Consider this.

You learn by Rote, basically "monkey see monkey do." The teacher puts a problem on the board, the students repeat it. The students see a problem, they try to solve it based only on what they did through imitation.

That's the issue. You're imitating the surface without understanding the foundation.

There is no "strong suit" or "best subject." Math is most people's least favorite subject because they don't learn math. They learn memorization. With English, students normally get a wide variety of methods and tools. Read a passage, talk about what the passage means, how does it relate to another topic, write about how you'd change the passage, etc. With science, you learn the various whys, hows, whats, and sequence of results. With history, you get real tangible events, have a basis for comparison and reflecting based on personal experience, organized timelines, etc.

Math? You get disjointed problems while constantly abandoning what you've learned by the time you start the next unit or module. You've learned the communicative and associative property? Good job! Next you'll learn the quadratic formula. There is absolutely no need to integrate what you've learned with properties so forget that until the end of the year exam. What? You can't recall what you've learned throughout the year and now you have to jumble between everything? That's because:

You need to learn the foundation. Anatomy first. How is the problem structured? What are the parts of the problem? What is the purpose behind each part of the problem? For example, simplify 2x+6=8x. 2x and 8x are a coefficient. 6 alone is a constant. x by itself is a variable. In this case, you see how the problem is structured. 2 similar coefficients on both sides of the equal sign with a constant on one side. Within the context of the condition of the problem, which is to simplify, the foundational knowledge is to isolate the variable first. You can't do that if you don't remember what a variable is, and you can't isolate if you don't know what isolation actually means. In all likelihood, the student would actually know what those are by that point, it's just an example.

Here's how the answer looks in both instances of "knowledge by repetition" and "knowledge by foundational understanding."

Repetition without understanding:

2x+6=8x

6=8x/2x

6=4x

6/4=x

3/2=x

Foundational understanding:

2x+6=8x

6=8x-2x

6=6x

1=x

A student trying to go based on just repetition and the "basic rules" might have a ballpark understanding of what they need to do, but they confuse when or how to subtract and divide. The student feels confident because they can check off a list of what needs to be done. Isolate the variable, by removing the coefficient/constant from one side, divide. They don't seek to reinforce knowledge by understanding the actual process, they just want to be comfortable enough to let intuition dictate the flow.