These kids need to be taught to look up the words they don't know in a dictionary appropriate to their age and gain an understanding of the new words they come across as they are studying. That is the only way to understand any subject one is studying. No amount of "guessing" or "memorizing" will replace an actual understanding of the words one is reading.
In fact, society has a great use for "parrots" whose sense of rational processing is beat out of them, and are taught to keep their heads down and just swallow whatever their superior is cramming down their throat. It is certainly not a noble use, but without these many years of mandatory obedience training, the wage slavery upon which our lifestyle depends would suffer a severe lack of willing participants.
Take language as an example. Sure there are better ways to learn a language than just memorizing words. (That's debatable but I think most people would agree.) However there certainly is some use, still, in just memorizing things. For example, I don't speak French, but thanks to memorizing things I can at least know the basics I might need to get by (allowing me, last night, to buy a packet of cigarettes, ask for a menu, order a meal and the wine I wanted, from a bar owner who didn't speak a word of English, and I never even needed to point at anything!)
And in the rest of life, certain things just are useful if you memorize them. I have an events manager at work who doesn't know anything about computer networking, but he's picked up bits and pieces from colleagues to allow him to do things he is likely to need to do. He hasn't gained the experience of tinkering with linux, so give him a new problem and he won't figure it out, but there are certain things he can do on a linux server easily - and that's fine, nobody can be an expert in everything, everyone has areas where you just need to be able to get by.
In fact, I think there's some kind of stigma related to not knowing the answer without looking it up. The vast majority of my schooling at least involved a lot of memorization. As a student, you take a test which gauges how well you've memorized things for the most part and that's what determines your "worth" in terms of grades as a student. But that's not how the real world works. In reality, trivial things can be trivially looked up.
I think the results we get for our coding interviews are pretty telling. Everyone that applies for a software developer position where I work has to take an online assessment. They've got 30 minutes on 3 questions and it's made explicitly clear that you can look up information for it and give the sources. Out of the many people that have taken the quiz, only one or two people have given any sources. It's as if people think they'll be penalized for not knowing everything off the top of their head (which I guess is in fact the precedent in traditional whiteboard technical interviews).