My WAG is that when Sandwriter says that the professor told what was going to be on the test, he told what specific questions that were to be on the test and advised students what answers they were to give.
I no longer remember the details, but I was in a training class sponsored by the Quartermaster Corps once where this was done. (I was a civilian employee of the Army for over ten years). During the review sessions before each test, the instructor would say something like: “now let’s see if we can all help each other out, know what I mean?” before reciting the exact information we needed for the test. I believe it may have been the case that some of the questions on the standardized test he had to administer were so obscure that he didn’t think it was fair to actually spring them on us.
While it doesn’t nearly rise (or sink) to that level, in law school I had a professor who did something similar. It was his custom to list a few short answer questions on his exam besides the usual “define the universe–give three examples” essay questions for which law school are notorious.
At the end of the last day of class (and, as he was my favorite professor for a number of reasons, I had him three times), he would say something like: "you know, I’d be really disappointed if there were alumni of this university practicing law in a few years who didn’t remember that the only correct term for … is …, or that, contrary to common belief, in this state a corporation can’t … without … The alert student would make a point to write these down in his notes, as they were sure to pop up on the exam.
I had another professor who liked to start each class with a little anecdote to illustrate some important point of law. And then he’d typically say something such as: “and I hope you will tell your friends who don’t show up for the start of class on time about that, because they are not going to find that in any review book”. When we had the final exam (and in law school, generally one has only a final exam), the professor gave a timed test–I believe it ran 45 minutes–with a series of short-answer questions before the conventional essay exam.
This exam was open book. A friend of mine who was rather pompous and had a habit of showing up for class late sat directly behind me in the lecture hall and I could feel the breeze he was making in my hair as he frantically rifled through review materials and textbooks he had brought. Afterwards, he was amazed when I said I had answered every question on the first exam. He said he had answered only 'about half", but added proudly that he had answered every one which was answered in a review book. None of them were.
When I was a boy The State of Missouri used to require 8th Graders to pass a music theory test. The Catholic grade school I attended didn’t have music classes, so instead we were given an intensive one-week course of study where we learned answers to questions such as “what are some of the common percussion instruments in a symphony orchestra?” by rote. By an eerie coincidence, it turned out that all of these questions were on the exam.
Did you know that the wood block is a percussion instrument? That’s all I remember from my music “class”. I felt cheated by what was done, and I came to look at my teachers and parish priests with rather less respect. At 47, I still keep telling myself that someday I’m going to take a night school class and learn to read music–and, as I’ve periodically addressed gaps in my education this way before, I think I eventually will.
