A less than happy rant about research

Alright. I am an English major. On top of that, I am taking a concentration in creative writing. Still with me? Good. Now, I can understand the need to have good research skills, one never knows when one will need to find information about a topic from reputable sources in any line of work. That being said, I am having an issue understanding why in my Advanced Composition class, my professor is finding it necessary to teach us how to research. It would be nice to think that at this point in our lives, having taken enough English classes and having had to write more than one research paper on more than one occassion, that she would assume that we knew how to do basic research. I know that some people are better at it than others, but still, it's hard to believe that by the age of 20, there are people out there that don't know how to research a topic.
The real reason for this rant is that I've been spending the last two days working on this assignment that is supposed to help teach us how to research more effectively. Now, the actual research part of this hasn't been that hard for me. I know how to plug keywords into a database search engine and then use those results to find even more sources. What's been bothering me is that we're having to write these stupid little rhetorical precises' based on one of the scholarly journals that we found in the process of doing this research. What is a rhetorical precis? you migh ask. Instead of trying to explain it in my words, I'll give you the exact instructions that my professor gave us:

A rhetorical précis is a strategy for understanding the content of an article and its point of view. Educator Margaret K. Woodworth first advocated this strategy in 1988. It forces you to read with greater attention and to write with control and conviction. It helps you convey to other people ideas that you have read about. The summaries you will write using the rhetorical précis will also answer the basic who, what, where, when, how, why, and to whom about a piece of writing.
The rhetorical précis is a highly structured four-sentence paragraph that records the essential rhetorical elements of a unit of writing. It includes the name of the writer, the content, the major assertion, the mode of development or support, the stated or apparent purpose, and the relationship established between the writer and the audience. Each of the four sentences requires specific information.
Sentence 1Name of author and title of work [publishing information, date, and page numbers in parentheses]; a rhetorically accurate verb (such as asserts, argues, suggests, contends, believes, reports, indicates, insists); and a "that" clause containing the major assertion (thesis statement) of the work.
Sentence 2A brief but accurate explanation of how the author develops or supports the thesis, usually in the same order as was developed in the essay.
Sentence 3A statement of the author’s apparent purpose, followed by an "in order to" phrase.
Sentence 4A description of the intended audience.

I think you see my point. This is on top of the other reading and writing assignments that she's already given us and that I have for my other classes. I really do think that in college, all professors believe that their's is the only class that their students are taking. Somebody really should educate them to the contrary. ::begins typing a memo to teachers world-wide::