I don't think that the author was implying the existence of a vast conspiracy to keep people dumb; rather, the author was suggesting that society is operating in a manner which he believes is suboptimal.

Let's say memorisation is taught in lieu of problem solving for the reasons you stated, then consequently the people who are good at memorisation become thought of as smart, since they do well academically. This, in turn, influences the education system to focus more on memorisation (though, of course, this is all hypothetical).