When he afterward released him from the savages who were about to eat him, he granted him his life for the second time on condition:
“1. That he should never under any circumstances presume to teach any boy anything any more.
“2. That, if taken back to England, he should pass his life in travelling to find out boys who wanted their exercises done, and should do their exercises for nothing, and never say a word about it.”
When it finally became necessary to hang the Latin master, Boldheart “impressively pointed out to him that this is what spiters come to.”
There are many kinds of cram that yet pass as fairly respectable in schools and universities. When the teachers or the professors give notes to be copied by the pupils and memorized, they are cramming. When teachers are storing the memories of children with facts, tables, dates, etc., to be used at some future time, they are cramming. All memorizing by repetition of words, even if they are understood, is cram, if the pupil can work the thought into his life by repetition of process or of operation. Words can never take the place of self-activity, nor even of activity.
So long as knowledge storing is placed above character development, examinations by “examiners” will retain their power for evil, and so long as such examinations are held cramming will continue.
All processes that attempt to educate from without inward, instead of from within outward, are in the last analysis cram. The selfhood must be active in going out for the new knowledge. The child must himself be originative, directive, and executive in the learning process if cram is to be avoided completely. This is the only sure way to secure perfect apperception, and without apperception the new knowledge lies dormant, if not dead, and unrelated in the memory until it disappears, as did Bitherstone’s. His declensions, according to Dickens, were not likely to last out his journey from England to India.