Demonstrate a sufficient and working understanding of? Yes; which I guess could be considered aping. However I can't recall a time I've been outright penalized for challenging a teacher's take as long as some greater mistake in making my case was not at the same time undertaken. For instance, the misapplication of logical device, or tortured cherrypicking of data/context.
I've never professed to understand why many people view academia as an institution in which the end goal is to agree with the professor for the grade. I've always treated it as an institution for the search for answers to questions where the searching for good questions is arguably more important and more difficult than finding the answers. I can't count the number of times I've felt dejected because I've had an armload of data or observations that are somehow related, and I've not been able to do anything but stew in angst because while there was some meaning to it, I could never figure out how to formulate the question to which the observations were the answer.
Then again, I stuck around long enough for my Bachelor's, then got out. I might not have gotten to the point where there is a much higher stake in tipping the Professor's Sacred Cow.
I didn't believe it either until I experienced it personally.
Depends on the subject really. It's probably not a good idea to try any stunts in history etc.
"Though majoring in Visual and Environmental Studies
And minoring in History of Sci
I had to retake Ethics from my Mennonite professor
For whom my skepticism didn't fly.
"The first time I made mincemeat of the standard propositions
Establishing a so-called moral science
And I declared morality an offshoot of aesthetics
And got a failing C for my defiance."
Cause bias against opinions expressed in writing assignments was a concern I had too.