I realize what this post is saying, but it reminded me of a somewhat similar situation. In my high school we had to learn the stems of words and their meanings (I.E. Acro = high; acr = sharp, etc). Our English teachers would give us a list of 15 stems (25 if you took accelerated/advanced English) at the start of the week and then on Friday they would hand out a quick test for us to conplete.
The idea was you'd look over the list throughout the week and memorize them that way. But instead I would look at the list 5 minutes before the exam, memorize them, take the test, ace it, then forget about them before the class even ended. Worked every time.