Hi, weird!
Fcrate, I love your hedgehog story and of course one would name a hedgehog Sonic, lol.
And I am sure you are a great teacher. In my opinion neither just memorisation nor understanding works on its own. The best method of teaching lies in the middle. A mixture of memorisation and understanding.This is so that all the children can learn it. Those who don't understand yet still get the knowledge through memorisation and those who understand get the knowledge programmed into their brains for later use.
There is a difference in how the kids learn these days in Germany than how my generation learned. Nowadays they are more about understanding. But they don't do memorisation any more. So you have the result that some kids memorise for themselves and some don't, because they were not told to do this. Then you have those who understand but can't remember what it was they understood. And you have those who still don't understand and don't memorise either. Those are left behind.
Neither is best on its own, but do it both and there will be less children left behind.
For example, in elementary school, they never learned their multiplication tables. The teachers told them that they should learn it but it was never tested. The teachers just assumed that's just knowledge now.
It is great that they understand how the numbers work, but Mini still doesn't know what 6 multiplied with 7 is if I asked her. Or Micro doesn't understand that if she can't remember what 7 multiplied with 9 is, she can just multiply with 10 and go from there. And that the same rules apply to higher numbers. Even though they were told why it works. I am glad that at least Micro has a good memory, so she did the memorisation technique. So she can at least multiply using the table in her brain.
Yesterday we visited the ruins of Tintagel Castle and Merlin's Cave. Very beautiful, great day. I drove the rented car. I have driven on the wrong side before

, but this was almost two decades ago. So far, the car is still alive and undamaged. We only got honked at in London, but who in their right mind would drive in a city like London? Or Paris. Or any big city. We just had to because the rental agency was there.
We will return home the day after tomorrow.