Well, you helped them all you could and they succeeded in their goal.
I am not surprised about your educational system. We, at least in school, seem to oscillate between that and the oposite, not memorizing anything, trying to understand everything. I think that is bad too because children have no context for anything because they do not remember anything. Of course, many good teachers are doing a good job in the middle, I am talking about the government normative (as far as I know)
