gerund-grinding

As to his own academic training, there is ample testimony that he appreciated the main classical authors whom he read in the gymnasium at Cassel; but it was refreshing to hear and to read various utterances of his against gerund-grinding and pedantry.

[Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White 1906

As to the former, I took pains to guard the institution from those who, in the higher education, substitute dates for history, gerund-grinding for literature, and formulas for science; as to the latter, I sought to guard it from the men to whom ` ` Gain is God, and Gunnybags his Prophet. ''

Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Volume I 1905

Its single course in classics and mathematics, through which all students were forced alike, regardless of their tastes, powers, or aims; its substitution of gerund-grinding for ancient literature; its want of all instruction in modern literature; its substitution of recitals from text-books for instruction in history -- all this was far short of my ideal.

Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Volume I 1905

My disappointment at the instruction; character of president and professors; perfunctory methods in lower-class rooms; ` ` gerund-grinding '' vs. literature; James Hadley -- his abilities and influence, other professors; influence of President Woolsey, Professors Porter, Silliman, and Dana; absence of literary instruction; character of that period from a literary point of view; influences from fellow-students.

Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Volume I 1905

The studies which interested me most were political and historical; from classical studies the gerund-grinding and reciting by rote had completely weaned me.

Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Volume I 1905

In the junior year matters improved somewhat; but, though the professors were most of them really distinguished men, and one at least, James Hadley, a scholar who, at Berlin or Leipsic, would have drawn throngs of students from all Christendom, they were fettered by a system which made everything of gerund-grinding and nothing of literature.

Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Volume I 1905

Grammar, gerund-grinding, the tyranny of the Lexicon and the Dictionary, had got the schoolboys of England in their grasp, and the boy "was suffocated with the nonsense of grammarians, overwhelmed with every species of difficulty disproportionate to his age, and driven by despair to pegtop or marbles"; while the British Parent stood and spoke thus with himself: "Have I read through Lilly?"

Sydney Smith Rusell, George W E 1904

He was wont in after life to speak of this time with bitterness; a delicate child, he was starved on insufficient diet; and an eloquent passage in "Eothen" depicts his intellectual fall from the varied interests and expanding enthusiasm of liberal home teaching to the regulation gerund-grinding and Procrustean discipline of school.

Biographical Study of A W Kinglake Tuckwell, Rev W 1902

ADMIRABLE CRICHTON, double Blue and double First at Oxford, weary of gerund-grinding at a fashionable preparatory school for £500 a year, charming conversationalist, expert auction-bridge player, is open to accept partnership in well-established financial house on the basis of four months 'holiday a year and genuine week-ends -- Friday till Tuesday.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 Various 1898

From the trials of gerund-grinding and fagging and flogging a temporary relief was afforded by the Coronation of

Prime Ministers and Some Others A Book of Reminiscences George William Erskine Russell 1886