The "correct" answer

At school I did badly in literature and poetry, whilst my class mates usually asked me for the answers and usually did well.

So what happened?

I only realised when I was 35 years old that when the teacher said "what do you think of the poem?", she meant "what do I think of the poem?" or "what does the textbook think of the poem?"

If the teacher had only asked "what do I think of the poem?" I would have got 100%. But when someone asks Shakespeare or Cervantes "what do you think of the poem?", you can imagine that the "correct" answer was given, and that it was "incorrect" for the teacher.

PS: This is why I did so much better at university than at school. If I could give the "correct" answer at university, even if it wasn't what the lecturer had taught, then I still got 100%.