This is an excellent point. I attended a medical school at a large state university which offered both a traditional lecture pathway and an independent study pathway. I chose the independent route. We were given a syllabus, told when the test was to be administered, and given the textbooks. At the end of the first 2 "book-learning" years of medical school, the average USMLE score for the independent study students was significantly higher than the lecture pathway (at least for our year group.) I believe this is because it forced us to figure out the best way we each needed to learn, not just be fed facts by the lecturer (which often go of tangentially off topic.)