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It's as if, when I was in school, the entire curriculum had been about the dewey decimal system. So I'd be great at finding books. But i would have no idea what books to look for or what they meant. So, as a kid, I would spend my time efficiently finding cowboy novels and science fiction favorites. Not learning how to factor a polynomial. One is easy and fun. The other is hard. Education is there to force the little buggers to learn the hard stuff. They'll learn the easy, fun stuff on their own.

Exactly.

IMHO, the "searchability" revolution in education is just another excuse not to teach the hard stuff.

That sounds about right to me. My dad is a teacher and I think he'd agree too. He's especially concerned that corners are being cut in how math is being taught these days, and his school is a pretty good school. Math is the ultimate "hard stuff" subject. There's just no escaping the fact that it's hard - and probably impervious to the notion of searching. If you say to math that you are a good searcher, math will not be impressed.