Did YOU learn English grammar at school? Me no.

I think my State school education covered the period when this was at its best (around 1947 - 1963). My early memories of English Language studies were: spelling, dictation and reading reading reading from an early age.
I have vague memories at grammar school of adverbial adjectives versus adjectival adjectives but it was all Composition "Autumn is here, the Leaves are falling..." blah blah blah - and every mistake in punctuation or vocabulary was rigorously corrected. I remember also we were taught not to use "nice", considered a lazy person's adjective.
Living in a European country, I was constantly bullied by my neighbours to coach their kids in English "because you're mother-tongue". I eventually succumbed and was puzzled and worried by my total inability to explain our grammar "What the hell is present simple or past continuous or present perfect?!" Having to learn these Step-by-Step I thought my memory had gone as I did not recall ever having learned these grammatical structures previously. Several years later (and by now considered a very successful English teacher) I approached an American colleague in a school asking "Um..er..by the way - did you learn grammar when you were at school?" "No!" she replied. "No way!". Am I unique in this discovery that we learned our language in a purely hands-on way? To me this was perfectly adequate. What do you think?