<p>Well no duh. Here you’re focusing on the memory-intensive part of biology. A lot of my chem exams have prompted me to regurgitate info as well, requiring mostly simple calculation. I didn’t do well in chemistry because I always failed to remember the seemingly hundreds of exceptions that exist for each “rule.” The reason you can “intuit” that information (eg. energy of e-) is because you are relying on facts you know. It’s not fair to compare the the speed of a raindrop (observable to us, on our scale) to the <em>given name</em> of a protein. </p>
<p>Although I do somewhat agree with your stance. Personally, I think biology is not taught as it should be. Instead of just forcing students to cram a bunch of information, classes should allow students to take a look at biology systematically, discuss philosophical approaches to studying biology, discuss assumptions, logic, controversies, etc. Never in my bio lectures did we talk about reductionism. It also bugged me that we sometimes just memorized the information from one view (eg. hypothesis of endosymbiosis), even though there are others. We never looked at life as a complex system. I could go on, but I think that students who are truly interested will go beyond.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, bio major coursework turns into this big memory game, but it could be SO much more. And I think a lot of people find that out themselves (why they pursue research, in some cases).</p>
<p>EDIT: I do realize I responded to a very old post. But I was more responding to a general stance, not the OP’s situation. I think that’s ok, right?</p>