In school sometimes there are open book tests. In college level finance course I could use a programmable calculator.
Some basics you need to know, I don’t think schools are wrong about that. But, I do think schools take it too far some of the time, and probably more tests could be open book.
You don’t want to have to google every two minutes when having a conversation, because you don’t have anything memorized. Moreover, we use what is in our memories to form logical patterns, to be able to come up with logical hypothesis, narrow down information. There is value in memorization as much as it is under fire right now.
Being able to look at numbers and be able to see they don’t make sense before actually doing the full out calculation, comes from knowing how to do calculations without a calculator.
Someone telling me they live 60 miles north of Orlando I can picture, because I know where Orlando is, I don’t need to google it. I know where most major cities are in all states, but the ones I don’t I at least know where the state is, the basic shape of the state, and can ask where the city is in the state.
Sometimes google isn’t available.