Memorization vs. Comprehension

Do we really believe that our pupils learn properly? Why are they have so many difficulties in understanding what they are studying? Why PISA and PIRLS reports about educational evaluation  tell us that we are so far from the average of those best qualified countries? Is there anything we are doing wrong? Are we unskilled teachers?

These are some questions I wondered last year when I was thinking about my Final Degree Project topic. After analyzing some texts and their reading comprehension questions, I realised most of them don't help children to understand what it is told in any text. Children are just memorizing some data from the texts but they aren't understanding that information indeed.

So should we carry out a revision of our educational approaches? From my point of view, I think we should make an effort to improve our children' comprehension. What do you think about this?

Is he really understanding what he's reading?