Ideally, encourage questioning and thinking. But of course the teachers wouldn't like that, imagine having to answer 50 kids' questions and accommodate their various levels of understanding. Most practical way would be to treat school as a guide on what to learn, then train and encourage the kids take the initiative to learn more in their own time. Government and schools would have to provide kids liberal access to learning materials (ie libraries, lab equipment, tools, facilities for sports/music/<whatever else you can't get from books>)

I always thought it was just because of the sheer amount of exercises they required us chinese kids to complete(or get caned), practice makes perfect that sort of thing. I did my fair share of analyzing maths during classes, but that always got me into trouble for not paying enough attention to the board, and led to a decent amount of canings =(

But I'm curious, do you all count in words in your head? I always counted in terms of discrete balls/dots, never in words.