I have found that sometimes a syllbus narrowly confines the interaction between the instructor and the student. "Why do we need to know this?" says the student. Adult students are acutely aware when there are items in a class that are there to fulfill some requirement other than simply acquiring the knowledge in the course. This always causes conflict, which I can mostly resolve, but I would prefer (as the course states) to have the student guide what they will get out of the course.
