That is funny. When I went through "A" school in the Navy our class was 8 hours long but with a 15 minute break every hour and an hour for lunch it was bad at all. It isn't like we could complain if we didn't like it anyway.

 

If your A school was anything like most of the 'Classroom' classes in the more basic schools in the Marines (Classroom time in recruit training, Initial classes in the school of infantry, etc) then you pretty much sat there and remembered what you were told to remember, the whole time bobbing for <<expletive deleted>> trying to stay awake. We ended up knowing a lot of facts, and were able to spout off general military knowledge verbatim in our sleep, but didn't really *learn* anything education wise until we arrived to the 'Fleet'.
Most of us that attend any kind of formal, structured aviation training (Read: 141) are very eager to learn and retain every thing that is presented to us in the classroom. This leads to actually focusing and paying attention to the instructor for every single second that you are in the class. Four hours per day is quite a bit of information to be presented and to actually try to retain.
But I agree, 4 hours in an aviation classroom is ten times easier/more enjoyable than 8 hours per day (In addition to every thing else that your are doing in a normal 24 hour period) in dry classes presented by military personnel

 

Don't know if you ever instructed but a few phrases come to mind; "Learning Plateau" and "Diminshing Returns." No matter how energetic the instructor is students, new students especially will hit a point where there retention level starts to fall off. A perfect example is a new flight student doing touch and go's, there is a point where fatigue sets in (7-8th landing for new students) where there landings and flying will start to regress. That is why a good CFI will call it a day when he sees their student reaching this point.

 

So much to learn in such a little time, even though im in class for almost 4 hours every week I feel the hunger for more information, In fact I wish todays class was a little longer. Today we got into what V speeds are and what they are used for. We also started talking about different powerplants. I really can't wait till next week.