This seems to be an endless topic of discussion for many dental/medical students in many schools all around the globe, and you can't really be all anti- or pro- when it comes to how important basic sciences are for us from a practical point of view.
I graduated loooooong time ago from one of only two dental schools in my home country Jordan (small country, middle east, mostly peaceful though
) We had to go through hell for the two years that we had to spend taking all the basic stuff (like anatomy, physio, patho, pharma, immuno, micro, etc) with fellow "medical" students in their school taught by their faculty. Now for somebody who might be inclined academically into one or more of the basic sciences that would be really nice, having the advantage of getting all of the heavy basic medical stuff. But most dental students are really not that type, correct me if I'm wrong. So that was just too much, I understand the importance again of having well knowledge of how the body works, and how the body gets sick, but I'd rather use more of my time doing actual dentistry, clinical, research, ..etc, anything dental in most of that time in school.
Another point that might be easy to forget, especially from a student's point of view is the need for some pre-requisite work done sometimes before you move on to other classes, subjects, etc. Yes we know Oral & dental anatomy is most of what we will be subjected to in practice, but before you get into lets say the details of anatomy and physiology of the masticatory muscles, or the innervation of the teeth, or taste buds functions, you have to have a general but strong knowledge of muscle anatomy and physiology regardless where these muscles are, and how action potentials travel through the nerves, and how special senses operate, ..etc. I hope I'm making sense to anybody reading this.
I have been teaching dental assisting for awhile now, and my students hate me because I'm the one who handles the "boring" subjects when they first start, the same subjects I complained about before when I was a student (I play the role of the evil faculty I guess
), but you can imagine the vast difference in scope, they still have to pass my classes that deal with a little bit of everything basic, and I try to explain to them in many different ways, that as health care workers we all have to have at least a basic understanding of the human body, and that as a dentist I'd rather pick a well educated assistant to help me.
I don't know if I'm always convincing, but the bottom line I guess is basic sciences are important as long as schools do take into considerations that different programs and specialties need different levels and scope of exposure to basic sciences.
Just my two cents
