Wow. I was never able to escalate situation to the direct accusation of cheating. I just got my marks lowered a bit because I used methods that were "above my abilities", as my math teacher believed. Though really I thought school math was boring and tried hard to make it more interesting, less routine, less relying on memorizing things, and more clever shortcuts from general principles.

But she never accused me directly. I know her explanation for lowered marks just because my mother visited her once with a specific test results and asked why marks are so low. I wanted a direct accusation, I was trying to provoke her to doubt my methods, but either I tried too hard and she knew deep inside of her the real situation, or I needed to do something truly exceptional and failed.

Yeah, thinking about it now, I should probably try some existing and very known methods but far above the school level, something she felt herself familiar with, so she could hope to prove that I've used methods without understanding them. And then it would come to my ability to prove, that I understand my methods. Something like raising e^(ix) into n-th power, to derive a formula sin(nx) = f(sin(x), cos(x)). Though, it is might be too weird for her.

> They do not reward creativity or ingenuity.

You can stimulate yourself if you look at it as a rebellion against the system. Teenagers are good at rebelling. Though, rebellion can make matters worse. I rebelled against history trying to get the lowest marks possible. It didn't end well, and I not just didn't learn history, I've got a life-long trauma, I start to regress to my teenager mind level every time I face history.