I got interested in bioinformatics in the early 2000's. The sequencing of the human genome, and of course that of many other organisms, was a huge enabler of "systems thinking" as applied to biology.
It isn't really fair to blame bio teachers for not teaching this in the 80's or even early 90's. Prior to that, it was mostly memorization. Some biologists and chemists were putting together the basic facts that came together and gave us an "aha!" moment. They won Nobel Prizes for a lot of that. Without Kary Mullis and PCR in the 80's, we wouldn't know 0.01% of what we know now.
It isn't really fair to blame bio teachers for not teaching this in the 80's or even early 90's. Prior to that, it was mostly memorization. Some biologists and chemists were putting together the basic facts that came together and gave us an "aha!" moment. They won Nobel Prizes for a lot of that. Without Kary Mullis and PCR in the 80's, we wouldn't know 0.01% of what we know now.