Word: cepts
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...comprehension of ideas rather than multiple-choice quizzes for recall of facts. This strains both the study time of the student and the grading time of the teacher-but neither has ever been shy about seeking short cuts. And, sometimes openly, sometimes secretively, a shortcut device known as the "cept" is creeping across U.S. college campuses...
...term springs from the widespread use of the cept at Princeton University, which boasts of the small, conversational classes that it calls "precepts." The cept is jokingly defined as "half a concept"-meaning that it is more than a fact but less than a philosophy, more than an epigram but less than an axiom, more than a thesis but less than a synthesis. The Princeton student has it made if he can spot these prized nuggets in rapid reading or sporadic attendance at lectures, spin them out glibly during a precept and, above all, weave them dazzlingly into an exam...
Handy Grading. To the cept-savvy student, cepts leap right out of the pages. In a politics course, he would readily note as a cept, "Revolutions are caused by rising expectations"; in philosophy, "To be is to perceive to be perceived"; in economics, "Calvinism caused capitalism"; in religion, "Capitalism caused Calvinism...
Some professors openly encourage ceptsmanship, stress the cept in their lectures, argue that students who retain the cepts acquire an understanding that goes beyond a rote knowledge of who said what. These teachers may also delight in the cept as a handy way of rating the quality of a student's essay in quantitative terms. They merely scan the essay, underline the cepts, assign a numerical value to each, and tot them up. Other teachers never admit they are even aware of cepts-but tacitly use them anyway in grading. Superlative ceptsmanship amounts to a canny duel between teacher...
Superficial Felicity. The student who can sprinkle some real comprehension over his cepts has an unbeatable essay. The difficulty with this is that it requires the student to read rather than browse through the assigned books, and to attend lectures rather than crib the cept notes of a conscientious friend. And doing all of the assigned work leads to a dangerous temptation: the student may answer an exam question with original thoughts, not cepts. To the cept-conscious prof, this is evidence that the student is trying to cover up his loafing and his failure to learn his cepts...