The concept of “absorptive capacity” our ability to gain from the information presented to us, is a key factor in education. If we humans remain agents of our own lives (which I find axiomatic) we still need education to interact with AI, to ask the right questions and to make sense of the results.
Yes, you definitely need to absorb some information, but you also need to understand an process it.
There is a bias in education to memorising facts over teaching concepts and skills. It has certainly got worse in the UK over the last few decades as a result of pressure on schools to get high grades, which has lead to teaching the exam rather than the subject.
I might be biased by the small sample closest to me: my kids doing some of the same A level subjects, and the GCSE teaching my kids friends got compared with their learning (they were out of school from late primary until after GCSEs) .There is a lot of "you do not need to know it for the exam". Memorising standard answers and definitions. Learning how to do a calculation without understanding it. Discouraging extra reading as a distraction from the exams.
I am not claiming its a new problem, but its an ever-present one that is getting worse at the moment.