There is a Polish children book about a group of school boys who desperate to get a good grade buy a set of ‘tricks’ for a teacher from older pupils. They could only afford the history teacher who was one of the most lenient ones — but such is life. The main trick was a ‘lunching a sea serpent’ — designed pupils were initiating a discussion with the teacher on a set of subject that were guaranteed the teacher to spend a whole lesson on. So a few of the boys had to sacrifice and prepare the designed subject while the rest had spare time. In the end turned out that the boys preparing those ‘sea serpents’ leaned so much history that they excelled when tasked with guiding a visiting school class from another town.

Unfortunately it looks like it was never translated into English: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spos%C3%B3b_na_Alcybiadesa