What gives you that impression? I don't think any physics teacher would consider that their goal; rather, they would want the students to gain an understanding

What gives you that impression? I don't think any physics teacher would consider that their goal; rather, they would want the students to gain an understanding of the concepts of force, mass, acceleration and how they interact. Being able to easily recall the formula describing that relationship would be a side-effect. I also read the abstract of this paper, and I didn't see any evidence of that underlying assumption.