Comment by hiAndrewQuinn

>[O]ften we teach things initially in simple terms as a way of building up to more complicated explanations. Failing to forget the simpler facts would be a learning failure to a degree.

I've never found remembering the simplified explanation to be a hindrance to learning the more complicated explanation. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I have found times where forgetting the simple explanation before ever getting to the more complicated one meant it felt like I was learning the complicated one from scratch.

>[W]e want people to learn what to do with facts, how to handle and interpret new information, focusing solely on recall doesn’t cover this either.

You can't learn any of that stuff without having the facts at hand first, however.

More importantly, "recall" is a much broader subject than it may sound at first: The ability to tackle novel mathematical theorems is based largely upon one's recall of prior proofs, which I have found to be just as valuable a target for spaced repetition approaches as any. But even if it turned out that wasn't the case, simply separating one's school day into an hour or two of "recall work" followed by 5-6 hours of "dynamic work" where we work with and elaborate upon facts that everyone in the class is statistically guaranteed to remember sounds like a much better use of one's time.