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“Bad Cram,” on the other bond, consists in temporarily
impressing upon the candidate’s mind a collection of facts,
dates, or formulm, held in a wholly undigested 13tStP and
ready to be disgorged in the examination-room by an act of
mere memory. A candidate, unable to apprehend the bearing
of Euclid’e reasoning in the first book of his Elements,” may
learn the propositions off by heart, diagrams, lettera, and all,
like a Sunday scholar learning the collects and gospels. Dates,
rules of grammar, and the like, may be “ crammed” by
mnemonic lines, or by one of those wretched systems of artificial
memory, teachers of which are always going about. In
such magd it is, I believe, powsiblo to givo answers which
simulate knowledge, and no more prOVf3 true knowledge than
tho chattering of a parrot proves iutolloct.
I am fer from denying tho existence of ‘( bad Cram ” of
this character, but I hold that it can never bo advantageously
resorted to by thoso who are capable of ‘( good Cram.” To
learn a propo8ition of Euclid by heart is far more laborious
than for a student of moderate capacity to master the nature
of tho reasoning. It is obvious that all advantages, even in
an examinational point of view, are on the side of real knowledge.
The slightest lapse of memory in the bad “crammer,”
for instance, the putting of wrong letters in the diagram, will
discloso the simulated character of his work, and the least
ahango in tho conditions of the proposition set will frustrata
his mneluonic dovices altogether. If papers be sot which
redly Clbll bo answerod by mere memory, the badness is in the
examiners.
Thorough blockheads may be driven to the worst kind of
“ Cram,” simply beause they can do nothing better. Nor do
the blockheads suffer harm; to exercise the memory is better
than to leave the brain wholly at rest. Some qualities of
endurance and resolution must be called into existence, before
a youth can go through the dreary work of learning off by
heart things of which he has no comprehension. Nor wit11
examiners of t,he 1-t intelligence is there any rason to fear
that the best dircct.ed “ bad Cram ’’ will enable a really stupid
oandidate to carry off honours and appointments due to others.