The traditional, time tested way of examining pupils' knowledge of complicated grammar, vocabulary, selected prose, and facts from all the branches of study was predicated on the assumption, common among educators and the public alike, that memorizing and reciting difficult material strengthened the mind and demonstrated intellectual progress. Accordingly, more than half the average high-school student's time was spent in recitations: a time for the individual simply to say aloud what he or she had memorized from texts and from lectures. Students made anywhere from three to seven daily recitations often in separate examining rooms. This didactic method of education was prevalent in all parts of the country, even though many theorists agreed with the Maine principal who claimed that "cramming is confused with education and the knowledge so gained soon forgotten, vanishing like Hamlet's ghosts at the approach of dawn." What mattered...