Modern education somewhat enforces miseducation by putting emphasis on memorization than understanding.
This is the result of the long held belief of equating memorization to understanding. But that is an incorrect belief and many find the process of learning too painful or boring simply because they think they have to spend hours trying to push words and difficult concepts into their brains. But educators should see the benefit of teaching their students the techniques of learning before they start teaching them concepts that are small and great.
Learning how to learn?
Have you ever thought of how you process information or wondered what happened to the information you just read? Most of us have caught ourselves after reading through an entire page and not recalling more than half of what we read. This is obviously a problem of focus and our general lack of absorbing power. But that is being human. I am not convinced my things like photo-reading or photographic memory etc. We simply have several competing thoughts in our brains at any given moment that want to suppress our desire to focus on a specific thing. But there are ways in which we could harness our ability of contextual understanding by enforcing certain techniques that could become habits if practiced.
Contextual understanding
Read not to memorize but to understand the context. Ask yourself these simple questions..
Why you are reading what you are reading
What are you expecting to gain from what you are reading
Next step would be for you to apply The Feynman Technique. This post here has quick intro into this technique:
https://mattyford.com/blog/2014/1/23/the-feynman-technique-model
