+1 This is pretty common. Myself, and the other students that represent about the top 10% of my class usually do this. (With the exception of the like, top 2 or 3 kids, because they're obsessed with academics to a point where it's not even healthy.) Most of us at the higher end of the spectrum see how easy most of the subject material is, so we only put in the minimal effort. Why put in hours and hours of work to get a 98-100% when half that effort can usually pull off a 94-96% without much trouble? The bar in the American Education system has been lowered to the point that there is no incentive to work hard because there is no need to work hard if you have half a brain. But even with public schools often having very easy materials (outside of the AP classes, but obviously AP classes are not a part of the required classes one must have to graduate) it's not stopping kids from setting their sites as high as being the manager at the local Burger King. My school has a dropout rate of ~40% between 9th and 12th grade. When I was in 9th grade, I had what was pretty much unanimously decided to be the easiest english teacher ever known to man. You could seriously be a blind monkey and still get a passing grade in that class. Yet he still told me at the end of the year that 35% of the students he had failed for the year. It wasn't because the kids were academically too dumb for the course, they were just lazy and had no ambition or role models. (Well, good role models anyway) i don't think there are that many dumb people that the fail rate is 35% or whatever you mentioned just people are 'unmotivated' or lazy to do anything else. plus in comparison we got so many other alternatives to doing homework... like this game people always think that doing the bare minimum will allow them to do just fine... now i am a hypocrite cause i do the same thing