[yummyfajitas]

I freely admit I have no idea what goes into a trig class. I dropped out before trig was taught.

You are probably right: when I teach calculus, there does seem to be an assumption that students know way too much petty nonsense. But some basics are necessary, even if the computer knows how to compute sin and cos. Students must understand angles and straight lines.

As for tradeoffs, I completely agree. I just think the value of basic trig is ridiculously high.