In my experience, people with “bad GPS” tend to disregard the GPS directions because they think they know better. Once they are good and lost, and the GPS is freaking out and frantically trying to reroute is about when they start to complain that the GPS is useless.
While it is true that rote memorization is a terrible thing for schools to focus on, I find it interesting that the discussion immediately jumped to “America bad” with a presumption it was a unique American practice. The many comments from around the world show it seems to be a more widespread practice.