I had a minor experience with what sounds like this style of pedagogy in my high school physics and calculus courses. The lecture and grading styles effectively pitted students against one another. I suppose this works for confident and competitive students, particularly if you can get in the instructor's good graces, but I was merely curious and dealing with self-esteem issues (physical late/never bloomer) and stereotype threat. I continued excelling in my other classes and just switched off in those.

Without getting too into the weeds, I did a lot better in classes where the teacher was some category of "votes blue", identity-wise (race, gender, sexuality, even height).