>>>> Definitely. Rote memorization teaches nothing, except how to memorize.
>>>
>>> Exactly, and primary school is supposed to (or should be) be about
>>> learning how to learn rather than how to memorize.
>>
>> But testing whether you've memorised specific facts is way easier than
>> testing whether you're actually stupid or not.
>
> Well, that's true, but if we're talking about measuring IQ, that's one
> thing.  Testing whether you can do stuff is actually not that difficult
> to do or evaluate.  You have someone do the job (or tasks of the job) and
> evaluate their performance.
>
> It's time consuming, but it's not actually that difficult to do,
> especially if you're focused on the end results rather than how they got
> there (as long as it's within a certain period of time).

I don't know about other countries, but here the entire educational 
system seems to be focused on meeting targets and out-competing other 
schools. Measuring whether the pupils at your school understand the 
scientific method is hard; measuring whether they know Snell's Law is easy.

(Yet another example of how competition is always a bad thing.)

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