[spdionis]

I understand and completely agree with your issue about memorization. In my experience good teachers don't force you to simply memorize formulas/details but make you appreciate the meaning of the concepts behind those. After understanding the concepts the formulas come out by themselves and look obvious.

E.g.: It's important to know that Greek history is divided in 3 pretty different big main periods and each of them had different column designs but after that knowing the details of those designs is pretty unimportant.

A gerund is a pretty easy and obvious notion. Personally I just know it without even thinking about it probably because I was taught about it at a pretty young age. To me someone not knowing what gerund is is like someone e not knowing what multiplication is.

Honestly anything before college is a pretty young age and 99% of people aren't sure (or shouldn't be sure) about what they're going to do with their life because they don't know enough about it yet. Even that 1% will benefit out of basic knowledge in the long run because that's what makes you a man with basic culture that can discuss on a range of topics.

We humans are not computer programs specialized on solving a single task. High school makes us more like an OS, providing the features to solve (hopefully) any kind of problem we encounter in life.