I know learning is recursive. That you must return and move forward. They have to remind themselves of what they have read. I believe this is educational malpractice. And there are lots of reasons why it happens.
Teachers love their students.
I know that I can't just go out and teach and pay no attention to the skills of the children in front of me. I do not ask my students what should we be doing today. You think they would have said, great, at the end of may, let's write a 5-page culminating paper. No, this is not what a teenager wants to do. But what we must do is make sure the instruction does increase in complexity.