Good comparison. This is how I felt when I took ECON 101. Though I was fascinated with the concepts, they felt so far from reality as to be effectively useless.
The problem was that this stance was used to justify claims like "the free market allocates resources in the most efficient way" and "all taxes incur a deadweight loss" which are big statements to make based on such basic coursework. If the class is going to make claims like these, it needs to start with realistic assumptions.
