Both the original discussion of this and the current one, not to mention numerous other discussions about other things, exemplify the following pattern:

I point out that phenomenon X is bad. Then, instead of replying with "I agree", or "I agree that it's bad, but don't think it's as bad as you do" or even "I agree with you about how bad it is now that you've pointed it out, but wouldn't myself have bothered to raise the issue", people come up with elaborate justifications, rationalizations, or explanations of X, which (I hypothesize) are basically intended to signal distance from "anti-X fanaticism". The parent comment is yet another example of this.

Folks, there just isn't any need to defend the teacher here -- unless you actually want to take the position that saying "I won't grade it" is preferable to saying "you will receive a score of 0" (and if anyone is tempted to take that position in reply to this comment, be forewarned that I simply won't believe you're being honest unless you say something genuinely surprising, that I hadn't thought of). I did not say I was still confused by the teacher's meaning, and I do not need an explanation of the fact that human language is imprecise in general, and of the reasons people say the ambiguous things they do. I'm not stupid, and I'm not even autistic. I'm aware of the social conventions that are operative here, and I'm not proposing that teachers speak to their students in Lojban. All I'm doing is expressing disapproval of the fact that some teachers say "I won't grade it", and proposing that they say "I will give it a score of 0" instead. This is really pretty simple; in particular, it would require much less effort on the teacher's part to implement this suggestion than you spent writing the parent comment. It's an easy, low-cost net-improvement on the world.

Agreeing with a "fanatic" doesn't make you a fanatic. You're allowed to agree with me and yet not feel as strongly about the matter as I do. You don't need to signal your distance by presenting superfluous rationalizations of the bad phenomenon. In fact, you don't even need to point out that you don't feel as strongly as I do -- because simple agreement carries no implication that you do feel that strongly!

No one really disagrees with me here; if you doubt this, ask yourself whether anyone would protest that a teacher who actually said "you will receive a score a 0" should instead have said "I won't grade it"! Rather, the dialectic pattern of apparent disagreement is due to the fact that my original complaint violated two social rules: (1) it was tangential to the post; and, more importantly (2) it expressed a strong opinion not already established as a group-defining belief -- something which is generally frowned upon in most human groups, but especially goes against the self-image of folks here as calm, reflective, "rational" people.

So, while I appreciate your concern with communication, and don't want to discourage you from further pursuing your efforts in that area, I am obliged to point out that your comment -- like those of many others -- didn't communicate anything to me other than resistance to my strength of feeling.