People have been saying that we "focus too much on memorization" for as long as I have been alive. To be honest, I don't really think that is true, if anything we don't focus enough on memorization nowadays since people leave school without knowing basic things about the world whether in science or in history. Knowing things allows one to make connections and see things in a different way that you simply cannot get if you rely on the internet or LLMs or whatever to look everything up.
