Schoolboy crowned 'bonafide genius' after tricking teacher for weeks – The Mirror
A student who was fed up with online teaching during the Covid lockdown came up with a very clever solution to his issue – and people were left in stitches after it was eventually revealed online
Turns out the whole 'dog ate my homework' excuse has been given the ultimate upgrade.
Whether we like to admit it or not, many of us have made up a flurry of excuses after arriving to school and realising we haven't completed our homework. Perhaps you spent your break time scribbling down an essay about Of Mice and Men to avoid the dreaded lunch-time detention – or faked an illness so badly your drama teacher would've failed you on the spot.
But when the world shut down back in 2020, Covid changed the way kids were taught. Children across the nation left the classroom and had all of their lessons held virtually. When your homework has to be submitted online, it's kind of hard to blame the pooch… My dog ate my laptop isn't going to cut it.
One boy came up with an impressively sly hack to dodge any questions during his class, and it took a while before anyone noticed…
Last year, TV presenter Chris Arnold wrote on X (formerly Twitter): "My wife is a teacher and apparently one kid has been changing his name to 'Reconnecting' during the Zoom lessons so that he doesn't get asked any questions. Been doing it for weeks. The lad doesn't need to worry about his education, he's already a bona fide genius."
His post quickly went viral – with thousands of likes and retweets. One person joked: "I am not sure whether to be excited that the future is bright with this kid or worry that he may choose a political career." While another tweeted: "LOL this kid is going places."
Lots of other people had similar stories – proving the kids really are all right. One dad posted: "My son said some of his friends had set a looped moving image of themselves staring at the computer screen as their profile pic Also lots of kids having private chatrooms to cheat on tests or in case someone gets called on in a lesson and wasn't paying attention."
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A fellow parent added: "Sounds like my son! Thinking I was clever turning off the WiFi to get him off his Xbox. He was one step ahead of me and connected his mobile hotspot from his phone to his Xbox and had been playing for hours!"
Another posted: "We've seen 'buffering…' and also kids setting their names to the name of another kid in the class and then posting rude comments in the chat. You can't prove who it was because there are now multiple kids with the same name!"
One teacher replied: "Last summer a kid set his profile to a photo of 3/4 of his face staring at the camera with a background of a wall in his room. Mandated cameras on, but you couldn't tell if his was on or off – if you're going to do that good of a job being awesome, I'm not going to stop you."
A version of this article was first published on June 15, 2023
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