Maybe it really is different for the kind of mathematics that Mathematics majors learn about, but for every single mathematics I ever took all the way from elementary school till college, I never had to write any proofs or come up with unique ways of doing anything.
Everything about Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, etc. was only ever taught to me like a series of algorithms and formulas to use to arrive upon a single result.
For all of that kind of stuff, I think solving problems from an exercise book/textbook really isn't too different from using a spaced repetition system.
Instead of saying "Well, you never really learned Math the way we did.", I'd like to see an example of something in Mathematics that you've actually had to work on where you don't think that memorizing anything would have been able to help you.
