To be fair though, that sounds... mostly legit, what you did that is.

Ie in many cases in school i don't think they actually care to teach you the subject. What good is that subject really going to have on your life going forward? Even if the sense of ethics or history-repeating i suspect it's quite low.

What those meaningless tasks can do (though highly dependent on the person, i assume) is teach you how to research, how to communicate, and how to cite.

At least that was always my takeaway from many subjects in school that were subjective (ie not math, science, etc). The content is often the least important aspect of many early learnings. .. but then again i loathed school growing up, so who am i to speak on the subject lol.