My comment does more, you may have just missed something.
Paying attention in class is actually hard work. Some people cannot do it even if their life depends on it.
I don’t argue paying attention in class was never hard. But it isn’t generally and not equally hard for everyone. For example, you said you didn’t think you were working hard in school, so I’d say participation in class usually wasn’t that hard for you as it was for those of your classmates.who were doodling. For me it was sometimes hard and sometimes not at all.
I would however argue that paying attention in class would be the biggest indicator for who’s going to get good grades. Getting information is one thing, but to actually learn something, memorize it long term and being able to adapt the knowledge takes practice and repetition which is often done through homework (though the extent varies from teacher to teacher, school to school and system to system).
I had teachers who fully relied on homework for this repetition and practice. You could.be as attentive as you want in class, if you couldn’t do homework properly you’d have a hard time passing their exams.
Now for teachers that integrated practice into their lessons, that’s another thing, then participation was absolutely important. But how hard that would be again would depend on the student, the type of exercise, etc.
My comment does more, you may have just missed something.
I don’t argue paying attention in class was never hard. But it isn’t generally and not equally hard for everyone. For example, you said you didn’t think you were working hard in school, so I’d say participation in class usually wasn’t that hard for you as it was for those of your classmates.who were doodling. For me it was sometimes hard and sometimes not at all.
I would however argue that paying attention in class would be the biggest indicator for who’s going to get good grades. Getting information is one thing, but to actually learn something, memorize it long term and being able to adapt the knowledge takes practice and repetition which is often done through homework (though the extent varies from teacher to teacher, school to school and system to system).
I had teachers who fully relied on homework for this repetition and practice. You could.be as attentive as you want in class, if you couldn’t do homework properly you’d have a hard time passing their exams.
Now for teachers that integrated practice into their lessons, that’s another thing, then participation was absolutely important. But how hard that would be again would depend on the student, the type of exercise, etc.