I think the underlying question here is: "Is it better to spend lecture time learning the bag of tricks, and then the people who need more can learn theory? Or

I think the underlying question here is: "Is it better to spend lecture time learning the bag of tricks, and then the people who need more can learn theory? Or is it better to teach theory and intuition and then people who need to do it can later look up the bag of tricks?". Reasonable people can probably disagree, and this might be biased by their personality and learning style. I personally forgot every trick from my bags mere moments after walking out of my graduate exams. Later, when I got a job that required me to actually /do/ things, I (re-)learned the theory and tricks I needed for the task at hand. The courses that have had a real impact on me were not the "bag of tricks" ones, they were the ones that planted a small grain of understanding and/or appreciation in my brain. I think these are like seed crystals: They make later learning orders of magnitude more efficient and are far less tangible but far more important than "bags of tricks" learning.