Yup. Repetition and rote memorization are useful tools, but should be viewed as putting data in L1 cache, and just that. Memorizing the multiplication table or solving equations ad nauseam gives huge speedups which can not only improve learning harder subjects but even enable the whole new sets of knowledge and skills that are unfeasible to learn otherwise.

But turning entire learning experience into cramming stuff into cache memory? That's a recipe for disaster, it leads only for data to be quickly purged, and the time being wasted on re-entering it instead of letting the brain to generate connections and new insights in the main memory. The result is basically what you described.