I'm going to go all the way back to the OP. The OP states that s/he attended a state university. All of the discussion raised neglects the function of a state university. Without knowing exactly which one it was, it's hard to say for certain. However, quite a lot of state universities are part of the land grant system. The mission of those universities is spelled out by the Federal laws that funded them, particularly the Hatch Act and Morrill Acts. The purpose of those universities is to provide a PRACTICAL education to the general population, originally with an emphasis in agriculture.
The "aristocracy" who could afford to obtain a private education would/could be taught in the more classical ways that included plenty of navel gazing over philosophy and literature, in preparation to marry well and inherit Daddy's fortunes. In contrast, land grant universities are intended to provide higher education for people to be employable. Today, there are plenty of other private universities with myriad missions from religious education to educational opportunities for minorities to more liberal arts training. Perhaps the real flaw in the "system" is that high school guidance counselors don't spend enough time informing students about these different opportunities so they select a college/university most suitable for what they want to get out of their 4 years of education there.
The discussions in this thread could be held for any major, really. When you're trying to condense a few hundred years of research (at minimum) into a 4-year education, going back and trying to read all of the primary literature is not a good use of the time. Instead, textbooks condense all of that into the essentials. Those essentials give you the preparation you need to use your education for the jobs you're most likely to do with your chosen major. If you want to go beyond that education, those essentials also give you the preparation to do more self-learning later, either simply for your own edification, or if you desire to attend graduate school. In graduate school, you WILL read the primary literature. You may not need to go all the way back to the beginning, but often you will have a course or two along the way that requires reading a small sampling of the early literature in your chosen field. I've done that for my own field. Frankly, I agree with those who will tell you it is not the least bit helpful for understanding modern science. It's mostly amusing to see how simplistically people viewed things so far back in time; students doing science fair projects do more challenging research than those early studies included. It's more interesting for the perspective of just how far we've come.
From a broader perspective of educating students, it's also important to remember that a student can only get out of an education what they put into it. Faculty are there to help focus and direct the studies, help explain some of the more difficult concepts, and give feedback assessing the students' progress, but the responsibility for learning is all on the shoulders of the students. Nothing but your own self-motivation prevents you from picking up other materials of interest to you and studying them on your own.