[crooked-v]

I vaguely remember the philosophy classes I took oncr upon a time as all being lectures and then extensive papers for homework, with real discussion only happening in the 400-level ones around when I finally stopped taking them because the endless paper-writing rhetoric in circles was just terminally boring by that point.

[viccis]

That sounds like an abysmal philosophy education. Sorry you got that. The main purpose of a philosophy class is to read some material, engage with it critically in a guided dialogue in class time, and engage critically by yourself with it in written work. Straight lectures are basically going to wind up just being cliff's notes for a written source and are about as useful as any secondary source. The exception would be survey courses and intro ones, where the professor's choice of how to guide students through material can make an overwhelming task of exposing yourself to a lot of different thought into something manageable.