In cooking, as in everything else, there are basics to know. Stocks, sauces, different pastry doughs, how to use lemon juice, how to blanch vegetables or at what temperature to cook meat.
The advantage of these basic techniques is that you can learn them by practising, and not in a scholastic way. You are not learning a multiplication table or a Latin declension, you have your hands in the flour or the knife on the mango, and you simply note to remember, for the next time.