Liberals hate the idea of "memorization". They think the child will not truly understand why they receive the answer they are "regurgitating" When in actuality, I always believed, for myself personally, that it was more important to initially contain the information permanently. Analyzing the "why's" and "how's" of it all were much easier after that.
Compare a kid who can do mental math and a kid who cannot, both in algebra test. Who understands the concepts better when they are presented - the kid who struggles with arithmetic, or the kid who has it memorized ?
As you say, it's a lot easier for the kid who's memorized their math facts.
The same is true for grammar. Who writes a better paper in a shorter amount of time - the kid who's memorized grammar rules or the kid who wings it? (And no, a computer grammar checker will not solve all your problems!)
Actually liberals are values-free (ie amoral) people. They dont want to be defined by trivial things like FACTS, TRUTH and MORAL ABSOLUTES [oh and G_D too]. They want the freedom to slink around and to bend and shape reality according to their whims and political objectives
I always hated memorization and thought I wasn't very good at it. Still not good with names, dates, etc. OTOH, I can't help but notice that I would bike and car magazines when I was a teen and could recite back every important figure to do with those vehicles - dry weight, HP, torque, brands of carburetors and FI systems, etc. So I suspect it was more a matter of just being lazy to do the memorization, and nobody ever really forced me.
I did memorize the times tables, like most people. I would hope that kids still do, at least up to 10x10, as it's pretty hard to do any kind of arithmetic without a calculator without knowing that. Then again, I don't know how to do square roots, or cacluate sine and cosine, or logarithms, or any of that stuff, either manually or with a slide rule. At one time those would have been considered essential for anyone going into science or engineering.