Yep, I understand the motive behind the requirement. There's a lot of good that can come out of it; students are forced to learn the "steps" or "mechanics," teachers can see where things went south and give partial credit or offer assistance, and finally it is a great way to circumvent cheating.

I totally get it and it makes total sense except for when it doesn't. The problem with our education system is that it's fundamentally flawed. It is designed to work best with the typical student being taught from a skill set chosen for optimal widget-making. People learn/think differently and yet we cater more and more to the mantra of pump-and-dump where children with the ability to retain the most frivolous information wins.

It took until my junior year as a comp-sci student for me to figure out what I personally needed to learn the material. I absolutely had to understand the big picture before I could ever attempt to solve the problems. If I didn't and I relied entirely on memorization then I was destined to fail.

In order for me to understand the big picture, I had to ask questions, sometimes a lot of them. Abstract questions would annoy some professors and certainly other students. Engineering classes, like most college classes, are full of people brought up in a system where the slide-show-after-slide-show of formulas, facts, or bullet points was all they needed. My questions were irrelevant and an interruption to their note taking.