Specificity of recall is not an end, but it is a necessary means to the end goal of education. We can only know that someone is an independent lifelong learner

Specificity of recall is not an end, but it is a necessary means to the end goal of education. We can only know that someone is an independent lifelong learner if we can tell that they have learned something; not only that, but that they have learned a lot of related, non-obvious facts, and can work with them. This dichotomy, between learning facts and learning concepts, is not an innate one and I wish that notion would go away.