I didn’t think you are implying that having knowledge (ready to go) is of no value.
Having more knowledge gives a huge advantage in time and space. Not only can you solve problems much faster (you don’t need to find, read, understand, and internalize the “knowledge”) you can also make connections that others would miss because to gain knowledge is deeper than mere recall.
It focused on a planned development (hotels, grocery stores, etc) in a part of town that everybody in the class is quite familiar with and asked us to apply concepts from lecture to predict the impact to a given set of species.
It was masterful. Hit all the points, anchored in our everyday lives, applied in a way that rote memorization just wouldn't help with. I had a moment like: WTF I've lived here my whole life and never seen a wild ferret. Searched it after the tests and turns out they're native and critically endangered.
Just saying, the good ones are out there.
With the technologies of today, the ability to recite knowledge (versus using said knowledge when provided, and the ability to look for said knowledge) is rapidly losing value. But our education system has not moved on and are mostly stuck at using recital to judge student capability.
A complete rethinking of how to assess student performance is long overdue. For subjects that cannot be assessed without recital, maybe rethink the necessity of existence of those subject for teaching.