One thing Polish education teaches is how to remember 100 random facts in 2 days and forget them immediately after the exam. This really trains short-term memory, but I don't think it's worth training it for 8+4+5=17 years so much :)

Also it teaches you that if you don't cheat the system on the subjects that doesn't matter to you - you will have worse grades than people who have the common sense to focus on a few subjects and cheat on everything else.

I guess it instills some healthy scepticism and antisystem attitude, but it can't be good for society if everybody first instinct is "is that rule for real, or bullshit like most of them?"