As far as I am concerned, the more rote memorization that things machines can take off my brain's to-do list, the more time+space I can devote to higher-level thinking.
I agree up to a point, but someone who understands lots of grammar but has no vocabulary is just as poor a communicator as someone with lots of vocabulary but no grammar, or perhaps even worse. I am concerned that modern trends in education could create a generation with lots of ideas but no practical experience or background information to put anything in context. They can't look everything up every time, and they are going to need a certain level of knowledge to appreciate the significance of the ideas they are learning.
As an example, high school kids learn calculus via rote memorization (at least this is how we learned it). We learned what the derivative of x^2 was, etc. but not necessarily what the derivative is. The majority of testing doesn't really focus on the concept, and it should.
As I got into college I understood the concepts behind mathematical thought and everything started making sense. So I guess I'm in the "less rote memorization" camp.