming to what the crowd said was “true.”

I had no real control over my grade since the “wisdom” of the crowd could be anything.

A class of 30 students was probably not a large enough crowd to give you a good example of the “wisdom of crowds.”

Learning the material was not the point. Conforming to the crowd was what got you a good grade.

Soon, the wheels inside this student’s head began to turn.

I figured out that if we all agreed to choose the same answer for every question, then we could all guarantee ourselves a perfect score on the quiz.

In reality, I only needed a plurality of people to go along with my plan. As long as I could muster enough “votes” for an answer, then we could control our destiny.

It didn’t matter if “A” was the correct answer or not. If we controlled the votes, we controlled our grades. And anyone who didn’t go with us — they were going to fail regardless of whether their answer was actually correct or not.

So the student began staging the rebellion.

I met everyone at the door to the classroom and explained the plan:

“For every question, we are going to choose the first option. If it’s multiple choice, it’s option ‘A’. If it’s True/False, we are choosing ‘true’. If we all agree to this, then we can all get perfect scores. If you decide to go against us, your answer will be wrong.”

It didn’t take long for the professor to figure it out, but still, the students persisted.

The first class we did this, the professor figured out after a few questions that we were gaming the system.

He had us redo the quiz and graded us on the factually correct answers.

After the second class we did this, the professor changed the rules: there were 2 answers that would get you full points — the factually correct answer, and whatever answer the majority agreed upon.

In the end, I was OK with this arrangement.

This ended up benefitting the student even more.

I could study and give the correct answer without being penalized for not conforming to crowd thinking — or if I made the same mistake as the majority of people, I still got credit for it, and it was a good discussion point for the class.

Yes, I got an A in the class.

What a strange way to run a class.

Redditors chime in with their thoughts.

This is basically a big, glorified group project.

Turns out, these students did get a pretty good lesson in political science — just not one the professor anticipated.

This is definitely no way to run a classroom.

This commenter would have confronted the professor directly about his puzzling logic.

Grading on consensus over accuracy may just be the worst idea a college professor has ever had.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.